The Tigers have signed a pitcher to a minor league contract on Thursday and many already call him a hero. The thing is, his heroics have nothing to do with his play on the baseball diamond.
On Oct. 1, 2017, Bubba Derby was in attendance at the Route 91 Harvest music festival in Las Vegas when a shooter opened fire on the outdoor crowd from the 32nd floor of the nearby Mandalay Bay hotel. Of the 60 people killed and the 867 injured by gunfire and mass panic, Derby made sure two women were not going to be among the victims as he threw himself over them to make sure they were safe.
“I turned and looked at my aunt -- because she was behind me -- and I remember looking in her eyes and it was that look of, ‘Are we about to die? Is this it? Is this it for us?’” Derby told TMZ Sports back in 2017. “I ended up kind of covering two girls that we had met in the group there. I tried to kind of be over them. My cousin was laying over his girlfriend. We were just trying to cover from any kind of fire coming around.”
Although he and his family members escaped the carnage that day, Derby was a witness to haunting images and even had someone else’s blood on his clothes by the end of it all.
Derby, who is a 28-year-old right handed pitcher, is still chasing his dream of playing in an MLB game after being drafted by the Oakland Athletics in 2015. He played in rookie leagues and high-A ball in 2015 before moving on to join the Milwaukee minor league system where he has played AA and AAA ball through last season. He has a career minor league record of 31-30 with an ERA of 4.62 and a WHIP of 1.416 in 564.1 innings pitched.
Along with Derby, the Tigers also signed 31-year-old right-handed pitcher Derek Law to a minor league deal as well. Law started in the San Francisco Giants’ minor league system in 2011 and he made his major league debut with the Giants in 2016. Last year, he appeared in nine games with the Minnesota Twins in relief capacity. He has a 10-5 record in the big leagues with an ERA of 4.22 and a WHIP of 1.439 in 181.1 innings.