Tampa Bay drafted Drew Rasmussen in the first round and then refused to sign him. Their doctors looked at his elbow and the team walked away from a contract worth about 2 million dollars. Today he pitched them to within one win of the World Series. Here is the whole thing. He grew up outside Spokane. His father taught middle school history and coached. As a freshman at Oregon State he threw a perfect game against Washington State. It is still the only one in that school's history. The next spring his elbow went and he had Tommy John surgery. He came back anyway, and Tampa Bay took him 31st overall. Then came the physical. They did not sign him. Two months after that his elbow went again. A second Tommy John. So he paid his own way back to Oregon State. The program had already assumed he was gone. And he spent that summer cutting grass for his girlfriend's father. Her name is Stevie. He met her at Oregon State the week she moved in. Here is how she describes him through all of it. "He never felt sorry for himself." "It might be stupid confidence. But it worked." The next year Milwaukee drafted him in the sixth round while he was hurt and not pitching at all. He threw zero innings that season. Then Milwaukee traded him. To Tampa Bay. The team that would not sign him. And here is the one that should have been the story of his life. He took a perfect game into the ninth inning against Baltimore and lost it on a leadoff double. Twenty six outs. Then his elbow went a third time. Not another Tommy John. A brace put inside it. He has since started on Opening Day for that franchise and been named an All-Star twice. In June of this year he put up an earned run average of 0.82 across five starts and they named him the best pitcher in the league that month. Here is the only thing he has really said about any of it. "God's put so many good people in my life that are always there to support me." Today, in Cleveland, with a World Series on the other side of it, he went seven innings and gave up one run. Tampa Bay 3, Cleveland 1. Now the honest part. The team that passed on him was right at the time. His elbow really was broken, and he blew it out again eight weeks later, and he has lost most of three separate seasons to it since. They were not wrong. They were just not finished being wrong. A middle school teacher's kid cut grass for his girlfriend's dad the summer a Major League Baseball team decided his arm was not worth 2 million dollars. Today he put that team one win from the World Series.