There’s no telling what might cross Joe Musgrove’s mind Friday when he makes his Pirates debut at PNC Park, but I can promise you this: At some point, he will think of his father, Mark, a long-time San Diego police officer whose brush with death 10 years ago changed Joe’s life for good.
I can promise you this, too: Mark Musgrove will be watching proudly from his home in El Cajon, Calif., with his wife, Diane, his two grown daughters, Marisa and Terra, and the family’s two chihuahuas, Abby and Emma.
None of them will be watching quietly, from what I understand, and there will be no outside distractions.
“We’re loud — obnoxiously loyal to Joe,” Mark Musgrove said Thursday. “My phone blows up every time Joe pitches, so I set it on vibrate. I let everybody know, ever since he got called up in 2016, that when you call during a game, unless you put a 9-1-1 next to it, I won’t answer.”
Ask Joe Musgrove about his dad, and you will see him swell with pride. He’ll tell you about the early morning games of catch, when his father would rush home from the graveyard shift. And about fearing his dad might not come home from another shift on the beat, like the night he encountered two armed robbers who’d invaded a home.
You’ll hear about the friendship Mark Musgrove had with long-time major leaguer Kevin Mitchell (234 career home runs) and how Mitchell would give Joe baseball tips. You’ll hear, too, about the cross-country trips mom and dad would make to watch Joe’s travel teams, one of which included Bryce Harper.
You might even hear about how Musgrove and current teammate Steven Brault were high-school teammates and about how Brault took Terra Musgrove to prom.
Mostly, though, you’ll hear about the bond of baseball.
“My dad was the one that instilled the love of baseball in me, and he is a lot of what inspires me,” Joe Musgrove told me in spring training. “He was everything you want in a father. Seeing the relationship he had with my mom, he seemed like the perfect man. He was always someone I tried to be.”
That notion became far too literal when Mark, who’d left the police force to become a private investigator, fell desperately ill in 2008. He was recovering from a stomach flu when he woke up on a Saturday morning with tingling in his fingertips and the bottom of his feet.
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When symptoms worsened, Mark thought he was having a stroke. He went to the emergency room. Tests came back normal.
The next day, everything changed. Mark was diagnosed with an autoimmune deficiency called Guillain-Barre syndrome, and it progressed like fire.
“By about 4 o’clock that afternoon, I was completely paralyzed from the shoulders down,” he said. “My cardiac and respiratory systems were going into failure.”
Mark survived after significant time in intensive care, but he was essentially paralyzed for nearly two years. He spent several weeks in the hospital and another year-plus bedridden in a makeshift ward at home.
The cruelty of his condition was that even though he couldn’t move his limbs, he could feel pain. As he tells it, the condition destroyed the sheath that protects his nerve endings.
A 20-year cop and the rock of his family, Mark was now helpless. Joe, just 15 at the time, would often tend to his father in the hospital overnight.
“He needed everything from [scratching] an itch in his face, to maybe being rolled on his side because of back pain, going to the bathroom, all these things,” Joe recalled. “You know, going through that and seeing him in the situation he was in, I think it made me mature earlier than I’d planned on.”
Father and son were forced into a heart-to-heart about how Joe might have to become the man of the house.
“The kind of talk you never want to have,” Mark recalled. “Like, ‘Son, I don’t know if I’ll ever make it out of the hospital.’ ”
But Mark also told his son he still “needed to be Joe” and should pursue his baseball career with all his heart (Joe become a first-round pick by the Toronto Blue Jays in 2011).
Now fast forward to Nov. 1, 2017, Game 7 of the World Series at Dodger Stadium. Musgrove, who’d won Game 5 in relief, and his Astros teammates stormed the field upon the final out. Soon after, he waited for his wheelchair-bound father to greet him on the field.
They both cried. And from what I gather, if you know Mark, tears didn’t always come easily.
“I’ve only seen it maybe a handful of times in my life,” Joe said, “and for me and him to be be sharing that same emotion was a really special feeling. It kind of overwhelmed me.”
Two months later, the Astros sent the 6-foot-5, 265-pound Musgrove to the Pirates as part of the Gerrit Cole trade. On Friday, recovered from a shoulder strain, he will launch his Pirates career.
Mark, 60, has improved to using a cane and crutches. He expects to continue to progress. Watching Joe pitch undoubtedly helps.
“He’s worked harder than anybody I’ve ever seen,” Mark said. “It’s such a pleasure to call him my son.”
Joe Starkey: jstarkey@post-gazette.com or Twitter @JoeStarkey1.
First Published: May 24, 2018, 7:50 p.m.
