Throwing a historic no-hitter for your new team is one way to introduce yourself, but there’s far more to Padres pitcher Dylan Cease than fastballs.
Painter. Disc golfer. Bee keeper. Cat owner. Mindfulness practitioner. Cease brought his whole self to San Diego when the Chicago White Sox traded him to the Padres in March. “Those are just things I like doing,” the 28-year-old said. “I have a really unique job and unique skill set, but I’m a human being first. I have the same human experiences as everyone.”
Cease’s thoughtfulness is apparent when he talks about his art practice, which he started only a few years ago. He’s inspired by a desire to create and to escape consumerism, at least for a little while. “Art is personality and expression,” he said. Unlike baseball, “art is under all your control, and I can put a lot of personality on the canvas. The outcome at the end is very cool. It’s gratifying.”
Cease views pitching as more scientific and logical than art, but his personality peaks through on the field. His motion is methodical and intentional, as if he wants as much time as possible to study his prey and direct his attack. Upright and slow, his is a thinking-man’s windup. That is, until it’s time to release the ball.
As he whips his 6’2” frame around, a violent force is created. It might be a fastball that explodes out of his hand, the ball doting a corner of the strike zone. Or it could be a slider that darts below the knees, leaving the batter questioning the laws of physics. His style doesn’t deceive hitters so much as it overwhelms them. It’s a repertoire that has carried a Padres rotation without co-aces Joe Musgrove and Yu Darvish for long stretches and that carried Cease into the record books on July 25 at Nationals Park in Washington, D.C. as only the second Padre to throw a no-hitter in team history (the first was Musgrove).
A 99 mile-per-hour fastball induced the final out of the eighth inning of his no-hitter. His first fastball of the game, almost two hours and a hundred pitches earlier, was “just” 97 miles per hour. The final three outs in the ninth came on Cease’s patented slider. Down and inside to a lefty: groundball. Down and away to a righty: groundball. Down and away to another lefty: fly out. He was dealing. He was, well, painting.
The demands of the baseball season limit his art to a couple pieces a year, but he’s generous with that output. He gifted his mom a recent painting for Mother’s Day. Another painting went to Padres teammate Michael King to support King’s charity work. It’s an ethos recognized by Dante Rowley, retail and visitor experience manager at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, who is working with Cease to highlight baseball caps that the museum and Padres designed together.
“We want to tell the story of, you don’t need to choose between getting into sports and getting into art. Cease has that duality and can be the bridge between the two worlds,” Rowley said. “He was kind of an unknown when the Padres traded for him, but I think a younger generation of ballplayers and artists in San Diego can look up to him and connect with him.”
And Cease’s interest in sports extends beyond baseball. “The pro disc golf season kicks off in Arizona, when baseball spring training is starting there,” said Paul McBeth, who Cease described as the ‘Tiger Woods of disc golf.’ “Dylan messaged me and we realized we have a lot of similar interests.”
Those interests developed into a friendship, which developed into a business. A Georgia native, Cease bought land outside of Tuscaloosa, Alabama, and asked McBeth to design a world-class course, which they named Cactus Rock. The two then partnered on buying Gran Canyon Disc Golf Course, one of the premier courses in Florida.
“Dylan probably wants to land a big baseball contract just so he can develop more courses,” McBeth said with a laugh. “It’s not so much about the money, though. I think Dylan likes seeing his ideas come alive. He’s a different thinker than most. He would love to sit around and talk about World War II. He loves to learn and loves to hear people’s stories.”
Cease considers disc golf a lifelong pursuit, and about his art he said, “I don’t think I’ll ever stop painting. It will be cool to look back 10, 20, 30 years from now and see what I created. Art is similar to immortality. It’s a time capsule.” When asked if his no-hitter–just the second in team history–can be thought of in the same way, Cease acknowledged it could be, but he quickly added that the World Series is the ultimate goal and what really gets immortalized.
Cease is a free agent after next season. Whether he spends two seasons or the rest of his career in San Diego is to be determined, but so far, so good. “The move here has been great. [The Padres] organization is fantastic,” he said. From road trips with the White Sox, he knew the weather here was perfect, but since becoming a Padre he has grown an appreciation for the “distinct” atmosphere at Petco Park and how passionate San Diegans are about their team.
Those San Diegans will certainly remember him forever if he helps bring home the Padres’ first championship. Cease may view himself a mere mortal, a human like any other, but connecting with people through more than baseball is the stuff of legends.
