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lives and that making it to the big leagues together would be a dream come true for both of them, this was far from the truth. Ryan and Jake had never been friends. When they were kids they played together all the time because their mothers were best friends and they lived three houses away from each other, but they’d never gotten along. There had always been a rivalry between them, a competitiveness about everything they did. It didn’t matter if they were playing Wiffle ball or stickball or having a footrace on the street on the way home from school -they always tried their hardest to beat each other.
    Jake and Ryan dominated in high school, breaking most of the Public Schools Athletic League’s hitting and pitching records. Jake was pegged as the surefire number one pick in the nation. While the scouts were impressed with Ryan’s control, toughness, and competitive spirit, they were concerned about his size. Ryan tried to convince them that he was still growing, that he’d have a growth spurt while he was in the minors, but the scouts had researched the heights of people in Ryan’s family and knew the chances that Ryan would ever be taller than five-ten were slim.
    It helped Ryan’s cause that he was pitching so lights-out. In his senior year, his record was eleven and oh, he averaged thirteen strikeouts and less than two walks per seven innings, and he tossed five shutouts and the perfect game. Despite his lack of size, Ryan got drafted, in the fourth round, by the Cleveland Indians. At best he had hoped to be drafted in the sixth or seventh round, so he was thrilled. Meanwhile, Jake got drafted as the first overall pick in the nation. The night of the draft Ryan and Jake and most of their teammates stayed out all night partying. It seemed like the fairy-tale story of the two kids from Brooklyn was going to have a fairy-tale ending.
    But things didn’t work out so well - or at least, they didn’t work out so well for Ryan.
    While Jake tore up the minor leagues from the get-go and got on the fast track to the majors, Ryan struggled in his first season in instructional ball at Winter Haven. He got blown out in his first two starts and was demoted to the bullpen. After a few solid outings, he made it back into the rotation and pitched well the rest of the year, including tossing a two-hit shutout. The next season he was promoted to A ball at Kinston. After a couple of rocky starts, he settled down and became the team’s number two starter. His career seemed to be moving along. His goal was to make it to double A the following season, or even triple A, and then make it to the majors within two to three years. He was pitching in his last game of the season, a Carolina League play-off game against Lynchburg, when it happened. The funny thing was, he never even felt it. He had just completed what was probably the best inning of his minor-league career. He had struck out the side on nine pitches and, although he wasn’t being clocked at the time, he felt like he was hitting the low to mid-nineties - a good five miles per hour faster than he’d ever thrown in his life. Then he took the mound for the next inning and he heard a pop. He was pulled from the game and taken to the hospital for an MRI, and it was determined that he had torn the ulnar collateral ligament in his left elbow. The doctor explained that the injury could have happened that day, but more likely it was cumulative. Ryan realized that all of those curveballs he’d thrown in high school had finally caught up with him.
    Ryan was finished for the season and had Tommy John surgery about a week later. The procedure, which replaced the ligament in his left elbow with one from his right forearm, was considered a success, and the surgeon told Ryan that, assuming everything went well with his rehabilitation, there was no reason why he couldn’t pitch again next season.
    But a few weeks after the surgery, Ryan knew something was wrong. He felt tingling and