As Tyler Wells listened to the stream of last week’s Rule 5 draft, he hoped not only to hear news about himself and a teammate or two in the Minnesota Twins organization, but also to satiate his craving for any baseball news at a time of year that is relatively barren of it.
The sport has often been a sanctuary for Wells, an outlet and escape for the stress his family went through after his mother died of cancer when he was 4 years old. Taking in the annual Rule 5 draft, this year’s being one in which he was eligible to be selected but wasn’t expecting to be, marks a continuation of that.