in defense of the utility player

Whoa hi! It's been a while since I've published anything here, although if ideas count for anything, I've certainly started half a dozen baseball-related posts in my head these past three months....about the White Sox having the best vibes in the league, for example; and the awesome San Francisco Firebells (FTQ); the Giants' terrible, horrible, no good, very bad season; ballpark horticulture (ok, I've actually written about this a lot over on Substack); the Padres' Comeback Year (which would've been much more fun to write if we'd actually made it to the World Series), etc. etc.

But today I'm putting all those ideas on the backburner and instead writing about my favorite bench player, Tyler Wade.

Wade recently announced he is retiring from baseball after a decade in the big leagues (five seasons with the Yankees, a couple seasons with the Angels and A's, and two seasons with the Padres). It wasn't a complete shock—he hadn't had any airtime in the majors in 2026—but it still gave me a soft punch in the gut, like when a good friend moves away for good. You'll always have the memories, but wish you could make more!!

Tyler Wade was not exactly a star player. His stats were lower than average, and he spent a decent amount of time in the minors before the Padres called him up for a spot on the roster. But he had two things going for him:

One: He was an all-time utility player. He could play almost every position on the field, was fast on the bases, and just generally made himself available for any situation where he could help the team win. One of his most memorable moments in a Padres uniform came in extra innings against the Marlins in 2024, when he sacrificed his nose while sliding home to give the Padres the lead.

Two: He's an ultimate vibes guy. That 10th inning slide was T Wade in a nutshell: taking one for the team, and then being right back in the dugout hyping up his teammates. He wasn't the best player on the roster by a long shot, but he was always there to carry out the big celebratory barrel of Gatorade after a win. There's a fake stat in baseball fandom called VAR (Vibes Above Replacement) that measures a player's impact on clubhouse morale, and Tyler Wade's VAR was off the charts.

One of my favorite non-baseball things Tyler Wade did was design a line of apparel called Give Yourself Flowers. While doing this, he spoke out in defense of self-compassion, both in this interview with the clothing label and this video from Padres spring training. There's a quote from that video that I think about a lot, paraphrased: "self-talk is important, because you talk to yourself more than you talk to anyone else in your life." An example, he says, is recognizing something you did well at the end of the day, instead of beating yourself up over what went wrong. Getting life advice from a Padres AAA player during spring training wasn't on my 2025 bingo card, but it was much, much needed during a time in my life when I was questioning everything I did.

Almost exactly a year later, I made the decision to step away from my full-time job in corporate tech. I'd been doing it for nearly 15 years, but felt like I could never find a role that completely fit my strengths. I'd jumped from operations to technical writing to product management to design to marketing to communications, and from huge enterprise companies to tiny scrappy startups. At any given moment my job title usually reflected about 25% of what I was doing, the rest was a hodgepodge of things I raised my hand for, because apparently I wanted to do all the things, and still wasn't completely satisfied.

People like to give advice like "find your niche", and hiring teams always seem to favor applicants who are really good at the exact jobs they're hiring for, but my resume never fit the mold (how do I convey on a resume that I'm just good at doing the work, whatever the work is??). I love being a generalist, a utility player. I'm a Tyler Wade, not a Manny Machado.

And after taking some time off to travel (going to baseball games, naturally), volunteer, and continue classes at CCSF, I'm starting to focus the lens on what the next phase of my career might look like, which is much more suited to a generalist's mentality. I've picked up a handful of freelance writing jobs (where I can work with all sorts of people doing all sorts of cool things!), while working as a plant care specialist for a local plant shop (a part-time gig that takes me all over San Francisco and makes me physically exhausted, in a good way, at the end of the day).

I used to think I loved structure, but giving up the 9 to 5 and bopping around the city all day while squeezing in as many jobs as possible in the week is way more fun. It's entirely possible I'll eventually burn out on this work life too, but the nice thing about freelancing and working for yourself is you can just...stop and do something else.

Which seems to be what our good friend T Wade is doing. I trust that whatever he's up to next (making more inspirational hoodies? being a male model? joining the Padres organization as unofficial Vibes Coach?) will be the thing that makes him happy. Here's to change, and here's to the best utility player to ever wear the brown and gold!

https://www.instagram.com/p/DJr-F5-Ta0U/