Angels George Klassen's inspiring journey back from head injury to MLB debut

ANAHEIM, Calif.  — George Klassen landed at Long Beach Airport at 9:45 p.m. on Saturday, April 4. He picked up his bags and began driving to his hotel, uncertainty still weighing on his mind after the two-hour flight from Salt Lake City, Utah.

Klassen, the No. 3 prospect in the Los Angeles Angels organization according to Baseball America, brought the 24-year-old right-handed pitcher up from Triple-A to be on standby after Ryan Johnson — the Angels’ scheduled starter for Sunday — had fallen ill.

At 11 p.m. Pacific Time, Klassen got the call: the Angels needed him to start on Sunday. Klassen, on short notice, would be making his Major League debut.

“I didn’t really know how to react,” Klassen told USA TODAY Sports. “I was like, ‘Alright. Yeah, let’s do it!’”

The first thing Klassen did when he hung up the phone was to pick it back up and start dialing. It was 1 a.m. in Port Washington, Wisconsin, but Klassen got hold of his parents, Jim and Lani, his sister, Sarah, and his girlfriend.

“You guys need to get out here,” Klassen told them.

He got his sister a flight and within four hours, the entire Klassen family was on a plane bound for Southern California to watch him step on a big league mound for the first time at Angel Stadium.

“It meant the world to me that they could make it,” he said.

Klassen’s debut on April 5 quickly turned into a high-leverage situation after Seattle Mariners outfielder Luke Raley jumped on his first pitch — a 97 mph fastball — and lined it down the foul line in right field for a leadoff double. Raley moved up to third on a groundout by Cal Raleigh on the next pitch, putting him 90 feet away from home.

He would stay there, though, as Klassen buckled down to fan Julio Rodríguez, making the slugger reach on a slider up and outside for his first career strikeout as a Major League pitcher and drawing a flyout from Josh Naylor to work himself out of the jam.

Klassen’s day would be over just two innings later after allowing two earned runs on three hits with five walks and four strikeouts as the Angels went on to beat the M’s 8-7 in extra innings. But it was enough to leave a good impression on Angels manager Kurt Suzuki.

“You’re gonna be nervous. I know he was nervous,” Suzuki told USA TODAY Sports. “I know there was some anxiety in there. Which is good, it means he cares. I thought he handled himself great, I thought he made pitches when he had to.

“Obviously two innings is not the line he wanted, but it could’ve been two innings and six runs. Instead, it was two innings, two runs and he gave us a chance to win.”

But not too long ago, the only thing Klassen wanted was to be comfortable on the mound again.

George Klassen's 'scary' 2025 concussion

On May 11, 2025, Klassen was starting the first game of a doubleheader for Double-A Rocket City against the Montgomery Biscuits. His mom and sister were in the crowd, having made the trip to see him play on Mother’s Day.

In the top of the fourth inning, Klassen threw a pitch to Hunter Stovall. His memory goes blank from there until he woke up a few moments later, arms outstretched as he lay on the mound facing the sky, thinking to himself, “I took one to the head, didn’t I?”

Stovall had made contact on his swing and hit a line drive directly back at Klassen, who tried to turn away right as the ball ricocheted off of the right side of his head. Klassen crumpled to the ground and lay motionless for a couple seconds as Trash Pandas manager Andy Schatzley and athletic trainer Dylan Culwell rushed out to attend to him on the field.

Mitch Farris, Klassen’s teammate, was warming up in the bullpen as he was scheduled to start the second game that day when he saw it happen. He was speechless, and could only hope that his friend was okay.

“It looked pretty bad when he went down,” Farris told USA TODAY Sports. “Didn’t look like he knew where he was at, and then it was kind of tough having to lock back in to get ready for my start the next game.”

Farris had grown especially close with Klassen as well as fellow Angels pitching prospects Sam Aldegheri and Samy Natera Jr. throughout their time together in the minors. The four regularly get together when they’re under the same roof, whether it’s Natera taking them to a local favorite Mexican food spot in Arizona during spring training or Aldegheri cooking up authentic Italian food during the season.

Farris, like most pitchers, has taken his fair share of comebackers over the years — though never one to the head — as well as some close calls.

“Sometimes, it’s hard to tell how hard they’re coming back at you,” he said. “Anything off the bat looks really hard and some of them are slower — which those too, can be dangerous because you react too quick, honestly.”

Suzuki was a catcher for 16 seasons in the big leagues and while he never saw any of his pitchers get hit in the head, he also saw a lot that came very close.

“It’s more of like, ‘Holy crap,’” Suzuki said. “The guys throw hard and then they hit the ball hard, so you don’t have much time to react. It’s a scary thing, man, it’s scary. I understand it’s part of the game, but you just never want to see it or be a part of it.”

Klassen wobbled off the field, leaning on Schatzley and Culwell, when he noticed his mom coming down the stands. She wasn’t crying, which was a reassuring sign for Klassen.

“Happy Mother’s Day!” he shouted out.

She laughed.

George Klassen's road to recovery was more mental than physical

Nine months earlier, in late August of 2024, Klassen — who had just been traded to the Angels along with Aldegheri from Philadelphia for Carlos Estévez a month before — threw a curveball that was chopped back towards him. The dirt in front of home plate usually slows down balls like that, but this one skipped the dirt entirely and bounced straight onto the infield grass, where it sped up and nailed Klassen right between his nose and upper lip.

Klassen needed four stitches and was on a smoothie diet for the next five days. On the sixth day, he could finally open his mouth enough to eat some solid food and treated himself to pasta with red sauce and ground beef mixed in.

“It was the best thing ever,” he recalled with a chuckle.

Based on that first time getting hit in the head, the second go around wasn’t as bad for Klassen, even with the three-day hospital stay. He already knew what the recovery would entail and what he needed to do.

He started running and throwing after five days, and spent a few more weeks in concussion protocol and missed three starts as it took him a couple tries at the memory reaction test before he was cleared to get back on the mound.

But once he got there, Klassen wasn’t expecting to find out that there was still a mental side of his recovery that he still had to go through.

When he started throwing off the mound, Klassen noticed that he would be pulling off at the end of his delivery. Or when he started facing live batters, he subconsciously — almost instinctually — began to shield himself.

“Your body is gonna wanna try to protect itself, so I mean it’s gonna do whatever it can without you knowing,” Klassen told USA TODAY Sports. “I wouldn’t say (it’s a) mental block, but like just another hurdle.”

And just like any physical hurdle, Klassen knew the best way for him to overcome this mental one was by tackling it head-on.

After talking it out with people around him, Klassen came to realize he was dealing with automatic negative thoughts (ANTs), a pattern of involuntary, repetitive and pessimistic thoughts that immediately affect mood and behavior and can often drive depression and anxiety, according to a 2025 study published by the National Institutes of Health.

“Your brain’s always gonna go with what went wrong or bad instead of thinking it was positive,” Klassen said. “So, that was a big thing that I stuck with and really tried to just keep on working with.”

Klassen effectively had to rewire his whole way of thinking while on the mound. He had to put aside what went wrong or what could go wrong — in this case getting hit before and the fear of getting hit again — and instead think of what could go right. Positive thinking sounds simple enough in theory, but it took a while for Klassen, about five weeks, he estimated, to fully buy into the concept.

But once things clicked, Klassen saw the end goal in sight. He could finally be himself on the mound again.

"I had a lot of support to get here."

The moment of realization for Klassen on April 5 didn’t come until he was throwing his pregame bullpen session at Angel Stadium.

“This isn’t spring training. This isn’t whatever,” he said to himself. “This is the real deal.”

Klassen had made it.

“It was an awesome feeling. It was really cool.”

For Farris, it’s been a full-circle moment simply getting to be in the Majors with one of his closest friends. Even if they’ve technically been competing against each other in trying to get called up, Farris says they’re so close that it doesn’t feel that way.

They are, after all, going through the same process together, stride by stride.

“Any success he has, I’m happy for him. Any success I have, he’s happy for me,” Farris said. “ … So, whatever information and advice I have for him, I give him and vice versa.”

And it’s not just Farris that Klassen’s seeking advice from. Throughout the first week he’s spent in the Angels clubhouse, he’s picked the brain of every player he can. He’s asked about pitch grips, cues, how they get themselves back into the moment whenever they’re feeling off that day and how they keep the bad from taking over their headspace. Then he looks for ways he can implement that advice into his own routine.

Just under a year ago, Klassen was just trying to get back to feeling like himself. Now, he’s trying to unlock the next level of where he feels he can get to, which in itself is a testament to how far he’s come.

“It’s crazy,” he said, reflecting on his path. “I definitely had a lot of help from my family side, coaches side, players side. Asking questions, just taking all the knowledge up I can.

“... I had a lot of support to get here, for sure.”

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Angels rookie George Klassen on mental hurdles in courageous comeback