I sat up until nearly four in the morning, laptop glowing in the dark, digging through every retired-athlete forum and comeback-story archive I could find that had absolutely nothing to do with hockey, absolutely nothing to do with me. I needed something real. Something documented. Something that could survive a professor standing over our shoulder asking hard questions without a single c***k showing.
By sunrise I had him,a guy named Aaron Pruitt, a minor-league baseball pitcher whose shoulder gave out for good in a game eleven years ago, who since built an entire second career doing sports psychology talks at high schools. He answered emails. He gave interviews. He was, as far as case subjects went, about as safe and verifiable as it got.
I emailed him at five a.m., barely coherent, and
