NEW YORK -- Cam Booser stood on the mound at Tropicana Field on Monday night with Game 2 of the American League Division Series hanging in the balance.
With the bases loaded and the game tied in the fifth inning, Cody Bellinger fouled off Booser’s first two pitches, then the bearded left-hander let loose a fastball over the plate and turned to see Bellinger’s drive sailing toward the outfield wall. First, he worried it would find a gap. Then, he saw center fielder Jonny DeLuca drifting alarmingly close to the fence.
But DeLuca settled under it and caught the ball. Inning over. Jam escaped. Job done.
“A little bit of relief as he caught it,” Booser admitted.
That was the only out Booser recorded in his postseason debut, and it wound up getting the 34-year-old lefty the win in the Rays’ 5-2 victory over the Yankees. It was a pivotal spot and an unforgettable moment, one that for so long seemed impossibly far away.
Seven years ago, Booser was living with his parents and installing acoustical ceilings in Seattle high-rises for a local carpenters union, retired from the game he loved and battling an alcohol addiction through some “very, very dark days.”
Now, Booser is the top left-handed reliever on a Rays team that’s one win away from the American League Championship Series.
“It's one of the greatest stories in baseball,” Tampa Bay teammate Drew Rasmussen said earlier this season.
And Booser isn’t done telling it yet.
In and out of baseball
Before he even got out of Single-A ball, Booser was dealt a career’s worth of career-ending injuries and career-altering setbacks.
He dislocated his knee and broke his femur -- a “pretty gruesome injury,” he said -- while playing football as a high school sophomore. Two years later, he fractured his L5 vertebra while lifting weights. As a freshman at Oregon State in 2011, he had Tommy John surgery.
He flunked out of Oregon State but landed at Central Arizona College, thinking he could catch professional scouts’ attention. His recovery from Tommy John surgery limited his time on the mound, but a 2013 stint pitching in the West Coast League in Bend, Ore., was enough to intrigue Twins scout Trevor Brown.
Booser signed as an undrafted free agent.
“He was like, ‘Hey, we’ve got a locker and a jersey. You want to come give it a shot?’” Booser recalled.
But his time in Minnesota’s organization was marked by more injuries and personal issues. He tore his left labrum in 2015. During his recovery from shoulder surgery, which sidelined him into the ’16 season, he was struck by a car while riding his bike and broke another bone in his back.
In 2017, he received a 50-game suspension after testing positive for marijuana. That was just the start of it. Every day was a battle away from the ballpark.
“Didn't really help myself a whole lot,” Booser said while recounting his story in the home dugout at Tropicana Field. “Injuries led to alcoholism, led to depression, led to some very, very dark days.”
At the end of the 2017 season, having never pitched above High-A, Booser stepped away from the game at only 25 years old. He figured it was the end of a career that wasn’t supposed to begin in the first place.
“I had to step away and kind of get my ducks in order, if you will, and figure out how to do life before I figure out how to do baseball again,” Booser said.
It’s right there in the transactions section of his MiLB.com profile:
“November 20, 2017: LHP Cam Booser retired.”
Higher calling
Back home in the Seattle area, Booser got what he called “a real job.” His father worked in construction. So Booser did, too.
He went to work every day, hanging ceilings, but he did so with what felt like an “overwhelming pit in my stomach that, like, I had some unfinished business.” As if that feeling wasn’t enough, one of the high-rise buildings he worked on offered a view overlooking the Mariners’ ballpark.
Baseball was still calling.
“Something was telling me I wasn’t supposed to be doing what I was doing,” he said.
The first step back to the mound was getting sober. Trying to quit on his own didn’t work. It only led to a deeper spiral of depression.
“When you're that far down, it's like you just don't really see the light, and you kind of just lean into like, ‘Well, screw it,’” he said. “You just kind of lean into, like, ‘If this is it, this is it.’”
The turning point came when Booser realized how much he was hurting his parents, Tim and Debbie. He can’t recall the exact date, but he remembers the moment. He was at home, with a bottle of rum by his side, when he got down on his hands and knees and asked God to help him.
“I said, ‘Jesus, if you're listening, if you can help me, I'll do whatever you want me to do in this life. Just please help me stop drinking. Please help me to put down the vices. Please, help me,’” he said.
He didn’t drink that night. One day turned into two, which turned into a month, which turned into a few months. He’s been sober for six years. Never a religious man beyond going to church on holidays with his family, Booser found a new purpose.
“I felt like my prayers were answered, and now I feel like I have a lifelong fulfillment to just honor Jesus,” he said. “I mean, think I'm here to play baseball, don't get me wrong. But I’m not only here just to throw baseballs. I think I'm also here to maybe share my story in case somebody else is struggling, in case anybody else is going through some tough times and doesn't want to reach out.
“I didn't reach out for the longest time. I suffered in silence because I thought that's just what you do. Everybody goes through stuff, and you just kind of do it on your own. It's too hard, man. It’s just too hard.”
Back in the game
Not long after that, Booser got a call from a friend asking if he wanted to work at a baseball facility in Puyallup, Wash. After a few months, he started giving pitching lessons.
When kids asked him to play catch, Booser declined. He figured his shoulder was still a problem, and on top of everything else, he’d been dealing with the yips at the end of his career.
“I had all of it,” Booser said. “I was a travesty. I was a trainwreck.”
Then, one day, he started throwing again. No pain. After a few weeks, he stayed late at the facility, making sure nobody was around to watch, and threw balls into a net. The lightning in his left arm was still there.
Finally, his friend asked him to get on the mound. Years removed from his last professional pitch, Booser’s fastball clocked in at 97-98 mph. He linked up with a trainer, Kyle Rogers, who jump-started his comeback.
First, he had to tell his parents.
“I was like, ‘Listen, if y'all will support me, I want to give baseball one more shot,’” Booser said. “And [the answer from Tim] was essentially a ‘hell yeah.’”
But even that wasn’t so simple, because he couldn’t sign with an affiliated team unless the Twins released him. That led him to a stint with the independent Chicago Dogs, and the stuff Booser flashed there attracted the interest of many professional scouts.
Unbeknownst to Booser, one of the evaluators in attendance was Kevin Ibach, now the Rays’ assistant general manager, who still has videos on his phone of Booser firing fastballs in a loose-fitting uniform inside a sparsely populated ballpark.
But Tampa Bay didn’t come calling quite yet. After the Twins released him, Booser landed a Minor League deal with the D-backs in 2022. It felt like his moment. He was back. So, he went to Double-A Amarillo, put up a 6.48 ERA and … got released.
He went back to independent ball, this time with the Atlantic League’s Lancaster Barnstormers, and came to grips with the state of his career.
“I was just in the mindset like, ‘Hey, this is probably it,’” Booser said. “I'm 30 years old in indy ball. I've never been above Double-A. The likelihood this is going to turn into anything is probably not very high. … Let’s just enjoy it. Let’s enjoy the summer for what it is.”
But baseball wasn’t done with him yet.
That offseason, he moved to the Phoenix area with his girlfriend, Jessica, now his wife. He found a new gym, revamped his delivery and signed with the Red Sox. He pitched a full season for Triple-A Worcester in 2023 and returned in '24, this time as a non-roster invitee out of Major League Spring Training.
“Things kind of took off,” he said. “It was pretty special.”
That word doesn’t come close to describing the meeting Booser had with then-Worcester (and current Red Sox) manager Chad Tracy on April 18, 2024. Booser offered to work three innings, whatever the team needed, and Tracy asked if he could pitch in Pittsburgh instead.
Booser made his big league debut the next day, at 31 years old, in the ninth inning of a Red Sox win at PNC Park. The team made sure his family -- his parents, his sisters and his wife -- was there to see it.
“To have everybody there, man, I broke down instantly,” Booser said. “It was just a culmination of so many emotions and so many trials and tribulations and dark days that -- I'm not gonna say it made it worth it on that day, but it was very special.”
If that had marked the end of the story, it would have been enough for a Hollywood script.
But it wasn’t the end.
‘An absolute blessing’
After an offseason trade to the White Sox and some trouble replicating his initial big league success for a 102-loss team, Booser finally became a free agent.
He had a destination in mind.
“For the majority of us middle-inning relievers, it's always been a dream to come to Tampa [Bay],” Booser said. “You hear about it throughout your entire career, just how good they are at taking guys and just kind of revamping them or really helping them understand what they do well.”
Tampa Bay gave Booser a spot on its 40-man roster at the end of Spring Training, but not in the Opening Day bullpen. Booser had a chance then to look around, to see what else was out there for a lefty with big-time stuff and take whatever Major League offers came his way.
Instead, he met with club officials, said he wanted to stay, went to Triple-A Durham and waited until the Rays called him up on May 31. It was an easy decision, he said. He believed in the organization, and the organization believed in him.
“Thankfully,” he said, “things ended up working out.”
Booser posted the best WHIP (0.76) among AL relievers who worked at least 40 innings, led all Major League lefties in walk rate (3.9%) and strikeout-to-walk ratio (7.50) and logged a 1.98 ERA over 42 appearances for Tampa Bay this season.
He helped stabilize the Rays' bullpen with another left-handed presence, and the Rays helped instill confidence in him, gradually working him into high-leverage situations for the tight-knit team with the best record in the AL.
“Credit to him and all that he’s gone through and been through, his work ethic, his routines,” pitching coach Kyle Snyder said. “We wouldn’t be here if he hadn’t come up here and pitched and performed the way that he has.”
One of the greatest stories in baseball? It just keeps getting better.
“This team itself is just really special,” Booser said. “It's been an absolute blessing, man.”