Josh Faiola's Inspiring Home Makeover

By Evan Miller

WEB EXCLUSIVE

The life of a minor league baseball player is a lonely one. Living in small towns far away from family and friends, the players chase a dream 90 percent will never realize.

The pressure, especially for a pitcher, is intense. You only play every fourth or fifth day so every game matters. Lose a game and the pain and doubts can linger for a long time.

Josh Faiola, pitcher for the Lake Erie Crushers, knows he faces the same long odds as the rest of his teammates. He’s suffered his share of setbacks.

After two years rehabilitating an injury, this past spring he was cut by the Baltimore Orioles. The Crushers may be his last chance to prove himself. But this summer Faiola will have plenty of support in the stands—his own personal cheering section, a rowdy throng of senior citizens.

Faiola, 25, became the fan favorite of The Belvedere assisted living facility in Westlake, Ohio, when the center took him in as his host family. Most of the Crushers players live with host families because they don’t earn enough to live on their own. But only Faiola lives with 32 grandparents!

For the center’s residents, Faiola’s arrival is the most exciting thing that’s happened since an Elvis impersonator visited a few years back.

“It’s great for all us old folks,” said Meta Dennis, 84, and a resident of the center for the last four years. “He’s brought us youth and a different outlook. He’s made a lot of us feel very lighthearted.” 

But when the right-hander first learned he’d be resting his cleats at an assisted living facility he wasn’t so sure he’d like the arrangement. He wondered if maybe the team thought he still needed to recover from the arm injury he suffered two years ago, that they’d put him up at the center in case he needed physical therapy. But when the center’s owner, Cindy Griffiths-Novak, began describing his suite all concerns vanished.

“She started telling me about how I would have my own studio apartment with a queen-sized bed and a flat screen TV and I thought, Wow, that’s better than if I was in an apartment.”

But Faiola soon discovered that the biggest benefit of his new digs was the fanatic support of his neighbors. When he first walked through his new home’s front doors he was greeted by a 40-foot banner reading, “Welcome Josh. You’re a big hit at The Belvedere.”

Baseball piñatas hung throughout the center, along with posters meant to motivate him, such as, “Don’t get cut. Move your butt.”

As Faiola knows too well the poster’s sentiment isn’t an idle threat. A graduate of Dartmouth College, he was drafted in the 24th round by the Orioles in 2006.