Aaron Civale ’13 Seeks to Make his Mark as Top-Shelf Pitcher and First-Class Person

By Jeff Otterbein

Above: Francesca Civale’s artwork of her husband, Cleveland pitcher Aaron Civale. Don’t expect to see Aaron turn his back on who he is: a hard worker with passion for the game and compassion for people.

We see the Major League Baseball players on our TV screens night after night, and we think we know who they are. But we do not. We know them by their statistics, and we often judge them that way, but they cannot simply be defined by the speed of their fastball or the quickness of their swing.

Aaron Civale ’13 is a major league pitcher for the Cleveland Guardians. Do not doubt for a moment that he enjoys the view from the pitching mound. Like so many before him and so many to come, this was his dream as a kid. Yet his vision for himself is to be more than just a major league pitcher.

He recalls his first spring training when Cleveland personnel asked him questions to get to know him. One he will never forget: When all is said and done, what do you want everyone to remember Aaron Civale by?

“I remember the answer I gave was that I do not want to be remembered as just a pitcher,” Aaron says on a winter day in January from his home in Massachusetts, just weeks before he would leave for spring training in Arizona. “There are so many pitchers who have gone through this game. It is difficult to get to this position, but my goal is not to be just another right-handed pitcher to play in the big leagues. If I am not using the opportunity I have to do something for the greater good, then I am wasting the opportunity I worked so hard to get.”

“Above everything,” says his mother, Helen, “that makes me the proudest.” 

Aaron was the Guardians’ nominee for the 2021 Roberto Clement Award, presented annually to one Major League Baseball player who “best represents the game through extraordinary character, community involvement, philanthropy and positive contributions on and off the field.” 

Aaron was 26 years old and in just his third season. In his rookie season, 2019, Guardians pitcher Carlos Carrasco not only was the team’s nominee, but won the award. Aaron became close to Carrasco and says they simply bonded. The list of what Carrasco and his wife did was as long as it was meaningful. Carrasco was traded before the 2021 season. So Civale stepped up his game. 

“I want to continue in the footsteps of those who came before me,” he says. 

And right alongside him is a teammate, his wife Francesca, whom he met when both were students at Northeastern University in Boston. Their dog’s nickname is Stetty, short for Stetson West, a dorm on the Northeastern campus. When Aaron left for spring training in February, Stetty stared at the door for hours.

Aaron and Francesca have been involved in their Pearls for Perseverance player program the past few seasons. 

“We always thought, what’s the purpose of having this platform and all the things that come with it if we don’t do something good for others with it?” Francesca says. “I have always said Aaron is a great baseball player, but he’s an even better man. Watching others get to know him better as a person through our charity work and having them see all he has to offer outside of the baseball field has been so special for both of us.”

Aaron also has attended the Great Lakes Science Center’s STEM camp for youth in the Cleveland area. He has supported a few Guardians youth baseball/softball initiatives and participated in hospital visits at the Cleveland Clinic — both virtually and in person. He had a personalized glove for sale through Wilson’s Glove of the Month program with $20 from each glove purchased going to LifeAct, whose mission is to provide mental health education guided by the goal of preventing suicide. The organization says it delivers in-school educational programs to more than 25,000 Ohio youths every year.

“The giving back that he has been doing in the Cleveland area does not surprise me at all,” says Jeff Ross, Aaron’s former baseball coach at Loomis Chaffee, who retired in 2016. “The whole Civale family is really a credit to the school. The fact that we had Aaron’s brother Nic for four years and that his parents were part of our community the entire time Nic and Aaron were at Loomis, they could not be nicer people, better parents, people you wanted to know and whose kids you wanted to root for.”

Raising awareness of mental health issues is important to Aaron and Francesca. Both have known people who took their own lives at a young age.

“Mine was a friend who was becoming a better friend, and I’ll leave my wife’s privacy to her,” Aaron says. “Sometimes you really don’t know what someone is going through, and maybe it’s one little thing you can do. Maybe it is just letting someone know that someone else is thinking about them. Maybe that can be a difference-maker.”

There is a growing mental health crisis in the United States as youth have had to process so much between COVID-19 and wars, senseless murders and hate crimes.

“Up until the age of 18 is such a precious age,” Aaron says, “and there is so much going on around you and so much development happening. You’re supposed to pick what you want to do the rest of your life, pick the college you want to spend four years at. … It is tough figuring out things at that age. If there is any way to take that pressure off, it’s important for us as a society to learn how to handle that.”

You are not alone, is one message, says Aaron. “And we need to do our best to check in with those around us and just be kind to those around us. Try to go that one extra step as frequently as you can. It’s important.” 

In the Pearls for Perseverance program, Aaron sets aside his warm-up baseball, which is signed and dated and given to pediatric patients at Cleveland Clinic Children’s. The child also receives a message of hope and encouragement. A pearl is a baseball term for a new ball that has been rubbed down and essentially is no longer bright white but pearl white. Perseverance is simply the message Aaron and Fran seek to convey.

“To be able to bring joy to someone else’s day can be so impactful, and at times might not even be that much effort on one side and can mean so much to the other side,” Aaron says. “Everyone goes through things, and when someone goes out of the way to reach out and make you feel you’re being thought about, that is something that carries a lot of weight.”

So, too, did his time at Loomis.

“I didn’t know where baseball was going to take me,” Aaron says. “I grew up in a small town, East Windsor, grew up with family as a priority. And like most high schoolers, not too aware of what is going on outside where you are from.” 

Loomis helped change that. Aaron speaks of having friends from all over the country and world.

“It was a unique opportunity to experience that diversity at a younger age than I would have, and that certainly helped prepare me for college and beyond,” Aaron says. “The group of people I interact with every year, there are constants, but it also is constantly changing.”

Trades, free agency, players being called up to the Guardians or sent down to the minor leagues means you never quite know who will be in that locker room each day. “Learning how to communicate and work with many diverse types and groups of people, I don’t think I would have had that if I had not gone to Loomis,” Aaron says. 

A teacher with whom Helen worked years ago had sent her children to Loomis and helped sell Helen and Aaron’s father, Kim, on the idea. Not that they needed much convincing. They were very familiar with the campus. Kim and Helen owned a Domino’s Pizza on Poquonock Avenue in Windsor from 1985 to 1994.

“I was pregnant with Nic delivering pizzas here,” Helen recalls. “So we knew Loomis before we had children.”

Kim remembers delivering about 120 pizzas to campus on a Super Bowl Sunday. He also remembers thinking, “I wish our kids could come here some day.”

Once Nic went, there was no stopping Aaron. 

“I think in Aaron’s application we wrote that Aaron has been bleeding maroon and gray since Nic walked through the doors,” Helen says. “Aaron really wanted to be here.”

Just like he really wanted to be a major league pitcher.

“I knew from when he was 10 or 11, the idea got in his mind,” Kim says, “and he was always determined no matter what. If you tell him no and he wants to do it, he will find a way.” 

Aaron’s baseball career already has memories that will last long after he throws his last pitch. A no-hitter in 2013 at Loomis Chaffee, the first in 36 years, against rival Kingswood-Oxford. A start for Northeastern University in a 2015 spring training game versus the Boston Red Sox in which he pitched two no-hit innings, striking out David Ortiz, Hanley Ramirez, Mike Napoli, and Xander Bogaerts.

“As a coach to have someone with Aaron’s focus and work ethic and leadership by example, you feel really blessed to have that as part of your team’s culture,” Jeff says. “It was very obvious, too, that included in all of that was that he was just a very nice guy. We had a lot of success in Aaron’s junior and senior years because so many of the boys on the team were good friends and felt being on the team was a valuable thing personally. No doubt Aaron was a big contributor to that, if not the biggest.”

Aaron was drafted in 2016 in the third round and received a $625,000 signing bonus. He told his brother to go buy a car. Nic was in grad school, driving one of his parents’ old cars. Aaron didn’t get a car for himself at that time. He was driving his grandfather Frank Civale’s car that had been given to him by his grandmother Lois Civale.

“He drove a 1997 Buick Regal until two years ago,” Kim says. “The other guys on the team were always busting him about driving that Buick.”

“We get to park in the players’ lot when we go to games,” Helen says.

Kim laughs: “And there are Ferraris and Mercedeses and all those types of cars there, and Aaron with his Buick Regal.”

“He took great care of that car,” Helen says.

In his first major league start in 2019, Aaron struck out the side in the first inning. He retired the first eight batters and allowed only two infield singles in six scoreless innings, getting the win as Cleveland beat the Tigers 2-0. His parents and Nic, who flew in from Hawaii, where he was working, were at the game. Francesca was there. An aunt and uncle flew in from Oklahoma. His godmother came. So, too, did the host family he lived with during his first year in professional baseball in Ohio.

His parents drove 573 miles from East Windsor to Cleveland. 

“It was awesome; the whole experience was incredible,” Helen says.

Kim adds, laughing, “Then we found out later they would have flown us out there and paid for our hotel and everything. We didn’t know that.”

They also were among the many family and friends on the field after the Guardians clinched the American League Central Division title last September.

“It’s something you never expect to happen,” Helen says.

They met front office personnel and were told that Aaron was a gift to the team. “It was so great to hear that,” Kim says.

Through hundreds of games and thousands of miles, Aaron has taken his parents on quite a ride over the years. Now all eyes are on certain days.

“You get on that five-day rollercoaster,” Kim says of Aaron’s turn in the rotation. “Then you watch the game, decompress, and get ready again.”

Or, as Francesca says, “Even after nine years of watching him, I still get nervous.”

Aaron and Francesca remain like-minded when it comes to the game.

“Aaron and I both try to take a ‘control what we can control’ approach,” Francesca says. “So I try my best to help him any way I can while understanding baseball has highs and lows, and in time, everything passes.”

Helen and Kim attend as many games as they can, but they also have the MLB TV package. So, too, does Lois, now 95 and quite possibly Aaron’s biggest fan. The MLB TV subscription is a birthday gift each year from Aaron and Nic. Family has always been important to the Civales. Helen has five brothers and three sisters. Aaron and Nic have 21 cousins.

“On Sundays we went to Kim’s parents for lunch no matter what, and then we went to my mother’s after that,” says Helen, who is in her 25th year working in the East Windsor school system. “And the four of us. We were always together. Family had to come first.”

Aaron enters his fifth season with the Guardians with a 24-21 career record with close to a strikeout per inning. In the offseason he signed a one-year deal worth $2.6 million to avoid arbitration. 

He has had a lot of injuries the past two seasons, so his offseason regimen was about being prepared for what is to come, a long season stretched over months with media scrutiny and intense fans being part of the deal. 

“It’s finding the right balance and trusting people you work with in the weight room and trusting that you’re doing the proper things baseball-wise,” Aaron says. “And a lot of that comes with experience and knowing your body.”

Despite the Guardians’ success last season, you will get no predictions from Aaron about this year, but you will hear plenty of praise for Guardians manager Terry Francona.

“He is one of the best to ever do it in this game,” Aaron says. “The setting, the energy, and atmosphere that has been established under him. It doesn’t matter what anyone else is doing. 

If we take care of business within our own team, we will be in a good spot. That is important to learn. You take care of business for yourself and for those around you, and everything else tends to take care of itself more often than not.”

Nic was a senior when Aaron was a freshman at Loomis. A fine player in his own right, Nic went on to play baseball at Quinnipiac University. Now married, Nic is a doctor of physical therapy in the sports medicine field. Aaron says it was comforting having his brother around his first year as he was trying to make his own way at Loomis and in baseball.

“More than anything, what strikes me about my Loomis days are the groups of friends I developed and continuing to love the game of baseball,” Aaron says. “I grew up in a fortunate situation where my parents never pushed me, no pressure. I’ve always had the opportunity to enjoy and appreciate the game versus them forcing me to do it. It has always been something I wanted to do, and it remains that way today. 

“I’ve played with many along the years [whose] parents pushed them because it was the parents’ dream, or they thought their son was very good at it and wanted him to make the most of it. But the ones that I see enjoy themselves the most and last the longest are the ones who truly love the game themselves, and I was fortunate to have that. I think that concept continued to develop at Loomis.”

Aaron was a mechanical engineering major at Northeastern. That major involves creativity, innovation, and problem-solving, all learned at a young age as he was mastering his Lego skills. Kim worked at a Lego warehouse in Enfield from 2001 to 2007.

“The kids had tons of Legos,” Kim says, “and we still have buckets at home.”

Aaron was in his glory. 

“I think for Aaron it was the idea that here was something that needed to be done, and he would not stop until it was finished,” Helen says. “Follow the directions, and it didn’t matter how many pieces. It could be hours, but he started it, he was going to finish it. He had to. It was that drive that he always had.”

Aaron says it was something he always enjoyed.

“I think it formed how my brain works,” he says. “Putting things together and going through a process with that STEM type of mind. I was always fascinated with the idea of creating something from nothing. And there is still something about that today I enjoy. My wife and I built a Lego globe. We were looking for a globe for our house, and we stumbled upon a Lego one, so we built that together.”

He laughs. “That is probably the first one I built with someone else,” Aaron says. “I’m usually very particular, so I told her she was very fortunate that I shared that with her.”

She did have the credentials, though. Francesca is a civil/environmental engineer.

Aaron can fall back on all his Lego training when it comes to baseball, too. 

“Whether you are trying to learn a new skill or, for me, if I am trying to learn a new pitch or a new arm action or some new movement in the weight room, you’re creating something from nothing, and I appreciate that it takes time, it takes many steps, it takes a planned-out approach, and that is what Lego taught me.

“Everything is prepared in a certain way and not that there is a formula for everything in life, but the more you prepare, the better off you’re going to be when trying to accomplish your goal.”

That systematic approach impresses Carl Willis, the Guardians’ pitching coach.

“Aaron is very dedicated to the analytical side of the game and is always open to feedback,” Willis says. “He has worked very hard to get where he is today. He also has done a really good job of using his platform to enrich the lives of those around him in areas that he is passionate about.”

There already has been an Aaron Civale Bobblehead Day. But an opportunity will be missed if Lego does not produce an Aaron Civale figure.

Aaron Civale

Baseball Resume and Bio

Born: June 12, 1995, in East Windsor, Connecticut
High School: Loomis Chaffee
College: Northeastern University, Boston
Major League career record through 2022 season: 24-21, 4.08 ERA
Contract status: Signed through 2023, 1 year/$2.6 million
 

Highlights

2013
Throws a no-hitter as a senior vs. Kingswood-Oxford, the first for the Pelicans in 36 years. 

2014
Gets first career save by recording a career-best three strikeouts in two no-hit innings at Villanova.

2015
Gets starting nod for Northeastern in an annual spring training game versus the Boston Red Sox. Pitches two no-hit innings, striking out David Ortiz, Hanley Ramirez, Mike Napoli, and Xander Bogaerts.

Finishes 7-2 with a 3.24 ERA and six saves, named to All-CAA Third Team and CAA All-Academic Team. 

2016
Finishes 9-3 with a 1.73 ERA and is selected in the MLB draft by Cleveland in the third round (92nd overall pick).

2017
13-6 with a 3.28 ERA in first season in minor leagues.

2018
5-7 with a 3.89 ERA at Double A Akron.

2019
7-1, 2.35 ERA at Double A Akron and Triple A Columbus before being called up to Cleveland. In his first major league start he strikes out the side in the first inning. He retires the first eight batters, striking out six, and allowing only two infield singles in six scoreless innings, getting the win as Cleveland beat the Tigers 2-0. 

Records the lowest ERA (1.82) for any pitcher in his first nine starts with Cleveland and is the first MLB pitcher to work at least five innings and allow two or fewer runs in each of his first nine appearances. 

Finishes 3-4 with a 2.34 ERA.

2020
His 11 starts working at least six innings ties for first in MLB. 

Finishes 4-6 with a 4.74 ERA in COVID-shortened season.

2021 
Aaron is Cleveland’s nominee for the Roberto Clemente Award, given annually to one Major League Baseball player in part for his work in the community.

2021
Starts season 10-2 with a 3.32 ERA in his first 15 starts and likely headed to the All-Star Game, but a sprained middle finger on his pitching hand causes him to miss more than two months. Led all major league pitchers in wins at the time of his injury. Finishes 12-5 with a 3.84 ERA.

2022
Injury-filled season in which he finishes 5-6 with a 4.92 ERA.