“It was like 2015 tore me in directions that I didn’t even know were possible,” Norris says. “I wasn’t who I wanted to be. I certainly made mistakes. I literally did not know if I was going to come back to baseball. I didn’t know what opportunity was going to be there around the corner. What I did know: I had to find happiness, I had to find health, and I had to find who I was as a person and a player.”
When Norris agreed to a one-year, $3-million deal with the Cardinals on the eve of spring training, they promised him only, possibly a chance to start.