Most afternoons at the ballpark, you’ll find Danny Farquhar chasing down fly balls in the outfield grass during Mariners batting practice.
You won’t find anyone anywhere enjoying anything more than whatever Farquhar is doing out there.
Half magician, half puppy, Farquhar will routinely flip his glove around to make a behind-the-back catch or excitedly leap at the wall to rob a home run, one trick after another. The Mariners’ assistant pitching coach, a 38-year-old father of three, is often doing all that while on a video call with his wife, Lexie, through his Ray-Ban Meta glasses.
“We’ll be chatting about our day — ‘Oh, what doctors appointments do the kids need to get to? What is our schedule like tomorrow?’ Lexie said. “And then all of a sudden he’ll yell, ‘I got it! I got it!’ and he’s, like, breathlessly running and then screaming, ‘I did it! I did it!’
“And I’m just like, yep, that’s my golden retriever husband.”
Yes, this is a story about a rad dad on Father’s Day. Really, it’s a story about family, about one true love, about a second chance and a life well-lived.
Seven years ago, Danny nearly died on a baseball field when an aneurysm ruptured in his brain while he was pitching for the Chicago White Sox.
Rushed to a Chicago hospital, he needed a four-hour emergency surgery to stop the bleeding in his brain, and then spent 17 days recovering in the intensive care unit, Lexie at his side the entire time.
About half of brain aneurysm cases prove fatal; roughly two-thirds of survivors demonstrate some permanent neurological deficit, according to medical studies.
Danny knows he’s among the lucky few.
He’s recovered to live a healthy life, maybe even his best life, and he approaches day-to-day dad duties with the same zeal with which he chases fly balls in the outfield grass. He’s still a kid at heart, Lexie will tell you, and he relishes his time with Madison, 13, Landon, 9, and Liam, 7.
“The trauma and the toll is real,” Danny said. “And something that I think, as a family, just having the silver lining of, ’Hey, Dad’s still here,’ is kind of the best way that I like to shift the emotion, to help work through the process.
“It’s always been, family is my priority — and even more so after the fact, of course.”
‘Pure magic’
They were 16 when they started dating in high school in south Florida. Danny and Lexie have been practically inseparable since, growing up together as young adults, then young parents and, suddenly, a young couple trying to navigate an unimaginable new reality as Danny lay in the hospital and tried to regain a sense of self.
The last memory Danny has from April 20, 2018, is walking out onto the field for the national anthem before the White Sox-Astros game at Guaranteed Rate Field. He has no recollection of pitching in the sixth inning of that game or vomiting as he walked back into the home dugout or anything, really, for the next four days.
“Just dark,” he said.
When he regained consciousness, Danny was unrecognizable to himself in the mirror, and he had reverted back to what he described as a high-school state of mind.
Lexie brought him back up to speed on who he was and what had happened. It was like a broken-down spaceship being powered back up, one switch after another on a massive circuit board.
“It was almost like relearning my life,” he said. “It was like a blank slate. No memory. Just the lights slowly turning on.”
Lexie called it one of the best moments of her life, sitting there in the ICU and gradually bringing back Danny to the present.
“You have that moment where you get married and you see your husband when you’re walking down the aisle, and there’s that look. And you have that moment when your child is born and you have this moment of, like, ‘Oh my gosh,’” she said. “And then here I am where all of that is wiped away from his memories, and then all of that joy coming back was — it was magic. It was pure magic. I couldn’t believe it. It was an incredible feeling to see him so joyful — like, ‘We have three kids?! Whoa.’
“Like, that’s a lot of information to process. But it’s amazing how the brain works. It was like watching him relearn his life, and each day was almost like a year of memories that would come back.”
A second home, a second chapter
Farquhar is part of the answer to a historic trivia question in Seattle sports lore: Whom did the Mariners acquire from the New York Yankees in their 2012 trade of Ichiro?
It was Farquhar and another little-known right-handed reliever, D.J. Mitchell.
Farquhar and Ichiro now share the outfield grass before every Mariners home game. Ichiro, who at 51 years old will be inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame next month, still goes through a meticulous workout routine at T-Mobile Park each afternoon, and it’s not uncommon for Farquhar or Ichiro to call one another off catching fly balls during BP.
“I tell him it’s The Farquhar Trade, not the Ichiro Trade,” Farquhar said with a laugh. “And I remind him he’s 0-for-Farquhar.” (Ichiro flew out to left field in his lone at-bat against Farquhar.)
That 2012 trade to the Pacific Northwest ended a whirlwind summer for the Farquhars, who zigzagged the country with their infant daughter — New Hampshire to Sacramento to Trenton to Rochester to Tacoma, initially — as Danny moved between five organizations over a six-week stretch. (Farquhar was later part of another notable transaction when he was sent to Tampa Bay as part of Jerry Dipoto’s first trade as head of Mariners baseball operations in 2015.)
The young family found stability in Seattle for a few seasons as Danny established himself as a major-league reliever, dubbed “Lord Farquhar” while he was here. Their first son, Landon, was born here, and even though their home base is in Southern California, they have long considered Seattle a second home.
Which is why Danny was thrilled at the chance to join the Mariners coaching staff before the 2024 season.
He holds the title of major-league pitching strategist and assistant pitching coach, and he works with M’s pitches in a variety of areas — and specifically on holding runners on base and pitch-tipping prevention. If, for example, he notices a pitcher starting to give away a pitch — because how the pitcher is holding the ball in his glove or something in his delivery — Farquhar will put together a mashup of film to show the pitcher and try to correct it.
“It’s so much fun, just being involved in baseball and trying to help these guys out in any aspect of their careers,” Farquhar said. “These are the best players on Earth, and they’ve been really receptive.”
A good day to have a good day
Looking back at Danny’s playing career, pre-injury, the one regret Lexie has is that she didn’t take enough pictures or videos — of even a mundane, every-day activity that didn’t seem particularly special at the time.
All those moments, big and small, carry more meaning now.
“When that (April 20) anniversary rolls around, it is remarkable how much it still hits,” Lexie said. “And then there will be different moments in time that sneak up out of nowhere that you’re just like, ‘Man, this was huge.’
“I think it’s a grieving process of what our life was before, and what we lost because of it. We also gained great perspective from it, but it’s still something that’s going to ebb and flow, I think, for the rest of our lives.”
Because the hemorrhage occurred on the left side of his brain, Danny does have some limitations on the right side of his body. Doctors told him he’ll likely never regain full strength on that side.
“It’s just not firing as quick … and it’s never going to be the same,” he said.
It’s a tradeoff he’s accepted for a second chance and a new appreciation for what he has.
“The biggest thing is just not really sweating the little things,” he said, sitting in the dugout during a recent interview. “Like, we’re playing a game. This is just a game. So it definitely puts a lot of stuff into perspective when everything was just taken away without any notice. You realize what’s really important.”
It’s changed those closest to him, too.
“He definitely just doesn’t want to miss out on just having a good day,” Lexie said. “And I think that is something that I have to remind myself of sometimes, like, hey, maybe we don’t always need to look at the big picture so much. Sometimes we just need to have a good day and enjoy what we have.
“And, man, he really does enjoy it.”
