Gilroy’s Jack Headley suits up again, fights to get back to pro
ball
For 20 years, it was his life.
Jack Headley was a baseball player. That’s who he was.
At the age of 4, he wanted to play so bad his family got the Little League commissioner to waive the rule that players had to be at least 5 years old.
At the age of 6, when given the school assignment of sketching what he wanted to be as a grown-up, Headley drew a picture of a professional baseball player.
“It’s what he’s always wanted to be,” said his father, Doug Headley. “Ever since he was able to pick up a ball and bat, he’s been playing.”
And at the age of 24, he was still playing. After starring at both San Jose’s Bellarmine Prep and Santa Clara University, the Gilroy-native was tearing it up in the Philadelphia Phillies’ farm system.
Undrafted out of college, Headley was now being mentioned in the Philly newspapers. Hall-of-Famer Mike Schmidt, his Single-A manager in Clearwater, Fla., was raving about the kid.
It was the stuff of his childhood dreams. Every night, Headley was putting up solid stats and playing the game he was seemingly born to play.
But being a couple thousand miles away from home can do funny things with a person’s dreams.
Every night, Headley was thinking about the family and the girlfriend he left behind.
Every night, he was miserable.
“I was more or less questioning whether or not I wanted to pursue the baseball life,” he said. “For the most part, my life had kind of fallen into place.
“Since I was 3 years old, Jack was always the one to play baseball. All everyone did with me was play baseball … all through high school and college, that’s what I did.”
Now, for the first time ever, Headley was forced to make a life-altering decision.
“After all those years, I guess I was just asking myself if this was really what I wanted.”
To get an answer, it took walking away from the game he had always loved.
It took coming home to the people he had always loved.
And in the end, it took only a few days – one Easter weekend this past spring.
“It was one weekend I’ll never forget,” said Headley’s girlfriend, Joahn Fauchier.
Her boyfriend of three years had flown home on Good Friday.
For over a month, he had hinted to Fauchier and others about the possibility of leaving the game.
In addition to growing tired of what he called “The Grind” – the minor-league life of low pay, cheap motels and constant bus travel – Headley had also become increasingly disillusioned with his lack of movement within the organization.
After putting up impressive numbers in Batavia, N.Y., during his first season of pro ball, the outfielder was invited by the Phils to this year’s spring training, where he played for minor league teams in both Clearwater and Lakeland, Fla.
Quite frequently, though, Headley had to sit and watch as teammates with less-than-stellar stats – but ones with the fortune of being a Phillies’ draft pick – got more of a chance to shine.
“Philadelphia has a really strong farm system right now,” said Doug Headley. “And when that happens, a lot of times undrafted players are forced to take a backseat.”
But when Philly assigned him to scrimmage games in “extended” spring training and told him to wait for a roster opening in Clearwater or Lakeland, Headley decided to put in his request for voluntary retirement.
He was already homesick – already asking himself tough questions about his future. And now he was wondering whether he would even get the chance to advance up the minor league ladder.
“I had thought about it for several weeks and I just couldn’t stand it anymore,” Headley said. “I was just always asking, ‘What am I doing? Where am I going?’ And that stuff wears on you.
“I just didn’t think I loved the game anymore.”
So he came back. He was thinking about pursuing a career as a firefighter, or going back to school and starting his own business.
But while dozens of Headley’s family members gathered at his sister’s house in Gilroy to mark his return, Fauchier said she could tell from the beginning that “something was wrong.”
Headley walked around the house and looked at some of his baseball memoribilia from Batavia his sister had collected – until he couldn’t look at it any longer.
Then with his dad and some buddies, he sat and analyzed a Giants game on television – until he couldn’t watch it any longer.
“I was sitting there breaking down an at-bat and it just occurred to me that I shouldn’t be doing that,” Headley said. “I should be playing out on a field somewhere.”
In fact, Headley knew he had made a mistake just before he boarded his plane in Florida, he later told his dad.
“I think he wrestled with it so much that he talked himself into it,” Doug Headley said.
Even then, though, it would’ve been too late.
From his sister’s house, Headley had called the Phillies and told them he desperately wanted back.
They told him they had a policy that once a player retires, he retires for good.
“But there were no hard feelings,” Headley said. “I was the one who had made the initial decision. And I was the one who had to live with the consequences.”
That didn’t mean he was giving up, though.
After his agent found out at the last minute about an open tryout for a professional independent league, Headley logged onto Hotwire.com and was on a plane to Pennsylvania the next day.
“I think it took walking away to realize how important baseball was to me,” Headley said. “It’s who I am. And I wasn’t ready to not have it around in my life.”
Out of the 300 or so hopefuls who traveled to the Pittsburgh area, only two dozen of them would be picked in the Frontier League’s walk-on draft, which took place immediately following the two-day tryout.
Headley was one of them.
“We took a look at his numbers in the minors and knew he probably should’ve had more of an opportunity there,” said John Massarelli, manager of the Washington (Pa.) Wild Things. “So we immediately targeted him.”
Then they drafted him.
All he’s done so far is lead the league’s best team in hits (72), runs (40), stolen bases (11) and batting average (.346).
And just last week, Headley batted leadoff in the Frontier League All-Star Game, becoming the first player ever from the walk-on draft to participate in the event.
“He’s not exactly your standard guy in this league,” Massarelli said. “Most have been released from affiliated teams and have struggled at some point.”
But Headley doesn’t see that much of a difference.
“Yeah, not too many walked away themselves,” he said of his new teammates. “But there are a lot of guys with tough circumstances who are trying to play as long as they can.
“So we’re all kind of in the same boat.”
Almost all of them trying to get back to the minor leagues. Almost all of them pursuing a dream far from home.
And almost all of them missing the loved ones they left behind.
Fauchier, who lives in Gilroy and works at a bank in San Jose, has gotten used to this life.
With the three-hour time difference, she’s gotten used to the 4 a.m. phone calls and the cell phone bills that have risen as high as $600.
She said it’s worth it, though, because she “knows Jack Headley the person.”
She knows he loves to hang out with his family, play his guitar and read every book he can get his hands on. And that “he really is funny when nobody else is around.”
The pair’s unwavering devotion to each other is obvious.
Headley calls her “the closest person in my life.” Fauchier calls him “my first true love.”
Headley’s only sibling, sister Janet Krulee, said if the 23-year-old Fauchier told Headley “to quit tommorrow, I’m almost certain he would do it.”
“But she’s wonderful for him,” Krulee added. “Very supportive.”
Even when Headley decided to go back to baseball after just a few days at home, his college sweetheart from Santa Clara was standing right there beside him.
“I was relieved actually,” Fauchier said of his quick change-of-heart. “It’s not like I didn’t want him around, but it just didn’t feel right. I knew he was better off doing something he loved.
“As long as he’s doing something he loves, I think it’s better off in the long run for everyone.”
And make no mistake – after hitting a low point back in the spring – Headley is again doing something he loves.
In the end, that’s made all the difference.
“He’s happy again,” Doug Headley said. “It’s like night and day … it was all negative before and now everything is positive.”
Will that lead him back to where he once was? Back to an affiliated club? Maybe even farther?
“Definitely,” said Massarelli, who cited a number of success stories from the Frontier League. “He’s a quality person and a great player.
“By no means is his journey over.”
Whatever the future may hold, though, Headley seems content.
“The big thing is knowing and feeling that this is the right thing to do,” Headley said. “And when you have that attitude, you feel like you can take on any situation and make the best of it.”
With his baseball future in doubt and his young life at a crossroads, Headley was given a second chance to pursue his dream.
Without hesitation, the hometown kid took on the situation.
And without a doubt, he plans on making the best of it.
