# Todd Blyleven Trauma Advocate, Speaker & Survivor — Route 91 Harvest Festival Canonical: https://mornings.network/shows/center-stage/guests/todd-blyleven ## Biography 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. Todd 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. As 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. After 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. On 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. For 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. The 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. Except 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. As 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. Todd 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. ## Links ## 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.