Dylan Axelrod, the 927th player chosen in the 2007 MLB Draft, pitched in Major League Baseball for both the Chicago White Sox and Cincinnati Reds
He got one on Sept. 7, 2011, when he made his very improbable pitching debut in Major League Baseball.
But it wasn't the miracle he'd requested.
His biggest wish was that his mother, Joni, would win her battle against breast cancer.
She died on his 10th birthday in 1995.
Sixteen years later, Dylan kept her close when he took the pitcher's mound for the first time for the Chicago White Sox.
He scratched the letter "J" into the red-brick dirt behind the pitching rubber before holding the Minnesota Twins scoreless during two innings of relief.
"She knew how much I loved baseball," Axelrod said at the time. "She knew this was my dream.
"I'm absolutely sure she did."
He pitched in the big leagues for five seasons -- three with the White Sox and two more with the Cincinnati Reds -- and remains in the game as the pitching performance and integration coordinator for the Detroit Tigers.
Few outside his tight-knit, devoted family would have predicted a big-league life for little Dylan.
His father, Dennis Axelrod, nurtured his love for the sport. Grandma Lula Axelrod kept the faith and the scorebook for all his games until her death at age 90.
"I am where I am because of my dad," Dylan said. "He raised me to be a hard worker, and his love of baseball and time spent coaching me laid my foundation."
Axelrod grew up on the PONY League diamonds of MacKenzie Park, Santa Barbara High School's Eddie Mathews Field, and Santa Barbara City College's Pershing Park.
SBCC will honor Axelrod on May 31, when it inducts him into the Vaqueros Hall of Fame. The ceremony will begin with a noon reception at the Campus Center, 721 Cliff Drive.
Joni Axelrod made the most of her 10 years with Dylan. She homeschooled him during the last four.
"When Joni was diagnosed, and her prognosis wasn't good, she wanted to maximize the time she had left with Dylan," Dennis said. "She started homeschooling him as the way to do that."
After her death, Dylan would "go behind the mound every inning to connect with Joni's spirit, because her spirit was so incredibly strong."
Axelrod began playing baseball a year before her death. His pitching career went much longer than any scout would have dared predict.
"Fred Warrecker liked to tell the story that when Dylan came out for his team as a sophomore at Santa Barbara High, he weighed about 120 pounds and threw maybe 75 mph," Dennis Axelrod said. "I think that's pretty close to the truth.
"Even by the time he graduated, he was probably only throwing in the low 80s."
Axelrod was only the No. 3 pitcher for the Dons as a junior.
His future didn't look more promising during the offseason when he severely dislocated his knee in a game of pickup basketball.
"He was out for five months," his father said. "He couldn't pitch for that long, but it just made him so determined to get back for his senior year. He worked so hard to do that.
"It might've been the key event to happen to him during his baseball career."
Axelrod's comeback was so meteoric -- 10 wins in 11 decisions for the 2003 Channel League champion Dons -- that he was voted as the conference's Pitcher of the Year.
"I was probably 5-foot-9 back then, and something like 160 pounds," Axelrod said. "And not a good 160, either. Kind of a fat 160.
"You know, limited strength. I was topping out at 80 mph back then.
"I learned how to get hitters out just by determination."
That resolve helped him pack his growing frame with more muscle during his two years at SBCC.
He worked out religiously at Dr. Marcus Elliott's Peak Performance Project (P3) to transform himself into a 6-foot and 195-pound pitching ace.
Axelrod also adopted a long-toss program he saw on the internet. His regimen included throwing a baseball from one football goalpost through the other -- a distance of 120 yards -- at SBCC's La Playa Stadium.
"Sometimes I'd get kicked out of there by security guards," he said, "but I'd always find a way back."
Axelrod set the school record of 117 strikeouts while leading the 2005 Vaqueros to their first Southern California Regional berth since 1978.
They tied the school record for victories with a mark of 24-15 -- a record that was broken four years later.
"Teddy Warrecker was the coach," he said, referring to the son of his high school coach. "And we had a great pitching coach, too, in Matt Hobbs.
Axelrod was the front man for Hobbs' three-man starting rotation at SBCC that included Justin Aspegren and Tyler Davis.
"We called ourselves 'The Big Three,'" Axelrod said. "We each threw 100 innings.
"I had the highest ERA of all of them and it was about 2.2.
"It was just fun, turning the program around, and winning was something to be proud of."
Hobbs was also Axelrod's pitching coach on the Santa Barbara Foresters' summer collegiate team of 2006 that won the first of the club's 11 National Baseball Congress championships.
"I have great memories from there," he said. "I have some lifelong buddies from that team."
Axelrod's greatest memory in baseball came the following spring when he helped put UC Irvine into its first College World Series.
The last of his three NCAA tournament pitching victories came in Omaha, Nebraska, when he held Orange County rival Cal State Fullerton to just one hit in 4⅔ innings of relief.
"The path it took to get there and the guys I played with were just incredible," he said. "We had two walk-off wins, and we were so close.
"The excitement was hard to describe, and so was the heartbreak of the loss (in the semifinals to eventual national champion Oregon State).
"We were in tears. It was like someone had died. We had to leave each other, and it was like brothers having to leave each other."
Axelrod became more of a baseball nomad after the San Diego Padres selected him in the 30th round of the 2007 MLB draft. He was the 927th pick overall.
He pitched in 14 different minor-league cities, returning for a second time in half of them. He had three different stints with the Charlotte Knights, the Triple-A farm club of the White Sox.
He experienced success at nearly every stop, posting a win-loss record of 27-14 and 2.80 earned-run average during his five seasons in the minors.
Axelrod's first stint in Charlotte didn't come until two years after his release by the Padres in 2009.
He kept his career on life support by joining the unaffiliated Windy City ThunderBolts in Crestwood, Illinois.
"It wasn't the typical route," he conceded. "I just had to work so hard to get there."
The long odds he faced in advancing from an independent league to the major leagues actually took some of the weight off Axelrod's shoulders.
"I changed how I thought about baseball," he explained. "Before, I was feeling that pressure to stay in the Padres system and move up.
"After that was taken away, I had to play for myself, and play for fun."
Two years later, he became the first Windy City player to ever make it to the Major Leagues.
"It felt so good to me because of the people who were behind me, like my dad and my friends, and everybody who'd helped me out along the way," Axelrod said. "I got that call and I was like shaking, pretty much ... 'Is this for real?'
"I told my dad first, and then a couple of my closest friends. I hopped onto a plane and pitched the next day.
"I know I pitched two scoreless innings, but I don't really know how or even what happened. It was kind of a blur, you know?"
Axelrod's teammates encouraged him to think about a coaching career down the line.
"People would come to me to talk about pitching, and even about the physical part of it," he said. "I've got a lot of knowledge about a lot of different things that can go into sport."
Much of that came from P3, the local center that applies sports science to its training. He even served an internship at the facility.
"They had a huge role in my career," Axelrod said. "I can't say enough about that."
He passed up an offer to serve as a pitching coach in minor league rookie ball after his last season in the Miami Marlins organization in 2016.
Axelrod returned to Santa Barbara instead and accepted an offer from Foresters' manager Bill Pintard to become his pitching coach.
"I just didn't have the desire to be in professional baseball anymore," he said at the time. "You kind of have your hands tied.
"You can't create a culture on your own. You have a lot of bosses and organizational structure."
He gave it a shot in 2020, however, when the Los Angeles Angels asked him to become their pitching coordinator.
Axelrod was among several coaches purged from the club three years later after former Angels ace Troy Percival paid a visit to their minor league instructional camp.
Percival, who managed a record of only 111-177 during his six seasons as the head coach at UC Riverside, made some condescending remarks about the coaches' use of technology in player development.
"I'm not one who's big on using the iPads," he said. "I understand it. I had to understand it through college coaching.
"I just feel like we need to have coaches with eyes who can see things and put their hands on people and fix them."
Several others in the Angels' organization considered Percival's observation to be way off base.
One said anonymously that Axelrod was "the best source for any player or coach to go to of anyone players had access to in the org."
The Angels' loss became Detroit's gain when the American League club promptly snatched him up. Two years later its current team ERA of 3.35 ranks seventh out of the 30 MLB teams.
The Angels? They rank 27th at 5.01.
Ironically, a game 14 years ago against first-place Detroit assured Axelrod that he belonged in the big leagues.
He rewarded the White Sox for his first pitching start by striking out eight Tigers, handing Chicago a 5-2 lead when he was relieved in the seventh inning.
"It validated the journey," Axelrod said. "All the trials, time and hard work along the way coming together to achieve what I devoted my life to."
Fans might have thought that the "J" he scratched on the mound that day stood for "joy."
Those closest to Dylan Axelrod knew it went much deeper.