Sean Burroughs, Little League hero and former Diamondback, dies at 43 - The Washington Post
Democracy Dies in Darkness
MLB

Sean Burroughs, Little League hero and former MLB player, dies at 43

After a standout high school career and scholarship to USC, Burroughs was a first-round MLB draft pick and played seven big league seasons.

By
Sean Burroughs walked away from baseball in 2007 but made an improbable return to the majors with the Arizona Diamondbacks in 2011. (Norm Hall/Getty Images)
5 min

Sean Burroughs, a former Little League World Series hero and first-round MLB draft pick who played seven big league seasons, died Thursday at 43.

Burroughs’s death was announced in a statement by Long Beach (Calif.) Little League on Instagram. Later, the Long Beach Press-Telegram reported the cause of death was cardiac arrest and that he was found unconscious next to his car after dropping off his son at a game. He was pronounced dead at the scene.

Burroughs was the son of major league outfielder Jeff Burroughs, a two-time all-star who made his debut with the Washington Senators in 1970 and was named American League MVP for the Texas Rangers in 1974. Sean was seemingly destined to be a ballplayer. The day after he was born in September 1980, his mother took him to see his father, the No. 1 overall pick by the Senators in 1969, play for the Atlanta Braves.

“Suddenly, on the scoreboard appeared a message that said, ‘Welcome Sean Patrick Burroughs, 22 hours old, to Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium,” Debbie Burroughs told the Long Beach Press-Telegram in 1998.

As a 12-year-old in 1993, Burroughs threw a pair of no-hitters to help lead his Long Beach team, which was coached by his father, to its second consecutive Little League World Series title. In his second no-hitter, Burroughs helped his own cause by going 4 for 5 with a pair of home runs.

After a standout high school career that earned him a baseball scholarship to USC, Burroughs, a third baseman, was selected by the San Diego Padres with the ninth pick in the 1998 MLB draft. At the time, he and his father joined Tom and Ben Grieve as the only father-son duos to be drafted in the first round.

In 2000, Burroughs was named MVP of the Futures Game at the All-Star Game in Atlanta. Two months later, he hit .375 in four games as the youngest member of the U.S. baseball team that claimed gold at the Sydney Olympics.

After hitting a combined .327 in three minor league seasons, Burroughs made his major league debut April 2, 2002, going 2 for 3 in the Padres’ 9-0 loss to the Diamondbacks. Burroughs hit .271 with one home run and 11 RBI in his rookie season, during which he battled an injury and spent time in the minors. Over four years with the Padres, Burroughs hit .282 with 11 home runs and 133 RBI in 432 games. San Diego traded Burroughs to Tampa Bay in December 2005 for starting pitcher Dewon Brazelton.

Off the field, Burroughs’s life began to life unravel after Tampa Bay released him in August 2006. He played four games for the Mariners’ Class AAA affiliate in Tacoma, Wash., in 2007 before being released again and walking away from baseball.

After making an improbable return to the majors with the Arizona Diamondbacks in 2011, Burroughs told ESPN’s Jim Caple he “was spent physically and spent mentally” in 2007, and opened up about the years he spent living in cheap motels and struggling with substance abuse while out of the sport before turning his life around.

“I really haven’t talked too much about what it was, but it was stuff that definitely wasn’t healthy taking for a long, long time, that’s for sure,” Burroughs said of his binges. “I was kind of like a garbage can. Whatever I had or needed, I would find and take it.”

Burroughs signed a minor league contract with the Diamondbacks in the fall of 2010 and earned a call-up the following May. He appeared in 78 games for Arizona that season, predominantly as a pinch hitter, batting .273 with one home run off Washington’s Jordan Zimmermann and eight RBI.

“It’s been an incredible journey. It really has,'” Burroughs told Caple in June 2011. “It was just a year ago I was eating cheeseburgers out of garbage cans and living in Motel 6.”

In a social media post published Friday afternoon, the Diamondbacks expressed condolences to Burroughs’s family and friends.

Burroughs signed with Minnesota after the 2011 season and made the Twins’ roster out of spring training in 2012, but he was designated for assignment in May and never appeared in the big leagues again. He continued to play independent league baseball until 2017 and won the Atlantic League batting title with the Long Island Ducks in 2015.

Back in Long Beach, Burroughs had been helping coach his son’s Little League team.

“I have had the privilege of coaching with Sean for the past two years and he always came with a fun and friendly attitude the kids were drawn to, a wealth of baseball knowledge that could get any kid out of a batting rut and humility worth emulating,” David Wittman, the president of Long Beach Little League, wrote on Instagram. “To say this is a huge loss is an understatement. … We will have his family in our thoughts and prayers during this time and try to end the season playing the kind of baseball Coach Sean would be proud of.”