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Smith enjoying every minute of comeback
- Updated: September 8, 2016
OAKLAND — The rental bikes were already secured, but Kendall Graveman didn’t know this. He thought Chris Smith was kidding, after all.
It’s only six miles, Smith said.
Graveman laughed but obliged, and so did Jesse Hahn. The trek began on Michigan Avenue, extending across a lengthy stretch parallel to Lake Michigan and through Chinatown in Chicago. The A’s team bus caught up to the three pitchers about two blocks from U.S. Cellular Field, honking at them relentlessly.
Graveman laughed again. Smith did, too.
“We just rode bikes to the park,” Smith said. “That was really cool.”
“His perspective on everything is one of the best,” Graveman said.
That’s because Smith has navigated longer journeys than 30-minute bike rides to the ballpark, going six years between big league appearances and experiencing a heckuva lot along the way: the 35-year-old stepped away from the game, dropped his agent, returned to his hometown and re-enrolled at UC Riverside. He became an assistant coach at the university and a father to three daughters with his wife, Lisa.
Life was good, which is why he was hesitant when he got the phone call.
It was the spring of 2013, two years after being released by the Mariners, and Smith was readying to be Riverside’s pitching coach when the Wichita Wingnuts of the independent American Association phoned, asking if he wanted to play.
Smith agreed, putting in motion a sequence of events that, to this day, even he has trouble believing.
“I didn’t think I could get picked up,” Smith said. “I just wanted to have fun and play baseball.”
Except Smith did well — really well — and opportunities followed. He played winter ball in Venezuela, then latched on with the Sugar Land Skeeters of the independent Atlantic League in the spring of 2014, the same springboard used by former A’s pitcher Scott Kazmir.
Smith went 6-0 with a 2.15 ERA in eight starts for Sugar Land, prompting another life-altering …
