'I've worked so hard to get back': Roman Kimball set to make long-awaited return to mound

This is what Roman Kimball dreamed of doing. He always wanted to pitch at the highest level with all eyes on him.

It was June 19, 2022. Kimball’s team, Notre Dame, had made its way into the College World Series. The Fighting Irish, who beat Texas in their first game in Omaha, were taking on Oklahoma. Trailing 6-2 in the bottom of the seventh, head coach Link Jarrett signaled to the bullpen for Kimball.

“You definitely get a little nerve-wracked,” Kimball said. “I’m telling you, it’s like an out-of-body experience, man. You go out there and you literally just see the hitter, the catcher and the umpire — that’s it. Everything else is just black. It’s crazy.”

Kimball came in and did his job, getting an immediate groundout to end the frame. He went back out for the eighth, walked two batters but got a strikeout. His day was over after throwing 20 pitches. But he had done it. Dream achieved.

Jeff Kimball, who made the trip without hesitation, couldn’t help but be in awe of what he just saw. He knew how hard his son had worked to earn a moment like this.

“It’s watching all of his hard work come to fruition. Seeing him out there throwing in a game that he wanted to be throwing in,” Jeff said. “I was definitely in awe, and again, I’ll have to say surreal moment. It was something you’ll just never forget.”

Little did Jeff or anyone know, but this was the last time Kimball would pitch in a college baseball game. He would transfer to South Carolina after that season. And before he could even pitch the next year, he felt something wrong in his throwing elbow and underwent Tommy John surgery. It was an injury that kept him out of action for all of 2023.

But that changes Sunday afternoon. 

In just a few hours, Kimball will be back on the mound and starting a game for the first time in 609 days.

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The aftermath of Omaha

After that special 2022 season, things quickly changed at Notre Dame. Just one day after the College World Series run came to an end, Jarrett, who had been with the program for three seasons, became the next coach at Florida State. It was at this point Kimball considered a change of scenery.

And it wasn’t just because his head coach left for another school. College baseball in South Bend is much different compared to other parts of the country where it’s king.

“He loved Notre Dame, it’ll always hold a piece in our hearts,” Jeff said. “He draws off of fans. And there wasn’t a lot of fans at Notre Dame. It was cold. It’s not a baseball school, it’s a football school.”

Kimball hadn’t made any immediate decision yet on what he wanted to do next. He was holding out to see if his pitching coach, Chuck Ristano, would be staying or leaving. Eventually, Ristano took the head coaching job at Navy, leaving Kimball without much of a choice.

“So while he was in the Cape (Cod League), then he was like, ‘Well, do I make myself available to other teams or not?'” said Elly, Kimball’s mother. “He was in the portal, but not making himself available to other teams quite yet. So then, he did make himself available, but that was getting down to the wire. He had to kind of make a decision. Well, where would you want to go?”

Deep down, there was always one place he wanted to go if it weren’t Notre Dame.

A senior year in Lexington

The year before Kimball began his college career at Notre Dame, he spent his senior year of high school in an unfamiliar spot: Lexington, South Carolina. He was going to play his final season at the P27 Baseball Academy, which has developed over 100 Division I college commits and professional draft picks.

It was a completely new experience for Kimball, who was only 16 years old at the time. And it wasn’t like he was from around the area; he grew up in New Hartford, New York.

“He left and went to live down there in an apartment. P27 doesn’t have dorm rooms or a mess hall or anything like that, a dining hall or anything where he goes and they feed you,” Elly said. “He had to learn how to do his own laundry and he had to learn how to grocery shop and cook and do all those things for himself when he was 16 years old and living in an apartment with three other boys.”

Despite having to grow up different from most kids his age, Kimball adapted and made it work. From the conversations Elly had with him over the phone, he seemed to be handling the situation fine.

“He was very mature through the whole thing. And I’m sure that he had his down moments too,” Elly said. “But whenever he talked to us, he always seemed pretty upbeat about things. And actually, he said that it seemed to go a lot faster than he expected.”

On the mound, Kimball was dominant. He went 4-3 with a 2.50 ERA and 84 strikeouts as a senior. He was ranked as the top right-handed pitcher in the state of New York.

While his primary reason for being in the area was to play baseball, that didn’t stop Kimball from venturing out. He’d usually wind up at Founders Park, where he’d go watch the Gamecocks play with his friends/teammates. And he was almost immediately blown away.

“You just come here and you see the culture and just everything about this place, man, is so special,” Kimball said. “When I came here and saw that I was like, ‘Man, this is what college baseball is all about.’ I go to Notre Dame and things aren’t quite the same there. Columbia is much more baseball centric than South Bend, Indiana is.”

So when Kimball found himself in the transfer portal, he knew this is where he wanted to go next.

“When he was down at P27, he saw what it could be like,” Jeff said. “I think that’s what really lured him to go back and return to South Carolina. And I think that was what brought him, and he would say home because he loves it down there.”

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October 21st

Elly still remembers getting the call. Her son was on the other end of the line.

“I was in the car with my parents. I had taken my dad to an appointment out in Syracuse. And we knew he was throwing that day in a scrimmage,” Elly said. “And he calls me and he said, I felt something pop in my arm. The first thing out of my mouth was, ‘Are you effing kidding me right now?'”

It was Oct. 21, 2022. Kimball was in the early stages of his transfer to South Carolina. He was scheduled to pitch in a fall scrimmage that day. Everything was fine while warming up until he noticed something.

“I was out in the bullpen and was like, ‘Man, I’m throwing hard today.’ This is the hardest I’ve thrown in a while,” Kimball said. “So I get out there, warm up, whatever. And I’m sitting 95 (MPH) that day. I’ve never really thrown that hard, I normally sit like 90 to 94. But I go out there for the first inning, I’m sitting 94-95.”

The uptick in velocity was a little concerning for Kimball. But what happened next was when he realized this wasn’t just something in his head.

“I think I was like 20 pitches in and then all of a sudden I threw a changeup. And I think the pitch before was a fastball and it just kind of got away from me. And then on the changeup I threw, just felt it go,” he said.

The craziest part about all this was that South Carolina was in the process of getting a new athletic trainer (Cory Barton). In fact, Kimball said it was the old athletic trainer’s last day on the job when he felt something off with his arm.

“He was like, ‘Yeah, I think it’s just a flexor strain, probably don’t have to be too worried about it,” Kimball said about the original diagnosis.

But after some more testing, it wasn’t a simple flexor strain. It was something all pitchers fear. He had an elbow injury in his throwing arm that required Tommy John surgery.

Like any parent, Jeff’s first instinct was thinking about the next step. What do you do after your son has contracted an injury that could change the course of his baseball career?

“The first step in all those steps that came running into my mind was, okay, how are you dealing with it? Meaning, asking how Roman was dealing with it,” Jeff said. “And of course, he was hoping against hope that it was something else. Because he didn’t feel the normal pain that everybody else feels. And he actually passed all the UCL tests and all that stuff. So he was hoping it was just something that was just a couple weeks off, and he’d be back. But of course, it wasn’t.”

Fighting through an inner battle

After coming off the mound, Kimball walked into the Founders Park tunnel feeling so defeated. This was something so foreign to him that he had never dealt with.

In reality, this was going to be a year or more long battle to pitch again. And in that time, there would have to be plenty of rehab to get his arm back to 100 percent. But it was also going to be a mental war.

But luckily, he had guys around him who had been through this surgery and knew what it was like.

“I’ve been through it, Sam (Simpson), he was our other roommate last year, he had been through it, too,” said Eli Jones, who lived with Kimball in 2023. “So we kind of knew all about it going into it, and I think we did a good job trying to help him keep his mind into it that it is a part of it and the best ways to get through it.”

Jones, who had worked his way back from Tommy John going into his freshman year, gave him a key piece of advice that stuck with him: take pride in the little steps.

“Every little thing, take it as a big accomplishment, because it’s a long road and it is extremely hard to do,” Jones said. “But if you take every single step and take that as a big accomplishment then it’ll help you out a lot.”

And that’s exactly what Kimball did. The recovery process wasn’t always sunshine and rainbows, but he took in stride and made the most of his situation.

“I feel like the hardest part was just getting everything back mentally, man,” Kimball said. “Those first couple throws are like, I don’t really know, this is like a foreign language to me. Just getting over the humps of the little things like that, first pitch and first throw. I feel like just getting being able to be mentally strong again, you get nervous. You haven’t thrown and you’ve got a new arm basically.”

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An escape

It was simple.

“Roman came to me last year and said, ‘Coach, I’m not going to be able to pitch. I want to be able to dive into something that might help us. Here’s what I’d like to do,” head coach Mark Kingston said.

Kimball’s idea was YouTube. It had been something he had done since his P27 days. And in that discussion with Kingston, it all clicked.

“And I said, ‘Is it going to make us look good? Is it going to give everybody a behind-the-scenes look at how we really do things, which I’m confident that we do things very well. So we have nothing to hide. So I said, you know what? Do it. Go for it,” Kingston said.

From there, Kimball had found a new purpose. If he couldn’t pitch, he was going to find another way to be impactful for his team. And his way of doing so came through vlogging about life as a college baseball player at South Carolina.

There weren’t limits to what Kimball could or couldn’t do. He was able to vlog during the games and show what it’s truly like to be on the team. It was the type of behind-the-scenes access that you couldn’t find just anywhere. This was different.

In a way, it was almost an escape from the battle he was facing. Something he could do to put his mind at ease for a moment.

“I think it softened the blow. It provided him with a chance to still be with the team,” Jeff said. “Tommy John, it’s a physical injury. But a lot of people don’t understand the totality it takes to come back from an injury like that. Day after day of a lot of the monotonous exercises that you continually have to do. And you have to take those little small goals and make them big goals. And I think documenting that throughout his process and doing that for other players, I think that not only helped him, but he’s also hoping it helps others.”

As of now, Kimball is up to 12,000 subscribers with almost 200 videos. His most popular videos tend to be the ones more focused on the day in the life aspect.

“I was telling somebody earlier that the fan support here has been unreal,” Kimball said. “Just to be able to have the fans backing me and I’m not even out there. That shows something about the fan base and what Columbia is all about here. I mean, man, it was just so exciting last year. I captured so many great moments.”

At long last

As the days go by, everyone always asks Kimball if he’s thought about what it will be like to pitch in a game again. His answer is always the same.

“Go back to Jack Mahoney’s first inning of his outing last year against UMass Lowell,” Kimball said.

Mahoney, much like Kimball is now, was working his way back from Tommy John. He hadn’t pitched in a game for 656 days. But he cracked the weekend rotation and made his return on the Sunday of opening weekend, similarly to Kimball.

In that first inning back on the mound, Mahoney struck out the side in order, making it clear to everyone that he was back in a big way.

“He just came in the dugout and was like, ‘I just had to let all my emotion out, man, because it’s been so long,'” said Kimball, referring to Mahoney.

Come Sunday afternoon at 1:30 p.m., he’ll be in the same boat as Mahoney was. Taking the ball for the first time in almost two years. It’s been a long road of recovery but the finish line is in sight.

“Just being back out there again is going to be such a special moment for me because I’ve worked so hard to get back to being healthy and being able to go out there,” Kimball said.

For his parents, they started booking flights for this weekend months in advance. Jeff and Elly have been in Columbia for the entirety of opening weekend, anxiously waiting to see their son back doing what he loves.

As a mother, Elly knows she’ll be feeling lots of emotions as she watches Kimball pitch again.

“I’ll be crying and at the same time thinking, ‘Oh my God, I hope his arms okay.’ Yeah, that’ll be me,” she said. “His first strikeout will be like, ‘Oh my God, yes!’ and I’ll scream.”

For Jeff, it’s the same type of feeling. He’s been waiting for this day ever since he saw him take the mound in Omaha.

“Can’t wait. Cannot wait,” he said. “Haven’t seen him throw in a collegiate game since the (College) World Series — Notre Dame. I haven’t seen him throw in a game since he was with the Chatham Anglers up here with the Cape Cod League. And his last outing was in early August that year.”

And for Kimball, he’s ready for this moment. But to have his parents, the ones that have been by his side through it all, in the building on Sunday will be extra special.

“They’re obviously my biggest supporters. Having a great coaching staff here and great support staff here as well has been big too,” Kimball said. “But my parents, I mean, obviously, they know me better than anybody besides myself. So having them constantly talking to me, asking how the arm is doing and just stuff like that, man. Just them checking up on me is always nice. It’s nice to know you’ve got people in your corner.”

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