BOONVILLE, Missouri — The softball field at Boonville Correctional Center has two fences. The first is a standard outfield fence, 275 feet from home plate, stretching from foul line to foul line. The second, about 50 feet farther, is made of taut barbed-wire strands ringed by circles of razor wire, separating the state penitentiary from the world. It’s a stark reminder that the field is, quite literally, a diamond in the rough.
That didn’t keep Lucas Erceg from admiring it. Erceg, who over the past two seasons has established himself as one of the most reliable relief pitchers in baseball for the Kansas City Royals, had arrived at Boonville, a minimum security facility that houses more than 800 inmates, about an hour earlier. He walked through a door that listed the rules to enter — no tight, transparent or otherwise revealing clothing; no holes in jeans or pants; no skirts, dresses or shorts above the top of the kneecap — and, as he toured the grounds, stopped at the field to appreciate its beauty amid the endless array of brick buildings that surround it.
Erceg had found purpose and meaning on the baseball field, and it brought him here, about 90 minutes east of Kansas City, Missouri, on an off day. Soon after Erceg was traded to the Royals last year, Tristram “Sean” McCormack, the chaplain at the facility, sent Erceg a letter asking if he would consider speaking to a group of inmates. Willie Mays Aikens, the former Royals first baseman who had served 14 years in federal prison for selling crack to an undercover police officer, had spoken at Boonville. So had Darryl Strawberry, the former New York Mets and New York Yankees star whose issues with drugs derailed his career. Even if Erceg were comparatively anonymous, McCormack believed his story would resonate with those incarcerated.
The date they settled on, June 9, was exactly five years to the day Erceg swallowed his last sip of alcohol. He is not shy about recounting his sobriety journey, but never before had he done it in front of a group of people so large, many of whom shared a similar history. His wife, Emma, had encouraged Erceg “to try and make something more out of my outlet as a baseball player and do more with the opportunities that I have.” And so here he was, wearing a black shirt, chinos and white sneakers, flanked by Emma, nervous as he had been in years, striding toward the final stop of the tour.
They arrived in front of the building where he would talk with the group. HOPE CHAPEL, a sign out front said, with the building number on another sign underneath it: 17. It just happened to be Erceg’s favorite number growing up. He isn’t necessarily one to believe in kismets, but the anniversary, a chapel named after his underlying ethos — and now the number? This couldn’t all be coincidence.
“It was meant to be,” Erceg said.
HAD ERCEG NOT awoken June 10, 2020, and committed to never drinking again, he worries he would have ended up somewhere like Boonville or even worse. It’s a complicated reality to confront, one that makes him appreciative not only of the career he has built but of the support system that buoyed him as he foundered.
Stability had never found Erceg in his youth. He grew up in Campbell, California, about 10 miles southwest of San Jose. His mom had a drinking problem. His dad was abusive. Erceg nevertheless thrived at Westmont High as a third baseman and pitcher, earning a scholarship to Cal, where his worst instincts took root. He drank constantly. He stopped going to class. Suicidal thoughts rippled through his mind. After being named first-team All-Pac-12 as a sophomore, he flunked out of school.
“I always used baseball as an outlet to kind of get away from all that and just go out and compete,” Erceg said. “I had natural abilities, and I had that natural fire, that natural competitor in me that kind of took me to the next level quickly. But I wasn’t a man, you know what I mean? I didn’t make the right decisions. And I think that’s when alcoholism kind of imploded on me and took over who I was as a person.”
Erceg transferred to Menlo College, then an NAIA program, and impressed enough for teams to look past his off-field issues and slot him high on their draft boards. The Milwaukee Brewers chose him with the 46th pick in the 2016 draft, scrapped him pitching despite his pleas to be a two-way player and envisioned him as their third baseman of the future. Erceg struggled to establish himself as a prospect, and his drinking went inverse with his career prospects. He chalked up his missteps — one time, he drank too much during a round of golf with his close friend, now-Yankees center fielder Trent Grisham, and flipped a cart when attempting to do a donut — to youthful indiscretion, not problematic behavioral patterns.
When COVID hit in 2020, Erceg spent his days pounding beers and playing Fortnite. Emma, whom he married in 2022 after they had met at Menlo six years earlier would arrive home, find 15 empty beer cans strewn about and “try to understand how it got to this point.” Deep down, she knew Erceg was drowning his unresolved childhood trauma in beer, which turned him mean. That June, Emma told Erceg she was leaving their home in Phoenix and gave him an ultimatum: If he did not stop drinking in the next two weeks, she wouldn’t come back. He resolved then and there: no more alcohol. He could do this, through single-mindedness and grit, like he had so many other things.
“Looking back on it now … I was constantly putting myself in the worst position possible to have success but still able to find that success just so I can say, ‘Hey, I did that. I did that on my own,'” Erceg said. “I didn’t need any help. I didn’t ask for help. I didn’t want help. I was kind of flipping people the bird when they reached out their hand.”
Erceg quit cold turkey. No rehab program. No 12-step meetings. The first three months of sobriety turned him gaunt. Previously a hearty 6-foot-2 and 210 pounds, he lost his taste for food and water and, along the way, almost 40 pounds. Managing life without alcohol was tricky, but Erceg proved adept. When he wasn’t invited to the Brewers’ alternate site for minor league prospects during the pandemic, he drove nearly 1,200 miles from Phoenix to Houston to play for the independent Sugar Land Lightning Sloths. One night in the team hotel, his teammate and bourbon aficionado Joe Wieland poured some in a cup and placed it on a PlayStation for Erceg. It was the first time Erceg had to explain to someone why he couldn’t drink. Wieland apologized and snatched away the cup, his support the sort of building block Erceg needed to resurrect his career.
Eventually, Erceg’s appetite and weight returned, and along came a plan by the Brewers to transition him into a full-time pitcher. It had been five years since he had been on the mound, and while his arm remained exceptional, the art of pitching would take time to master. Erceg spent 2021 at Double-A and split the next season between Double-A and Triple-A, showing flashes of excellence with a slider and changeup to complement a fastball that could touch triple digits. The A’s believed in Erceg’s talent enough to purchase his contract from Milwaukee for $100,000 in May 2023 and add him to their major league roster.
In less than three years, he had gone from nearly drinking himself out of the game to the big leagues. As a 28-year-old rookie, he struck out 68 batters in 55 innings. Teams took notice, and at the 2024 trade deadline, Erceg was one of the most sought-after relievers available. The Royals landed him for three prospects, and within two weeks, he was their closer. He locked down both of their wins in a wild-card series sweep of the Baltimore Orioles, and as Erceg tried to navigate the postgame celebration in which droplets of champagne pooled on his mustache, he remembered a night out with Emma in the winter of 2022. He ordered a non-alcoholic Moscow mule, took a sip and immediately recognized the bartender had made it with vodka. Erceg spit it back into the copper mug.
One taste could lead him back to the depths he had worked so hard to leave in the past.
REMAINING COGNIZANT OF that past is part of Erceg’s recovery, and it’s why when McCormack described Boonville’s goals to him, they sounded familiar: education, vocation, restorative justice. Erceg has done much of the same, learning who he was, is and wants to be, absorbing the skills that promote success and doing right by those done wrong by his actions.
The tour of Boonville showed Erceg the side of prison he otherwise would never have understood. The facility, which until 1983 was a home for minors who had run afoul of the law, had evolved in recent years to emphasize that imprisonment offers opportunities for personal growth. Restorative justice programs aim to take away a purely punitive approach to criminality by providing offenders opportunities in the local community to repair the damage they caused. Missouri’s Department of Corrections leaned into that concept with nearly 20 programs offered to those incarcerated in its 21 facilities.
The men at Boonville can attend school four days a week. For those who prefer to ply a trade, one program gives graduates professional welding certification. When Erceg walked into a room with heavy equipment simulators — wheel loader, bulldozer and excavator — he looked at Emma and said: “Wow.” Even though the dirt they were moving was virtual, the operators wore hard hats and fluorescent vests and worked eight-hour days to prepare them for as smooth of a reentry as possible into life outside of razor-wired walls.
In Boonville’s wood shop, funded by money collected at the prison’s canteen, men make a variety of items — perhaps the most popular are the cornhole boards given to local communities to raise money at auctions. Puppies for Parole, a program that offers dog training certification to those who work on the grounds with rescues, is a welcome sliver of home. On the day Erceg visited, around 30 men were at work-release jobs beyond the walls of Boonville.
“In the last five, six years, the department has changed its focus, and we’re trying to set them up to be successful when they go home,” said Justin Page, the warden at Boonville. “What is that going to do to recidivism? It’s going to take another 10 or 15 years to really see. But I always say: How can it be a bad thing? We give guys tools that they didn’t have before they came here.”
The tour crystallized Erceg’s sense of what he needed to say when he arrived at Hope Chapel. He knows how fortunate he is. Beyond the fame, the money, the privilege that comes with being a Major League Baseball player, he has freedom and agency. Inside him, though, is still the shared pain that fomented so many bad decisions. Since June 10, 2020, he better understands it doesn’t define him — just as their decisions and incarceration don’t define them.
“Dealing with adversity when you’re growing up and in your life — it takes a toll on you mentally, it takes a toll on you physically,” Erceg said. “Addiction is a serious topic, and I don’t think it gets enough reach. So I want to make what I’ve been through relevant in these inmates’ eyes and make them appreciate life for what it is, no matter what the circumstances are.”
DOZENS OF MEN wearing standard-issue gray uniforms filed into Hope Chapel around lunchtime June 9 and filled the wooden pews. The roof above them was made of tin and tattered, the walls to their sides bright with stained glass and the scene in front of them welcoming: McCormack, their friendly faced pastor, sitting with Erceg, who was trying to hide the nerves surging inside of him. Emma chuckled. Over the winter, Erceg had done a smaller-scale version of this, talking with a group of local children who had been in trouble.
“He was red as a freaking tomato, all nervous,” Emma said. “He can pitch in front of 40,000 people with bases loaded and not break a sweat. But public speaking is difficult.”
Erceg hid it well. He smiled as McCormack ran a short video explaining who Erceg was. He looked comfortable in front of a microphone, his legs crossed, his posture at ease. More than anything, he recognized that he was doing exactly what Emma encouraged him to: giving a little bit of himself, being vulnerable to those whose state in life made them inherently even more so.
“Before we even get started, I just want to tell you this: Thank you for taking the time out of your day to listen to what I have to say,” Erceg said. “At the end of the day, I only have one goal in mind being here, and that’s just to connect with you guys. I don’t want to make it seem like I’m here to talk at you. I want to make sure that you guys understand that this means a lot to me.”
He delved into his background: the tough upbringing, the successes in spite of it, the failures because of it. The value in talking, as uncomfortable as it might be. The need for support, whether it’s from family, friends, community, religion, work — wherever it can be found. And the ultimate realization that previous decisions do not foretell future ones.
“I know that if I take a drink, all that hard work that I put in the last five years would go out the window and I’d have to restart,” he said. “So it’s almost like for me personally, I’m challenging myself every day to maintain, maintain that slow little step. I mean, five years down the line, I’ve walked a hundred miles. But I know I’ve got a thousand more to go.”
In the back of the chapel sat Alex Luttrell, 38, who in September 2022 drove drunk, passed cars on the wrong side of the road and caused a head-on collision with 25-year-old Steven Stafford, who died in the wreck. Luttrell pleaded guilty to DWI causing death of another and was sentenced to eight years in prison. Since arriving at Boonville, he said, he had sobered up and worked to mend his relationship with his wife and three children.
Through an empowering dads program Boonville offers, Luttrell gets to spend time with his family once a month. He tells them about his work with Puppies for Parole: He trains dogs for Retrieving Freedom, an organization that places dogs with veterans in need of service animals and children with autism who require emotional support.
“When he was being asked what made him finally say, ‘That’s enough. I’ve had enough.’ — I think I related to that the most,” Luttrell said. “For me, it was years and years and years I was drinking. You’re in denial. You don’t want to believe you got a problem. I thought I could stop at any time.”
That shared feeling brought Erceg to Boonville and guides him elsewhere. Earlier this season, he spent a day at Triple-A Omaha on a rehabilitation assignment. Inside the clubhouse, he said, teammates mandated a quick icebreaker. He could sing a song, do a goofy dance, tell them something they might not know about him.
“I made the decision to say something interesting about myself,” Erceg said, “and I immediately just shared, ‘Hey, I’m about to be five years sober. Please, if you guys want to come to me anonymously and share your story with me, I’m more than willing to help and just talk you through some things. It’s a scary road to go down, but I promise it looks good on the other side. Like I said, I’m living proof.’
“And immediately one of my teammates came up to me. He shared with me that he was working on three months of sobriety. I just gave him a big hug and told him, ‘Thank you for sharing.’ And that’s something that means …”
Erceg paused to compose himself.
“That’s something that means a lot to me because …”
He stopped again. Tears welled in his eyes.
“I know how scared he was to tell me that,” Erceg said. “And he still told me, and that s— fired me up, dude.”
All of Hope Chapel broke into applause.
“I know it meant a lot to him,” Erceg continued. “And selfishly, it meant way more to me. I never thought I would be in that situation because the way I’ve grown up thinking about myself and all that stuff, but to have him do that was truly special. And I hope you all get to experience that too, because like I said, it’s special and you don’t really understand how much it means to you until you’re in the right spot to understand that.”
Emma jokes with Erceg that he is almost too positive, relentlessly so, but really it’s just a rebalancing. All the years of sadness that drove him to drink excessively warrant a cosmic equalization. Erceg likes to say that the day he stopped drinking, his life went from black and white to color. His day at Boonville felt like the whole Pantone spectrum, filled with shades he didn’t know existed.
Erceg wrapped the session by offering to let those at Boonville pick his entrance music — “I ain’t doing NSYNC, though,” he said, drawing laughs from the attendees who soon thereafter lined up to shake Erceg’s hand and thank him. For the insight, and for the honesty, and for caring about people most of society forgets.
As he walked toward the exit, Luttrell, standing with the black lab he was training, waved goodbye. McCormack and the rest of the staff thanked Erceg and Emma for their time. They jumped into their car and went into immediate debrief mode.
“I don’t like giving myself credit,” Erceg said, “but I just kept thinking like, ‘Hey, you did a really good thing.’ And that’s something that was important and it stuck out to me because I don’t think we as humans give ourselves enough credit.”
It’s something Erceg is trying to do more. Every time he cracks a bottle of sparkling water instead of a bottle of booze: That’s a win. Every time he’s feeling down and speaks to a therapist instead of turning to alcohol: That’s a win. Every time he plays Fortnite without needing a swig from a can of beer: That’s a win. They pile up, day after day, and help him believe he is going to be the sort of parent his never were when his and Emma’s first child, due Dec. 28, arrives.
Whenever the doubts creep in, Erceg knows all he needs to do is look down at his glove to validate just how strong he is. The stitching above his thumb is there as a reminder:
“6/10/2020,” it says. The day his life forever changed — and set him on the course to change others’.
Go to SAMHSA.gov or call the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration at (800) 662-HELP [4357] or TTY (800) 487-4889.
