LOS ANGELES — When Eileen Flaherty looked down at her phone and saw the message from her son, she thought something was wrong. Just minutes remained until the trade deadline, but a day after Jack Flaherty’s start for the Detroit Tigers was pushed back, he texted his mom that he was heading to Los Angeles.
After seeing her son in Detroit, Eileen had just returned to Los Angeles by plane, and it took her a half-second to comprehend its significance.
In the midst of a comeback season, Flaherty was returning home. There was nothing off. He was signed in a blockbuster deal to become a Los Angeles Dodger.
The Flahertys had considered Dodger Stadium to be a sort of second home for many years. At three weeks old, Eileen adopted Jack from Burbank, California. When he was six months old, she took him to his first stadium visit, starting what became a kind of a Blue Heaven tradition. He may now once more call it home.
@Dodgers @jflare_
— Eileen Flaherty (@JackandGradyMom) July 30, 2024
Circa 1997 …. Let’s Go!!! pic.twitter.com/YlI39KIx3Q
On Friday, in his first home start for his childhood team, Flaherty, who is now 28 years old, will take the mound at Dodgers Stadium against the Pittsburgh Pirates.
“I didn’t think I was gonna get emotional when I talked to him,” Eileen Flaherty recalled by phone this week ahead of Flaherty’s first home start on Friday, “but then I did.”
When Eileen received the call, she was returning from the airport by car. When Eileen got home, she started going through boxes of old pictures until she came across one of her baby boy, who was less than a year old, wearing a Dodgers onesie, a flat-brimmed Dodgers cap, and a huge smile. Eileen attempted to take a picture of the glossy ’90s print on her iPhone while sitting in her hallway, trying to filter out some of the glare. A mother and kid experienced a “full circle” moment when she shared it online.
“Somebody had sent me an email a couple days ago and said, ‘How can you not be romantic about baseball?’” Eileen said. “Like the romance of the fact that this kid that went to his first game at 6 months old, and pretty much like 28 years later, is actually stepping on the mound as a Dodger. How do you not get a tiny bit emotional and romantic about that?”
The Flahertys never imagined this night would arrive.
“Just how cool it is, how special it is,” Jack Flaherty said last week after the trade. “I think everyone deep down wants to play for their hometown team. Getting the opportunity to do so is just special.”
Convenience was the main reason Eileen took her son to the baseball at first. It was advised that she take Jack to Dodger Stadium by a friend who owned season tickets in the reserve level. A single game became roughly 20 every season. And Jack Flaherty sat motionless at the stadium even as he developed into a mobile and agitated toddler.
“There was something about it that he loved,” Eileen said.
Jack Flaherty as a kid loved the Dodgers, as well as nachos and pretzels with extra cheese. (Courtesy: Eileen Flaherty)
Because Eileen loved Mike Piazza, she once painted Piazza’s No. 31 on Jack’s face during a game. Even though Flaherty had a great admiration for Derek Jeter of the New York Yankees, he consistently wore Dodgers apparel when attending games. Every night, he would purchase a soft pretzel with additional cheese to dip it in and share an order of nachos. They would constantly watch the Dodgers of Piazza and Raul Mondesi, of Eric Gagné and Adrián Beltré, from their reserve level seat.
As part of a renowned Harvard-Westlake High School rotation that also featured future major leaguers Max Fried and Lucas Giolito, Eileen was astounded by what she witnessed when Flaherty pitched at Dodger Stadium for the first time. This time, instead of sitting in reserve, she was at field level when Flaherty took the mound, where he had watched a great deal of Dodgers pitchers toss over the years. At the Southern Section Division I championship game, Flaherty pitched six scoreless innings, striking out eight and scoring the game’s lone run to defeat Marina, 1-0.
In 2018, Eileen was seated at field level once more, this time for her son’s first major-league pitching appearance at Dodger Stadium. Her son, an ascending star in his first full season with the St. Louis Cardinals, struck out ten Dodgers in six innings of one-run ball. While her son was giving a commanding performance, Eileen glanced back at a segment of the audience that knew his son from Harvard-Westlake or elsewhere.
In 2019, Flaherty made a comeback and pitched seven scoreless innings while striking out ten batters, solidifying his status as one of the best young pitchers in the game. After making 33 starts, he recorded a 2.75 ERA and finished fourth in the NL Cy Young votes. Both former teammates and Dodgers officials, who were hoping to sign Flaherty this summer, still remember his outstanding second half of play. Tommy Edman, who is currently reunited with Flaherty on the Dodgers, described him as “just about the best pitcher in baseball.”
The years that followed were not as idyllic. Flaherty’s indirect injury caused him to miss time. Then a pain in the shoulder. His output dropped as he pitched. He was traded to the Baltimore Orioles during the trade deadline of the previous season, ending his career with the Cardinals. Flaherty was moved to the bullpen by the time the Orioles advanced to the postseason.
A chance for a fresh start came with a one-year deal with the Tigers. The majority of the winter was spent by Flaherty refining his mechanics and gaining velocity stability. The team, which included Chris Fetter, the pitching coach for the Tigers, advised him to throw more sliders and shelve his cutter.
More than anything, Eileen said, Jack’s run of success with the Tigers (a 2.95 ERA in 18 starts before the trade), was “so encompassing of the happiness and joy that the Detroit Tigers were able to give back to him. It was just so fun to see him be so happy and settled, which I think for any of us with what we do for a living, the results are successful as well.”
Flaherty gave his best performance since that productive period of 2019. Eileen knew what to look for on the mound when she traveled to Detroit in April to witness her son take on his former team for the first time: Flaherty struck out 14 batters in 6 2/3 innings without giving up a run. According to Eileen, it was not a reinvention. Flaherty has always been like way.
The Dodgers, who made Flaherty the most noteworthy pitcher traded before the deadline, are depending on that. Questions are popping up in their rotation, and Flaherty is supposed to answer them.
This kid will start Friday against the Pittsburgh Pirates. (Courtesy: Eileen Flaherty)
Eileen went to the Oakland game on Saturday, where Flaherty made his Dodgers debut, tossing six innings without giving up a run for a team that had been struggling most of July. She had also traveled through the I-5 to visit her son when he arrived in San Diego with his new squad.
Naturally, she and her son Grady will be there on Friday as well. Numerous loved ones who have observed Flaherty since he was a little boy on the reserve level will also feel the same way.
“I’ll want to just break down and cry about the joy of all of it,” Eileen said. “It’s crazy.”
(Top photo of Jack Flaherty: Robert Edwards / USA Today)
