At 18, this pitcher had $746,000 and aimed to ‘cruise to the big leagues.’ What happened?

The best high school athletes — the ones that lead their teams to championships, and earn all-city, all-county, all-state or maybe even All-American honors as individuals — often go on to become good-to-great athletes in college, or some sort of developmental league.

But the vast majority of the young men and women who have hopes of ascending to the top of their respective sports eventually come to a realization that we non-star athletes figured all along: Becoming a “major-league” athlete is very, very difficult, if not impossible.

Today, we’re introducing you to four of those from the Charlotte area, two men and two women who were sports stars at local high schools; who still maintain home bases here; who have struggled in their pursuit of stable top-tier pro careers; but who haven’t given up yet.

Charlotte Knights pitcher Garrett Davila has a very vivid, very fond memory of the day when he got his first paycheck as a professional baseball player.

It was two months after he was selected by the Kansas City Royals in the fourth round of the 2015 Major League Baseball draft, and the fresh-faced graduate of South Point High School in Belmont found himself in Surprise, Arizona, working out under his new team’s supervision at its spring training home.

Davila, then still a teenager, received a notification that cash had been deposited into his bank account, and immediately made a beeline for the ATM in the lobby of the hotel he was staying at in Arizona.

“I didn’t take any money out,” Davila recalls. “I just said ‘check balance.’ And I checked it, and I was like, Oh my gosh.”

Almost $250,000 had landed in his account, the first of three installments that amounted to the $746,000 signing bonus Kansas City had committed to him. “I was 18 years old, and I was like, ‘I think I’m the richest person alive!’” he says, chuckling.

Eight years later, those remain by far the largest checks made out to the left-handed pitcher. Now 26, Davila has toiled in the minors for six long seasons and is still waiting — hoping, praying — that he’ll get his first-ever call-up to the majors before he decides it’s time to hang up his cleats.

But he’s also, with age and maturity, come to realize that there are more important things in life than baseball.

Athletes on the Brink

These four Charlotte-area athletes were sports stars at local high schools. They still maintain home bases here and have struggled in their pursuit of stable top-tier pro careers -- but haven’t given up yet.

• When this pro golfer isn’t chasing her LPGA dreams, she’s delivering food for Door Dash

• At 18, this pitcher had $746,000 and aimed to ‘cruise to the big leagues.’ What happened?

• Former NC hoops star is chasing WNBA dreams. But she also fantasizes about a normal life.

• No NBA team would draft him. 3 years later, he’s still trying to prove that was a mistake.

Davila admits that after a strong showing for a Rookie-level team in Burlington in 2016, when he won seven games and lost none, he “kind of got cocky ... and I was like, ‘I’m gonna cruise to the big leagues.’” In 2017 and 2018, however, he struggled at the Single-A level, and the petulant youngster was beating himself up about every poor performance. His mindset had switched to: “‘If I don’t make the Big Leagues, I don’t know what I’m gonna do.’”

He then missed all of 2019 after having surgery to repair a torn ligament in his elbow, then all of 2020 due to the pandemic. He says during that time, close friends in the sport, his father, and two Christian mentors helped him reset his expectations, adjust his attitude (and his pitching style), and develop his faith.

When he returned to the mound in 2021, for the Quad Cities River Bandits (the High-A affiliate of the Kansas City Royals, in Iowa), Davila had a new mantra: “‘It’s not life or death anymore; it’s let’s have as much fun as we can.’”

Whatever changes he made, they worked: By season’s end he had been promoted to Double-A. He pitched at that level throughout 2022, was picked up by the Chicago White Sox as a free agent at the beginning of this year, and then ping-ponged between Double-A Birmingham and Triple-A Charlotte twice in the spring before landing an assignment here in May that has stuck.

Across his three stints with the Knights, Davila has started 14 games with mixed results (2-6, and an ERA of 6.14). A call-up this season seems unlikely. But he is indeed having fun, and he’s having that fun just a 20-minute drive from the home he shares in Belmont with his wife Mackayla — and, soon, a new baby.

They’re expecting their first child on Aug. 21.

So whether he eventually makes the Major Leagues, and whether he ever gets another chance to run to an ATM to check his balance and is rewarded with eye-popping deposits, Davila will always know there are more important things in life than baseball.

And at the same time, he’ll remain grateful for the opportunities the sport continues to give him.

“Kids that get drafted out of high school get every chance to make the Big Leagues, to succeed at the level they get put at. I had those chances and (I felt like) basically I blew them. But looking back, I didn’t blow them. ... Like, I’m playing Triple-A baseball. ... Not too many people get to say they play Triple-A baseball. Even less people get to say they play Triple-A baseball while living at home. ... I get to do something people dream of doing.”

He looks out at the diamond at Truist Field, which sits in the shadow of the gleaming Charlotte skyline, and nods his head slowly.

“God’s got me,” Davila says, smiling, “where I need to be.”