LAKELAND, Fla. — All alone. Nowhere to stay. Grieving his father. His entire world falling apart.
Sixteen-year-old Donny Sands started living out of a 2006 Toyota Camry.
His father, a member of the U.S. Army Special Forces, had died of a heart attack in a hotel; and his mother, Alma, was in Mexico.
“It was very difficult for Donny,” Alma says. “After his father died, in one day, we lost everything. We lost a house. We had to move. We lost friends.”
So, Donny went into survival mode and lived out of his car for several months.
“Where would you park it?” I ask him.
“Where wasn’t I?” he says, standing in the Tigers’ clubhouse. “I was just everywhere and then I ended up on coaches’ couches and a lot of stuff.”
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More often than not, he was in his car.
“I’m sleeping in my car one night, and I remember saying, ‘One day, you are going to be a Major League Baseball player,’” he said.
It was as if he was speaking it into existence, even in the midst of the turmoil.
The grief was so profound, the loss so shattering, that Donny wound up struggling with panic attacks.
“I would have to pull him into a shower to get him out of it,” Alma says.
This is the story behind this 26-year-old catcher — one of the players the Detroit Tigers acquired in the Gregory Soto trade with Philadelphia last month.
A guy with a tattoo across his chest that reads: “Through my darkest night, I realized my brightest dream.”
Some frank motivation
Donny lost it.
He was crying on the kitchen floor.
“I had just changed to catcher and I was terrible,” he said. “I was awful. I think I was leading all of baseball in passed balls.”
So, he called his mother.
“I was looking for some sympathy,” Sands said.
It was 2015 and he was playing rookie ball in Tampa, Florida.
“This is so tough,” he told his mother.
“Come home,” she said. “I don’t want to hear this (expletive). Get your ass up. Go work. Work like you’re a grown man.”
Then, she laid down an ultimatum — part motivation, part cold-harsh truth.
“If you come home,” she told him, “I don’t ever want to hear about baseball again.”
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It was like the days when she pulled him in a shower to snap him out of a panic attack; and it worked instantly.
“I love you,” Donny said.
He hung up the phone. From that day forward, his mindset changed.
“She’s badass,” Donny said, breaking into a laugh while standing in the Tigers’ clubhouse.
That is why his mother’s name, Alma, is tattooed on his forearm.
Because she means everything to him.
“He’s a very good boy,” she says.
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A gift for his mom
More trouble. More desperation.
Alma called her son on the phone, later in 2015.
“She was crying,” Donny said.
She had been evicted again.
The last time she would be evicted.
Because Donny used his $100,000 signing bonus to buy her a house.
“No one can take this place away from you,” he said, giving her the keys.
She was stunned.
“I was (like), ‘Oh, wow, now we have a place where we can sleep,’ ” she remembers.
They were both crying.
“I cannot believe, it was beautiful,” she says now. “Really beautiful. You know, we didn’t have a house.”
This is the newest Tiger. The son of a special forces solider — a man who was tough and strict — but a momma’s boy at his core. And dang proud of it.
“I’m here for Donny,” Alma says. “I tell him, ‘Even if it’s in the middle of the night, and I’m 1,000 miles away, I will be there for you.’”
This is a guy who came through all the death and turmoil and found a laser-like determination.
It’s the reason he plays with so much energy.
“There can always be a lot worse than baseball,” he says. “That’s why I bring the edge, the edge and grit. That’s how you win.”
Now he is fighting to make this team.
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“That’s why we’re here,” he said. “I mean, that’s a lifelong dream. But again, I wouldn’t be surprised because you know, that’s why I’m working my ass off this whole time, fighting so hard to make this team.”
Sands has a jaw-dropping backstory. But if you focus only on his journey out of that car, on his journey to Lakeland, you might miss the bigger point: How his past has become motivation for the present. How it has shaped every thought. Every day of his career. Every step along the way.
“It’s just baseball,” he says. “It’s a game. What I dealt with was life. That’s why I think I’ve persevered so much. If I go 0-for-10, what is that to me? I was homeless. That’s why you go full speed and play so hard.”
Message to struggling kids
Years ago, I spent months researching a series on teens who were homeless in Michigan.
I talked to kids who were couch surfing. Kids who were living at shelters. Kids who had fallen between the cracks.
“It’s a problem in Michigan,” I tell Sands. “What would you say to those kids?”
“This is gonna seem super-harsh,” Sands says. “But my dad was in special ops in the military. And he always would tell me this: ‘The second you start feeling bad for yourself, your dream is over. If you have a dream, no matter what the circumstances, don’t feel bad for yourself.’ ”
So, that is why Sands sat in that Camry, repeating his mantra: Someday, I’m going to make the major leagues.
“The world’s full of negativity,” Sands says. “No matter where you come from, you can make it. It doesn’t matter what situation. Thank God, I had a mom and a dad who instilled that in me. ‘Don’t make excuses. Don’t feel bad for yourself. You want it bad enough, work your ass off.’ I never wanted to be the person at the end of the day who said, ‘I didn’t make it because of this or that.’ ”
Because of some excuse.
This is the newest Tiger.
A guy with the word “relentless” tattooed on his neck.
Across his arm, another tattoo reads: “The relentless pursuit of perfection and those who give their lives.”
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He’s got a shot
On Saturday morning, Sands was working on a backfield at TigerTown.
Hitting off a machine.
He crushed a homer that clanked against the metal building beyond the left-center fence.
“Get off me, ball!” Eric Haase screamed.
Sands came out of the cage to watch his teammates. Music was playing and he couldn’t help but start dancing. Shuffling his feet. Bending his knees. Swaying to the beat.
His joy was obvious.
“Donny’s a good guy,” Tigers manager A.J. Hinch said. “Donny is a competitive guy. He’s got a little edge to him, got a lot of grit, can really receive and has had to work on that. He’s pretty disciplined at the plate. So he offers a little bit on both sides of the plate. He’s just never been given an opportunity in the big leagues. So, we’ve tracked him for a while and getting him in this trade was key for us to create the competition that we want.”
The Tigers have eight catchers in camp.
Haase has made the team.
But nothing else is set.
“The one thing (Sands) hasn’t had is a major league opportunity,” Hinch said. “If he wins the job, he’ll get plenty of it.”
Sands carries his story with him everywhere, in the tattoos covering his arms and chest.
It’s all out in the open.
Deeply religious, he has a cross tattooed behind his left ear and a rosary down his arm.
He has the archangel Michael tattooed down his arm: “The angel of travel,” he says. “We are always traveling, always on the go.”
This is the new guy. Someone who has overcome tremendous loss and turmoil, homelessness and grief.
Sands has overcome tremendous loss, turmoil, homelessness and grief and has found a wonderful perspective. He shares an uplifting, positive message, something that he carries with him all the time.
On his right hand, there is a tattoo of a skull — representing all the pain and misery in his life.
But another tattoo appears above that.
A single word that seems to rise above all of it, hanging over everything, summing up his view of life: “Blessed.”
Contact Jeff Seidel: jseidel@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @seideljeff.
To read Seidel’s recent columns, go to freep.com/sports/jeff-seidel.