Sparkman hopes to light up Toronto Blue Jays after Rule 5 Draft

By Millie Diaz
Sports Writer
    Ganado-bred Glenn Sparkman, better known as “Sparky” to Jackson County, is about to enter the biggest opportunity of his baseball career yet, all due to a gamble. In the 2013 draft the right-handed pitcher was selected in round 20 by the Kansas City Royals.
    But the Royals had an option this year: they could either protect Sparkman or give him a chance to see if he could get picked up by another team. The Royals took the gamble and chose not to protect the 24-year old, but it appears to have worked out in Sparkman’s favor.
    He was the 13th pick in the Rule 5 Draft by the big leagues: the Toronto Blue Jays.
    Major League Baseball holds two player drafts, the main one in June dealing with amateur players, but Rule 5 takes place in December and concerns professional players. The Rule 5 Draft means for $100K, Sparkman will train with the Blue Jays in the spring. He must make the team by March or April and be with the Blue Jays for a year for them to own his contract. If he doesn’t make the team, he goes through waivers and gets offered back to the Royals at half the cost, for $50K.
    For Sparkman, he said his career hinged, literally and metaphorically, on an ulnar collateral ligament reconstruction procedure, or better known as a Tommy John surgery, in 2015.
    A Tommy John is done to repair a damaged ligament in the elbow. A baseball pitch wind-up twists an arm abnormally with its normal rotation, and over time can and will damage a pitcher’s elbow.
    The surgery, named after the the first pitcher to undergo the procedure in 1974, Los Angeles Dodger’s pitcher Tommy John, takes a tendon ligament from a different part of the arm to replace the rutured UCL in the pitching arm.
    “My path to surgery was due to pain more than anything, it began to feel like a knife was stabbing my elbow, and it became hard to do the thing I loved,” he said. “I went into rehabilitation for an entire year, for six months I couldn’t touch a baseball. It was really hard at times, and my arm was slow and weak. It feels like you have a new arm, but some days you want to sleep in and not go to rehab, it’s takes a lot of work, but it’s worth it. You just have to keep pushing yourself.”
    Sparkman’s pitch in miles per hour was in the low 90s, but since the surgery, he said he’s topped out at around 96 mph. He was limited to 20 innings because of the surgery, then returned in June to pitch 60.1 inning at a 5.22 ERA.
    “During those my arm felt the best it’s ever felt. I’m throwing my hardest and my elbow is still tender, by my arm itself felt great. I found you have to set little goals for yourself to keep going.”
    Sparkman will leave to spring training in early February of 2017 in Florida, and his first game will be two weeks after. He started his baseball career out of high school by walking onto the Wharton County Community College baseball team, and switched from shortstop to pitching. He was named Carolina League Pitcher of the Year in 2014.
    He has a 15-month old daughter Raelynn with his wife Katherine.
    “My dream is for my family now, there comes a point in your dream when you want to provide for your family and do the best for them and keep them happy. Even when I was in college my biggest dream was to pitch in the big leagues and I wanted to do that with as much passion as I could.
    “There’s nothing better than going outside in the baseball field in the morning and smell the grass, see the lights, the fans, it’s just a great atmosphere and I wanted to be a part of that in a professional way, so I kept pushing myself and going to tryouts just trying to be seen. I told myself, I’ve pushed myself this far, there’s no way I’m going to give up now. I don’t plan to give up anytime soon, until I’m physically unable to play.”
    Sparkman will know before May of 2017 whether he made the Toronto Blue Jay baseball team. The first step is spring training.