Life After Baseball Isn’t So Bad

Remember Mark Mulder? Of course you remember Mark Mulder. Mark Mulder was a high Athletics draft pick back in 1998 who came up and served as a third of Oakland’s Big Three, alongside Tim Hudson and Barry Zito, before getting traded to St. Louis. He was well on his way to a long, productive career until shoulder injuries started popping up. Rotator cuff trouble first knocked him out in 2006, and after making failed attempts to come back in 2007 and 2008, at just 31 years of age, Mark Mulder’s baseball career came to a premature end.

It’s a sad story, and one that many might even mischaracterize as tragic. So how has Mulder dealt with the disappointment? Pretty well, as a matter of fact.

Former Cardinal’s pitcher Mark Mulder won his second Golf Channel Amateur Tour major this weekend at the Western Open on the legendary TPC Scottsdale golf course. Mulder shot a combined 147 over the two day event. This is Mulder’s sixth victory in nine appearances this year.

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Mulder has now earned enough points to qualify for the Am Tour National Championship, taking place at the TPC Sawgrass, home of the PGA Players Championship, in September.

Stories like Mulder’s, or Eric Byrnes’, can be upsetting or sweet, depending on how you look at them. On the one hand, neither Mulder nor Byrnes ever got to play in a World Series, and had the thing they’d worked towards all their lives taken away before they were ready. On the other hand, both Mulder and Byrnes earned tens of millions of dollars in their twenties and early thirties, setting themselves and their families up for life while getting away from the game and being able to enjoy retirement in the prime of their lives.

It’s enough to make a man jealous.