LOS ANGELES — When Eileen Flaherty looked down at her phone and saw the message from her son, she thought something was wrong. Just minutes remained until the trade deadline, but a day after Jack Flaherty’s start for the Detroit Tigers was pushed back, he texted his mom that he was heading to Los Angeles.
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It took a half-second for Eileen, who had just flown back to LA from Detroit after visiting her son, to realize what it meant.
Flaherty, amid a resurgent season, was coming home. Nothing was wrong. He was a Los Angeles Dodger, acquired in a blockbuster deal.
For years, Dodger Stadium had been something of a second home to the Flahertys. Eileen adopted Jack out of Burbank, Calif., when he was 3 weeks old. She brought him to the ballpark for the first time when he was 6 months old, creating something of a tradition in a place called Blue Heaven. Now he gets to call it home again.
Circa 1997 …. Let’s Go!!! pic.twitter.com/YlI39KIx3Q
— Eileen Flaherty (@JackandGradyMom) July 30, 2024
Flaherty, now 28, will be on the Dodgers Stadium mound Friday against the Pittsburgh Pirates, his first home start for his childhood team.
“I didn’t think I was gonna get emotional when I talked to him,” Eileen Flaherty recalled by phone this week ahead of Flaherty’s first home start on Friday, “but then I did.”
Eileen was driving back from the airport when she got the call. Upon arriving home, Eileen began sorting through boxes of old photos until she found one of her then-infant son, less an a year old, wearing a Dodgers onesie, a sideways, flat-brimmed Dodgers cap and an unmistakable grin. Eileen sat in her hallway, hoping to block out some of the glare from the glossy ’90s print on her iPhone as she tried to take a photo of the photo. When she posted it online, it marked a full-circle moment for mother and son.
“Somebody had sent me an email a couple days ago and said, ‘How can you not be romantic about baseball?’” Eileen said. “Like the romance of the fact that this kid that went to his first game at 6 months old, and pretty much like 28 years later, is actually stepping on the mound as a Dodger. How do you not get a tiny bit emotional and romantic about that?”
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It’ll be a night the Flahertys never thought would come.
“Just how cool it is, how special it is,” Jack Flaherty said last week after the trade. “I think everyone deep down wants to play for their hometown team. Getting the opportunity to do so is just special.”
Eileen first brought her son to the ballpark out of convenience. A friend had season tickets in the reserve level of Dodger Stadium and suggested that she bring Jack along. One game turned to about 20 per season. And even as infant Jack Flaherty turned into a mobile and restless toddler, he sat still at the ballpark.
“There was something about it that he loved,” Eileen said.
Jack Flaherty as a kid loved the Dodgers, as well as nachos and pretzels with extra cheese. (Courtesy: Eileen Flaherty)
Eileen was a Mike Piazza fan, so for one game, she painted Piazza’s No. 31 on Jack’s face for a game. And as much as Flaherty idolized New York Yankees shortstop Derek Jeter, he always came to the ballpark in Dodgers gear. Each night, he would split an order of nachos, then order a soft pretzel – no salt, extra cheese to dip it in. They always sat in the reserve level, watching the Dodgers of Piazza and Raul Mondesi, of Eric Gagné and Adrián Beltré.
When Flaherty pitched at Dodger Stadium for the first time, as part of a famed Harvard-Westlake High School rotation that also included future big leaguers Max Fried and Lucas Giolito, Eileen marveled at what she saw. She sat at the field level this time, not reserve, as Flaherty got the start on the same mound he’d watched countless Dodgers pitchers throw from over the years. Flaherty delivered six scoreless innings, striking out eight and driving in the lone run to defeat Marina, 1-0, in the Southern Section Division I championship game.
Eileen again sat in the field level in 2018, when her son pitched at Dodger Stadium for the first time as a major-leaguer and provided six innings of one-run ball, striking out 10 Dodgers as an ascendant star in his first full season with the St. Louis Cardinals. As her son delivered a dominant performance, Eileen looked back at a section of fans who had ties to his son, whether at Harvard-Westlake or beyond.
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When Flaherty returned a year later in 2019 and tossed seven scoreless innings, again striking out 10, he was building his case as one of the preeminent young pitchers in the sport. He’d post a 2.75 ERA in 33 starts, winding up fourth in NL Cy Young voting. His sterling second half remains stuck in the minds of former teammates (“He was just about the best pitcher in baseball,” said Tommy Edman, who is now reunited with Flaherty on the Dodgers), as well as Dodgers personnel as the club looked to acquire Flaherty this summer.
The years in between haven’t been as storybook. Flaherty missed time with an oblique injury. Then a shoulder strain. When he did pitch, his production dwindled. His time with the Cardinals ended at the deadline a year ago when he was traded to the Baltimore Orioles. By the time the Orioles made the postseason, Flaherty had been demoted to the bullpen.
A one-year contract with the Tigers provided a chance at a reset. Flaherty spent much of the winter streamlining his mechanics and stabilizing his velocity. The staff, including Tigers pitching coach Chris Fetter, encouraged him to mothball his cutter in favor of throwing his slider more.
More than anything, Eileen said, Jack’s run of success with the Tigers (a 2.95 ERA in 18 starts before the trade), was “so encompassing of the happiness and joy that the Detroit Tigers were able to give back to him. It was just so fun to see him be so happy and settled, which I think for any of us with what we do for a living, the results are successful as well.”
This was Flaherty’s best performance since that prolific 2019 stretch. When Eileen flew to Detroit in April to watch her son face his former team for the first time, she recognized what she saw on the mound: Flaherty struck out 14 and didn’t allow a run over 6 2/3 innings. It wasn’t a reinvention, Eileen said. It was who Flaherty has always been.
That’s what the Dodgers are counting on as Flaherty became the most notable pitcher moved at the deadline. Their rotation is sprouting up with questions, and Flaherty is expected to provide answers.
This kid will start Friday against the Pittsburgh Pirates. (Courtesy: Eileen Flaherty)
Eileen attended the game Saturday in Oakland when Flaherty made his Dodgers debut by twirling six scoreless innings for a team that floundered for much of July. She had been in San Diego, too, riding down the I-5 to meet her son upon his arrival with his new team.
Of course, she will be there Friday, as well, along with her son, Grady. So too will countless friends and family who watched Flaherty from his youngest days in the reserve level.
“I’ll want to just break down and cry about the joy of all of it,” Eileen said. “It’s crazy.”
(Top photo of Jack Flaherty: Robert Edwards / USA Today)
Fabian Ardaya is a staff writer covering the Los Angeles Dodgers for The Athletic. He previously spent three seasons covering the crosstown Los Angeles Angels for The Athletic. He graduated from Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication in May 2017 after growing up in a Phoenix-area suburb. Follow Fabian on Twitter @FabianArdaya
