{"id":"guest:120","sourceProfileId":113,"slug":"todd-blyleven","name":"Todd Blyleven","headline":"Trauma Advocate, Speaker & Survivor — Route 91 Harvest Festival","bio":"Todd Blyleven spent forty-five years doing what his father, Dutch Hall of Fame pitcher Bert Blyleven, taught him to do: push through, don't stop, there are people who want your job. It was a philosophy built for baseball diamonds and running hills in Villa Park, California. It worked until the night of October 1, 2017, when 22,000 people were caught in the deadliest mass shooting in modern American history — and Todd ran toward the gunfire instead of away from it.\n\nTodd grew up in professional baseball. As a seven-year-old, he was the bat boy for the Pittsburgh Pirates during the 1979 World Series, known as 'Tomato Face' in the dugout, swinging from Dave Parker's arms and collecting gold stars from Willie Stargell. He was not just near greatness — he was part of the family of it, a child who absorbed the ethos of professional sport before he understood what ethos meant. His father's constant refrain: there are people who want my job. No stopping.\n\nAs a prospect, Todd was legitimate — a star pitcher at Villa Park High School when his father was finishing his career with the Angels, his name in the Orange County Register on the inside pages while Bert's was on the front. Major League teams scouted him. The Houston Astros offered a signing bonus commensurate with a second-round pick. But Bert and Todd's mother Patty held out for the first round. The Astros moved on. Todd fell to the Angels in the 39th round, went to college, drank too much, didn't concentrate, and never made it past Double-A. The dream he had — to be what his father was — didn't happen.\n\nAfter baseball, Todd found purpose again as a scout. He signed Troy Tulowitzki for the Colorado Rockies out of Long Beach State — taken seventh overall in the 2005 Draft. He earned a 2002 World Series ring with the Angels. He carried that ring with him for years, slipping it on when things got hard, using the weight of it to remind himself of who he was capable of being.\n\nOn October 1, 2017, Todd was at the Route 91 Harvest Festival in Las Vegas with his wife Cathie and a group of about 18 family and friends. Some of those friends were 21-year-olds he had watched play Little League. When the shooting started from the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay — a gunman with 22 weapons firing into a crowd of 22,000 — Todd got his family and friends to safety. Then he went back in.\n\nFor the next several hours, he carried bodies, checked pulses, escorted the wounded to triage, and ran back again. He estimates he assisted dozens of people. He held one woman as she died. He saw his World Series ring in that moment and it felt hollow — wrong. Something about that ring representing achievement when a woman was dying in his arms recontextualized everything he thought he valued. He later tucked the ring away, where it has remained.\n\nThe aftermath was what most people don't talk about. Todd went back to doing what he had always done: kept moving. Got up. Went home. Took his son to baseball the next day. Didn't tell anyone the full story for six months because the culture he had grown up in didn't have a language for what he was feeling. When his father asked him when he was going to get over it, it wasn't cruelty — it was the same Dutch directness that had made Bert Blyleven one of the great pitchers in baseball history. There are people who want my job. No stopping.\n\nExcept now it wasn't working. Todd found a specialist in EMDR — Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing — and slowly began to piece together the fragmentary movie of that night. He began to understand that PTSD is not something you get over. It is something you learn to walk alongside. He calls his framework 'walking with your trauma': you acknowledge what happened, you name it, you don't let it run your life, and you don't pretend it isn't there.\n\nAs a result of carrying all those bodies that night, Todd required multiple surgeries — tears in his left labrum, bicep, and rotator cuff, a hernia in his right groin area. PTSD is now a permanent part of his life. When he and Cathie go out to eat, they find a table with their backs to the wall and a view of the room.\n\nTodd Blyleven now speaks publicly about trauma, healing, and what it means to finally ask for help. His message is aimed directly at men who have been taught the same lie he was: that moving forward means moving silently. Walking with your trauma, he argues, is not weakness. It is the most honest and the most courageous thing a person can do.","originalBio":"Todd Blyleven spent forty-five years doing what his father, Dutch Hall of Fame pitcher Bert Blyleven, taught him to do: push through, don't stop, there are people who want your job. It was a philosophy built for baseball diamonds and running hills in Villa Park, California. It worked until the night of October 1, 2017, when 22,000 people were caught in the deadliest mass shooting in modern American history — and Todd ran toward the gunfire instead of away from it.\n\nTodd grew up in professional baseball. As a seven-year-old, he was the bat boy for the Pittsburgh Pirates during the 1979 World Series, known as 'Tomato Face' in the dugout, swinging from Dave Parker's arms and collecting gold stars from Willie Stargell. He was not just near greatness — he was part of the family of it, a child who absorbed the ethos of professional sport before he understood what ethos meant. His father's constant refrain: there are people who want my job. No stopping.\n\nAs a prospect, Todd was legitimate — a star pitcher at Villa Park High School when his father was finishing his career with the Angels, his name in the Orange County Register on the inside pages while Bert's was on the front. Major League teams scouted him. The Houston Astros offered a signing bonus commensurate with a second-round pick. But Bert and Todd's mother Patty held out for the first round. The Astros moved on. Todd fell to the Angels in the 39th round, went to college, drank too much, didn't concentrate, and never made it past Double-A. The dream he had — to be what his father was — didn't happen.\n\nAfter baseball, Todd found purpose again as a scout. He signed Troy Tulowitzki for the Colorado Rockies out of Long Beach State — taken seventh overall in the 2005 Draft. He earned a 2002 World Series ring with the Angels. He carried that ring with him for years, slipping it on when things got hard, using the weight of it to remind himself of who he was capable of being.\n\nOn October 1, 2017, Todd was at the Route 91 Harvest Festival in Las Vegas with his wife Cathie and a group of about 18 family and friends. Some of those friends were 21-year-olds he had watched play Little League. When the shooting started from the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay — a gunman with 22 weapons firing into a crowd of 22,000 — Todd got his family and friends to safety. Then he went back in.\n\nFor the next several hours, he carried bodies, checked pulses, escorted the wounded to triage, and ran back again. He estimates he assisted dozens of people. He held one woman as she died. He saw his World Series ring in that moment and it felt hollow — wrong. Something about that ring representing achievement when a woman was dying in his arms recontextualized everything he thought he valued. He later tucked the ring away, where it has remained.\n\nThe aftermath was what most people don't talk about. Todd went back to doing what he had always done: kept moving. Got up. Went home. Took his son to baseball the next day. Didn't tell anyone the full story for six months because the culture he had grown up in didn't have a language for what he was feeling. When his father asked him when he was going to get over it, it wasn't cruelty — it was the same Dutch directness that had made Bert Blyleven one of the great pitchers in baseball history. There are people who want my job. No stopping.\n\nExcept now it wasn't working. Todd found a specialist in EMDR — Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing — and slowly began to piece together the fragmentary movie of that night. He began to understand that PTSD is not something you get over. It is something you learn to walk alongside. He calls his framework 'walking with your trauma': you acknowledge what happened, you name it, you don't let it run your life, and you don't pretend it isn't there.\n\nAs a result of carrying all those bodies that night, Todd required multiple surgeries — tears in his left labrum, bicep, and rotator cuff, a hernia in his right groin area. PTSD is now a permanent part of his life. When he and Cathie go out to eat, they find a table with their backs to the wall and a view of the room.\n\nTodd Blyleven now speaks publicly about trauma, healing, and what it means to finally ask for help. His message is aimed directly at men who have been taught the same lie he was: that moving forward means moving silently. Walking with your trauma, he argues, is not weakness. It is the most honest and the most courageous thing a person can do.","portrait":"https://app.conversationos.live/api/public/guest-photo/todd-blyleven.jpg","originalHeadshot":"https://app.conversationos.live/api/public/guest-photo/todd-blyleven.jpg","topics":["Center Stage","Route 91 Harvest Festival mass shooting and survivor advocacy","Trauma recovery and PTSD for men","EMDR therapy and traumatic memory processing","Walking with your trauma — framework for healing","Men's mental health and breaking the silence culture","Professional baseball scouting and MLB career","Growing up inside Hall of Fame professional sport","Faith, marriage, and rebuilding relationship after trauma","First responder mentality and protective instinct","Asking for help without feeling weak"],"expertise":[],"product":"center-stage","socialLinks":{},"sameAs":[],"appearances":[{"showName":"Mornings in the Lab","segment":"Center Stage","date":"2025-12-15","sourceUrl":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZ2SVIUHJSo","videoId":"WZ2SVIUHJSo"}],"primaryVideoId":"WZ2SVIUHJSo","primaryTitle":"From MLB Scout to Las Vegas Hero","episodeNumber":"#CS-025","authoritySegment":"Center Stage","clips":[],"insights":[{"eyebrow":"","quote":"When the shooting started, we were about 20 feet from the stage when Jason Aldean was up there. I got my group together, got my family out, and then I went back in.","context":"Todd describing the moment of decision at Route 91 — getting his family to safety and then choosing to return into a live mass shooting to help others. This is the action that defines everything he now speaks about: what happens when you're built to be a protector, and the cost it extracts.","topic":"The decision to run back in","timestamp":null},{"eyebrow":"","quote":"I always looked back on it and think — if I were to fall that night, and that was kind of my mentality, I was going down proud. My family would know that I went down the way my dad taught me.","context":"Todd naming the framework that drove him back into the gunfire — not heroism but the values instilled by a Hall of Famer father who ran hills and said 'there are people who want my job.' The same philosophy that built his resilience also put him directly in danger that night.","topic":"Fathered values meeting the ultimate test","timestamp":null},{"eyebrow":"","quote":"In American culture, we're supposed to get stuff in like, 30 days.","context":"Todd naming the cultural lie about trauma recovery — the expectation that suffering has a completion date, that real strength means moving past it quickly. His entire framework is built against this expectation, arguing that healing is not linear and is not measured in months.","topic":"The cultural lie about healing timelines","timestamp":null},{"eyebrow":"","quote":"You acknowledge it. You name it. You do not let it run your life.","context":"Todd articulating his 'walking with your trauma' framework — the three-step philosophy he developed from therapy and lived experience. Not suppression, not being consumed by it, but coexisting consciously with what happened.","topic":"Walking with your trauma — the framework","timestamp":null},{"eyebrow":"","quote":"When I set one woman down outside, I looked in her eyes and realized she was gone. I had my right hand upon her, and I saw my shiny, gaudy World Series ring staring back at me. It didn't feel right. That achievement now felt so hollow.","context":"Todd describing the exact moment his entire value system recalibrated — holding a dying woman while wearing a symbol of achievement. This is the pivot point of his story, the moment when baseball and record and ring meant nothing, and what mattered became unmistakably clear.","topic":"When achievement feels hollow — the revaluation","timestamp":null},{"eyebrow":"","quote":"When do you think you're going to get over this?","context":"Todd recounting the question his father Bert Blyleven — Hall of Famer, legendary tough man — asked him after Route 91. It is simultaneously the most loving and most culturally loaded question in the story: a man asking his son to use the same framework that made the son a protector in the first place, even when that framework is exactly what got him into trouble.","topic":"The impossible question from a Hall of Famer father","timestamp":null},{"eyebrow":"","quote":"If that thing is a movie, it starts to put those minute-long segments back in order for you over time. It allows me to process the good parts and the bad parts and to lean more on the goodness of things.","context":"Todd describing what EMDR therapy — Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing — did for his experience of the night. The movie metaphor is precise: trauma doesn't erase the film, therapy helps you sequence it so the full story is accessible, not just the worst moments.","topic":"EMDR therapy and processing traumatic memory","timestamp":null},{"eyebrow":"","quote":"Put your boots on and take the next step.","context":"The final image of Todd's healing journey — borrowed from country music and from the literal experience of returning to a Jason Aldean concert. The boots he wore that night, covered in blood, are in the back of his closet. Taking the next step is the only move available, and he takes it.","topic":"Taking the next step — the closing image","timestamp":null}],"quotes":["I got my group together, got my family out, and then I went back in.","You acknowledge it. You name it. You do not let it run your life.","I saw my shiny, gaudy World Series ring staring back at me. It didn't feel right. That achievement now felt so hollow."],"faqs":[{"question":"Who is Todd Blyleven and what happened to him at the Las Vegas shooting?","answer":"Todd Blyleven is the son of Baseball Hall of Fame pitcher Bert Blyleven, a former Minor League pitcher, MLB scout (known for signing Troy Tulowitzki), and Route 91 Harvest Festival survivor. On October 1, 2017, Todd was attending the concert in Las Vegas when Stephen Paddock opened fire from the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay, killing 58 people and injuring 851 in the deadliest mass shooting in modern American history. Todd got his family and friends to safety, then returned to the venue multiple times over several hours, carrying wounded people to triage, checking pulses, and assisting dozens of people. As a result, he suffered multiple physical injuries requiring surgery and developed PTSD, which he has addressed through EMDR therapy and public advocacy."},{"question":"What is Todd Blyleven's 'walking with your trauma' framework?","answer":"Todd Blyleven's 'walking with your trauma' framework is a philosophy he developed from his own PTSD recovery after Route 91. It has three components: acknowledge what happened, name it clearly, and refuse to let it run your life. The framework explicitly rejects both suppression (the approach he used for six months after the shooting, which failed) and being consumed by it. Todd argues that trauma does not have a 30-day resolution timeline and that real strength is not moving silently past what happened but learning to coexist consciously with it. The framework is now central to his public speaking and advocacy for men who have been taught that asking for help is weakness."},{"question":"What is Todd Blyleven's baseball background and connection to Bert Blyleven?","answer":"Todd Blyleven is the son of Bert Blyleven, the Dutch-American Hall of Fame pitcher who won 287 games over 22 MLB seasons and was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 2011. Todd grew up inside professional baseball — he was the bat boy for the 1979 Pittsburgh Pirates World Series team at age seven. He became a legitimate pitching prospect, was scouted by Major League teams including the Houston Astros, and ultimately signed with the Angels as a free agent after college. He played five seasons in the Minor Leagues, never advancing past Double-A. He then worked as an MLB scout for the Angels, Rockies, and Arizona Diamondbacks, with his signature signing being shortstop Troy Tulowitzki, taken seventh overall in the 2005 Draft. He also holds a 2002 World Series ring from his time with the Angels."},{"question":"What physical injuries did Todd Blyleven sustain at Route 91?","answer":"As a direct result of carrying wounded people to safety during the Route 91 Harvest Festival shooting on October 1, 2017, Todd Blyleven required surgeries to repair tears in his left labrum, bicep, and rotator cuff, as well as a hernia in his right groin area. His left hip also continued to give him trouble. Beyond the physical injuries, Todd developed PTSD, which manifests in hypervigilance (he and his wife always sit with their backs to the wall in restaurants), sleep disturbances, and emotional responses tied to the sights, sounds, and sensations of that night. He addressed the PTSD through EMDR therapy, a specialized treatment for traumatic memory processing."},{"question":"What does Todd Blyleven speak about and who is his audience?","answer":"Todd Blyleven speaks about trauma recovery, the silence that men are culturally trained to maintain around suffering, and the mechanics of asking for help. His message is aimed at men who have been raised — as he was, in the culture of professional sport — to equate toughness with silence and to treat continued forward motion as the only acceptable response to pain. His framework, 'walking with your trauma,' challenges this directly: real strength is not suppression but conscious acknowledgment. He draws on his experiences as the son of a Hall of Famer, a minor league player, an MLB scout, and a Route 91 survivor to demonstrate what happens when the move-forward-silently approach finally fails."},{"question":"How has Todd Blyleven processed the trauma of the Las Vegas shooting?","answer":"Todd Blyleven's processing of the Route 91 trauma began about six months after the shooting, when he committed to professional therapy. He worked with a specialist trained in EMDR — Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing — which helped him piece together the fragmented memory of the night into a sequential narrative. He describes the process as reassembling a movie: initially he experienced the night as disconnected fragments; over time, EMDR helped him sequence the events so he could access them with less emotional flooding and lean more heavily on the positive aspects — the people he helped, the selfless acts, the reunion with his wife. He and his wife also began attending church together as part of their healing journey. He has been open that PTSD is a permanent part of his life and is not something that goes away."}],"transcript":"Todd Blyleven spent most of his life doing what men are taught to do. To be tough and to handle it. Show up, do your job, do not complain. Do not ask for help. He grew up inside professional sports. Toughness expected and silence respected. For a long time, performance mattered and feelings did not come first. He is the son of Hall of Famer Bert Blyleven, played professional baseball and later became an MLB scout, always carrying pressure without talking about it. That approach worked for a long time. But on October 1, 2017, Todd was at a music festival in Las Vegas with his family. Gunfire broke out. He made sure his family was safe. Then he ran back to help others get out. After the shooting, Todd went back to doing what he had always done. He kept moving forward. Over time, he saw that approach was not enough. So, he finally asked for help and started the journey of recovering from trauma. From that work, Todd built a way to live without hiding from what happened. He calls it walking with your trauma. You acknowledge it. You name it. You do not let it run your life. This conversation is about what you say when you finally speak up, about who you tell, and how you ask for help without feeling weak. Todd, thanks for joining us today. Welcome to Mornings in the Lab.","conversationTopics":[{"label":"Introduction and context — the man before Vegas","duration":"~3 minutes","summary":"Todd describes his upbringing inside professional baseball, the son of Bert Blyleven, the bat boy summers, the Dutch toughness that was never put down. The world he was built for before it all changed."},{"label":"Growing up the son of Bert Blyleven","duration":"~4 minutes","summary":"Todd walks through what it meant to be the son of a Hall of Famer — the impossible standard, the borrowed identity, the love that was transmitted through push-harder-there-are-people-who-want-my-job."},{"label":"Playing baseball and the minor league years","duration":"~3 minutes","summary":"Todd covers his own playing career — high school prospect, minor leagues, never past Double-A. The loss of the baseball dream and the identity crisis that followed."},{"label":"Finding purpose in scouting — Troy Tulowitzki and the 2002 ring","duration":"~3 minutes","summary":"Todd describes his return to baseball as a scout, the Troy Tulowitzki signing, the World Series ring — and what that ring represented before October 1, 2017."},{"label":"Route 91 — the night of the shooting","duration":"~6 minutes","summary":"Todd walks through the night in detail: the music, the first shots, getting his group out, the decision to go back in, the hours of carrying bodies and checking pulses, the woman who died in his arms with the ring on his hand."},{"label":"The aftermath — going back to normal (and why it didn't work)","duration":"~4 minutes","summary":"Todd describes returning home, watching his son's baseball game the next day, and spending six months trying to move forward the only way he knew — silently. He covers the headaches, the emotional responses, the 'Any Ol' Barstool' moment at work."},{"label":"His father's question — 'When do you think you'll get over this?'","duration":"~3 minutes","summary":"Todd walks through the most loaded moment in his recovery: his father asking the question that the culture trained him to ask. He reflects on why it was both the most natural question Bert could ask and the most impossible one for Todd to answer."},{"label":"EMDR therapy and learning to process","duration":"~4 minutes","summary":"Todd explains what EMDR therapy did for him — how it sequenced the fragmentary memories into a coherent narrative he could process without being overwhelmed, and how therapy became the tool that made everything else possible."},{"label":"Walking with your trauma — the framework","duration":"~3 minutes","summary":"Todd articulates his framework: acknowledge it, name it, don't let it run your life. He explains why this is not resignation but liberation — the difference between being haunted and being honest."},{"label":"What he wants men to hear","duration":"~3 minutes","summary":"Todd closes with the direct message aimed at men who were taught the same lie: that asking for help is weakness. He argues it is the opposite, and invites men to find out what walking with their trauma, rather than under it, actually feels like."}],"images":[{"url":"https://pub-176ab0b7668b46259a6c72d4ad146d40.r2.dev/guest-profiles/todd-blyleven/1777329195646-895130aaec34-headshot-1777329195646.jfif","label":"authority_portrait","description":"","type":"authority_portrait"}],"livingPortrait":"","heroVideo":"","heroPoster":"","storyVideo":"","mediaKit":"","sourceUrl":"https://guestengine.live/profile/todd-blyleven","publishedAt":"2026-04-27T22:33:23.097Z","publicationStatus":"published","canonicalUrl":"https://mornings.network/shows/center-stage/guests/todd-blyleven","verifiedVideos":[{"status":"available","videoId":"WZ2SVIUHJSo","title":"Todd Blyleven: From MLB Scout to Las Vegas Hero","channel":"Mornings in the Lab with Keith, Jon & Friends LIVE","channelUrl":"https://www.youtube.com/@MorningsintheLab","thumbnail":"https://i.ytimg.com/vi/WZ2SVIUHJSo/hqdefault.jpg","verifiedAt":"2026-10-04T00:40:24.851268+00:00","evidence":"https://www.youtube.com/oembed?format=json&url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZ2SVIUHJSo"}]}