This was reported earlier today (well, today in Korea, I guess it would last night for those in North America) and I began following and collecting as much information as possible.  Why?  Because during Dylan Covey’s physical he was diagnosed with Type-1 Diabetes.  Now, for a lot of people this really isn’t important news.  Covey was expected to be a solid pitcher and the Brewers were looking forward to adding a good arm to a minor league system that isn’t chalk full of many, but what’s far more important to me was that he picked his health over several million dollars.
I’ve heard a lot of people complain about his decision, saying that he should have signed, taken the money, and started working in the Brewers system, that it isn’t that big a deal.  But it is.  Being diagnosed with Type-1 Diabetes at an early age is much easier to deal with.  You have 15 or more years to get used to the idea of not eating a lot of cake and the annoyance of dry and cracking finger tips from blood-sugar checks.  Finding out when you’re older, when you’re at an age where it’s far more common to believe that you’re invincible, is devastating.
So, yeah, I was diagnosed with diabetes at 20 on New Years Eve. Â I was in college 4 hours away from my parent’s home and support system. Â After I found out, I stayed in the hospital for 3 days to “better understand the changes in my body” – one admittedly cool thing that eventually became the most annoying thing in the world was finding out that my eyesight, after I started to get my blood sugar levels balanced, would improve and I might not need glasses…for about two days before my eyes returned to being terrible. Â Immediately after I was discharged, I went back to thinking I was invincible. Â A large part of me didn’t want to believe that anything changed. Â I returned to college too early and everything culminated with me failing all buy a writing class and breaking down in my apartment bathroom before I took a medical leave.
The point is I’m really proud of Dylan Covey.  He decided to focus on the change, accept and learn to manage it before jumping into yet another life changing stage.  And I applaud his parents who were a large part of his decision, my guess is reminding him that he’ll have another chance to be drafted and to get into the majors if that’s who he’s supposed to be.  He only gets one chance to learn to be happy with his new baggage.  It’s not something that later in life you can grow to accept or love.  He needs to learn and deal with it early or he might end up like so many others, in the hospital constantly or in the morgue.
To read a report of the events as they happened, you’ll find them here, here, and here through Tom Haudricourt’s Twitter feed and an interview with Covey here at Baseball Beginnings’ Twitter feed.
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