Long live our baseball king

Eight years ago, Daniel Cooper retired from playing the game of baseball professionally. At only 28 years old and six years removed from a stellar senior season at USC in 2009 that led to him being drafted by the Seattle Mariners, it was a heartbreaking end to a promising career.  

There was a variety of reasons why making the MLB, baseball’s American dream, faded away for Cooper.

Physically, he was breaking down. He deals with thoracic outlet syndrome, a disease that makes it difficult to have feeling in the fingers of his pitching hand. He was also overwhelmed with anxiety surrounding his performance, and couldn’t go on playing without addressing his mental struggles. He couldn’t keep up with the demands of the game and as a result, he was getting batted around. His career minor league ERA ballooned to 4.80. He played his final professional season in Australia for the Brisbane Bandits, and his ERA was still high at 4.03. 

After his return home from Brisbane in 2015, he would never have another professional opportunity in baseball.

But Cooper’s baseball odyssey doesn’t end there. In fact, in the years following 2015, baseball would become something even greater for him: a passion project, the origin of a love story and a revolution that is sweeping through an entire country.

This seems impossible, given that baseball basically gave up on him. 

But it happened, and it all started with two decisions he made in that crucial year, 2015.

The first one was to see a neurotherapist. Cooper knew that to continue with baseball in any capacity, he needed to work on his mental game. A friend of his connected him to a neurotherapist named Alexa Schmidt. The two bonded over a shared experience as athletes. 

“I was a professional dancer the majority of my life, and I too suffered from a debilitating injury very early on,” Schmidt said. “We connected on that in a very unique way.”  

The two had a strong friendship and professional relationship for a while, but felt their bond growing even stronger and eventually started dating. In December of this past year, they got engaged. 

It was a desire to be better at baseball that indirectly led him to the love of his life. Her neurotherapeutic help, as well as her personal relationship with Cooper, gave her the passenger seat on the journey that Cooper sparked with his next big decision: to keep playing baseball.

But how could he do that? There were no professional opportunities left for him.

True, no one was willing to pay him to play baseball. But Cooper didn’t need a financial incentive to play the game, because he truly loves it.

“The excitement and the commitment he has to [baseball] is just very inspiring,” Schmidt said.

And there was a team that needed that kind of passion: Great Britain’s national baseball team.

The opportunity to represent Great Britain on the baseball diamond was something that Cooper had been pursuing since 2012, when Great Britain tried, and failed, to qualify for the 2013 World Baseball Classic.

Back then, there was almost no British representation in professional baseball. Cooper’s manager for the British national team, Drew Spencer, said that getting Cooper to represent the Union Jack was incredibly meaningful.

“He started out as one of those big names,” Spencer said, “10 years ago, you kinda go, ‘Wow, we got a guy named Daniel Cooper, he went to USC and he’s pitched in pro ball!’ And so he was a name that helped us recruit people.”

At the time, Great Britain baseball was badly in need of more talent.

“I think we were ranked 40th [in the world] when I first started,” Cooper said.

But from the moment Cooper first joined the team, he began to help them steadily climb the rankings.

In 2015, when the professional opportunities stopped, he could have hung up his cleats entirely and stopped playing for Great Britain too. He needed a full time job, and the British team couldn’t provide him consistent employment or pay. If he kept playing for the Brits, it would be only as a hobby or a passion project of sorts.

So the question became only if he loved it enough to keep playing.

His answer was a resoundingly passionate yes.

“I can’t touch on enough how much it means to me to help spread baseball to Great Britain,” Cooper said. “There’s young kids out there [in Great Britain] who love this game, who are learning it … the young talent, homegrown from England, it’s just been really great to see.”

That passion wasn’t always returned by British citizens.

“A lot of people in the country don’t even know we have a baseball team,” Cooper said.

But Cooper and his teammates continued to put their whole heart and soul into representing Great Britain, and seven years later, they had the opportunity of a lifetime to finally help British baseball shine on the world stage.

Led by phenom catcher Harry Ford, they qualified for the World Baseball Classic for the first time ever in 2022 at the World Baseball Classic qualifiers in Regensburg, Germany. The WBC is a tournament where national teams compete for a championship, similar to the World Cup in soccer. It’s international baseball’s biggest competition.

Their seeding in the WBC slotted them into the same pool as the United States national team, which was stacked with MLB stars such as Mike Trout, Trea Turner, Mookie Betts and Nolan Arenado. Mexico, Canada and Colombia were also in Pool C, and the pool games were played at Chase Field, the home of the Arizona Diamondbacks, in Phoenix, Ariz.

And so, 11 years after his last Minor League Baseball game and eight years after retiring from professional baseball, Cooper had a chance to play against baseball’s biggest stars on the game’s biggest international stage.

“It’s honestly surreal,” Cooper said. “I get kind of emotional thinking about it, I got chills thinking about it … for how many times I keep telling myself I need to retire, and I almost quit because of injuries and stuff, to have this moment.”

When the moment finally came, he was beyond ready. Despite having a fastball that tops out at about 84 mph, Cooper snuck pitches past the best hitters in the world. In his two games in the tournament, he pitched 2.2 innings, gave up only 1 run and struck out two batters.

But the most impressive aspect of Cooper’s pitching appearances was the hitters he got out. Against the U.S., he got Kyle Schwarber, Kyle Tucker, Betts and Trout to fly out, Jeff McNeil to ground out and he struck out Turner.

“Walking off the mound against USA, he was kinda like, ‘Who did I get out there?’ And someone said ‘Oh, that was Trea Turner.’ And he went, ‘Oh cool, he’s on my fantasy team,’” Spencer laughed.

For reference, Turner went on to hit 5 home runs and drive in 11 and was arguably the best player in the entire tournament.

In his second appearance against Mexico, he came on in a tight 2-1 game in the bottom of the seventh inning with a runner on first base and proceeded to strike out Randy Arozarena and get Alex Verdugo to ground out.

For reference, Arozarena went on to hit .450 with 9 RBIs and produce clutch moment after clutch moment, leading Mexico to the semifinals for the first time ever. He was probably the most clutch performer in the entire tournament.

Cooper struck out two of the tournament’s top three performers. While he didn’t get a chance to face eventual tournament MVP Shohei Ohtani, considering he struck out the other two MVP candidates, who’s to say he couldn’t have struck him out too? 

His team lost both of the games he pitched in, 6-2 against Team USA and 2-1 versus Mexico, but showed they could compete with two of the top teams in the tournament.

Against Colombia, they won 7-5, which marked their first World Baseball Classic win ever, a jubilant moment for the country. It also gave the team an automatic qualification for the 2026 WBC, where they hope to string together even more victories.

Cooper is not sure whether or not he will play in the next classic. But whether he does or not, the people in his inner circle who have seen his journey finally reach the mountaintop after all these years are proud of him.

“Coop has proved that, you know, baseball doesn’t have to stop when you stop being paid or when the dream of making it to the big leagues is over,” Spencer said.

Baseball will surely never stop for Cooper. Whether he plays for Great Britain in spring 2026 or not, his glove will always be within reach, and as long as he has a baseball field and a right arm, he’ll try to throw his sinker past anyone that will challenge him.

And they’ll probably swing and miss.