Last May, Angels pitchers Andrew Heaney and Garrett Richards each received stem-cell injections, hoping to regenerate the ligaments in their elbows that had ripped and prevented them from pitching.
Heaney went first, and he gave Richards a rundown of what to expect, including one important piece of information.
“Make sure you bring your credit card,” he told Richards. “You gotta pay for it.”
Until then, Richards had not thought about the cost of the procedure. He assumed it’d be covered by the team that employed him, like every other operation he’d had in his seven years as a professional ballplayer.