Ivan Mastalski keeps finding his way back

Ivan Mastalski did what everyone’s parents teach us to do as soon as we’re old enough to cross the street on our own: look both ways.

He stepped into the crosswalk on East 17th street — the one that connects Briscoe Quadrangle and Wilkinson Hall — while he headed toward another preseason baseball practice at Mellencamp Pavilion.

It was routine. Even as a freshman in just his second semester on campus, it was something he had already done countless times.

Then a car cut through the intersection, moving westbound through the light, and hit Mastalski. Suddenly, the routine gave way on impact.

“I got up immediately and was like, ‘Holy crap, I just got hit by a car,’” Mastalski said.

The car, the pain in Mastalski’s left hip suggested, was traveling around 20 to 25 miles an hour. 

A week before his freshman season at Indiana was scheduled to begin this past February, a pitcher who had only recently started working his way into the conversation was instead sitting in the back of an ambulance, trying to process how quickly everything had changed.

It wasn’t how Mastalski’s freshman season at Indiana was supposed to begin.

When head coach Jeff Mercer evaluated his freshman pitching options in the weeks leading up to the season, other names surfaced first, more established recruits with bigger arms, players expected to shoulder a heavier load early. Mastalski, a lightly-recruited right-hander out of Andrean High School in northwest Indiana, was a bit of an afterthought.

That didn’t mean he wasn’t trending in the right direction.

Over the fall and into the buildup to the season, Mastalski had started to turn heads. He was throwing well — “rolling,” in Mercer’s words. He was stacking solid outings in practice. He was doing enough to begin to earn some trust.

Still, the expectation wasn’t that he would become one of Indiana’s most relied-upon arms this early.

Indiana trusted the program Mastalski came from, led by longtime Andrean head coach Dave Phiskur, Indiana’s all-time winningest high school baseball coach.

Still, when Mastalski arrived in Bloomington the previous summer, Mercer made it clear what it would take. 

During a team outing that included a caving trip, Mastalski showed up with a dirty backpack, something Mercer immediately noticed. The conversation that followed turned into something bigger: a message about details, about discipline, about how everything mattered.

That is, if Mastalski wanted to pitch as a true freshman. 

“You’re gonna have to work your ass off if you want to play for us this year,” Mercer told him.

The shock wore off quickly.

Mastalski found himself sitting in the back of the ambulance, as paramedics examined him, trying to make sense of what had just happened. 

He didn’t black out, and he didn’t even see the car coming. It came from the opposite direction as he stepped between two eastbound cars. One second he was crossing the street, the next he was on the hood.

He couldn’t even remember the car. Not the make. Not the model. Not even the color. 

At first, his mind didn’t go into a panic. It went to baseball. From the ambulance, Mastalski pulled out his phone and called Indiana pitching coach Matt Myers.

“Hey, I just got hit by a car,” he told him. “I might be a little late to practice.”

There was a pause on the other end of the line. Myers needed clarification. Was it Mastalski’s car, or was it him?

After running through the usual questions, the call ended with Mastalski realizing practice probably wasn’t in the cards that day. 

Instead, director of operations Morgan Colopy picked him up and drove him to Bart Kaufman Field. The adrenaline hadn’t worn off yet. Mastalski was still amped up, his fight-or-flight response still kicking, still trying to process what had happened.

Once inside the conference room in the Indiana clubhouse, Mastalski called his parents. 

They had questions, too — the kind that come from experience. Mastalski had been in his share of minor car accidents, so their first instinct was to ask what kind.

Did he hit someone? Did someone hit his car?

“I was like, ‘No,’” Mastalski said. “Me, in my own body, got hit by a car.”

The tone shifted quickly. The questions became more direct. Are you OK? Do we need to come down?

Eventually, they all landed on the same conclusion: Mastalski should go to the hospital out of an abundance of caution.

He spent the next couple of hours being put through a series of tests. The diagnosis was relatively minor — mostly bruising — but it didn’t feel that way.

“I could barely walk,” Mastalski said. “My hip was really sore.”

The next night, it got worse.

Mastalski began having trouble breathing, enough to raise concern about something more serious. A broken rib, maybe, or something with his sternum. So, he went back to the emergency room.

More bruising. Nothing broken. Still, the damage lingered. 

In the weeks that followed, Mastalski was limited to short bullpen sessions, building himself back up. For a while, 15 to 20 pitches would leave him gassed. His arm felt fine, but his body hadn’t caught up yet. 

Whatever momentum he had built in the fall and preseason was gone. 

It wasn’t the first time Mastalski’s season had started this way.

A year earlier, at Andrean, a different kind of setback had derailed the beginning of his senior season.

Mastalski got sick. Badly.

A bout with strep throat lingered for weeks that spring, leaving Mastalski sidelined, missing school and struggling to keep anything down. By the time he returned, he had lost nearly 25 pounds.

“He came back looking like he’s from a third-world country,” Phiskur said. “His face was thinner, and his body, he didn’t look good, and he wasn’t throwing really hard.”

Even before that, there had been little reason to expect much. 

Phiskur remembers watching Mastalski as a freshman, a four-sport athlete still trying to find his footing. On the first play of his first football game, he broke his leg. During basketball season, Phiskur doesn’t remember seeing him score a point.

There weren’t many signs pointing toward a future on the mound.

“I had zero expectations,” Phiskur said. “In fact, just because of what I knew, I’m thinking this guy’s not gonna be any good. If I would have had to rank him before he ever threw, he would have been on the ‘No chance this kid is ever gonna pitch at Andrean’ list.”

The first time Phiskur saw him throw, a simple flat-ground session in the Andrean basketball gym, something stood out. He wasn’t a domineering physical presence. But the arm was loose and the ball came out easy. He had a chance.

It didn’t happen right away. Mastalski didn’t pitch as a freshman. Even as a sophomore and junior, the flashes came and went. There were moments where he looked the part, others where it fell apart quickly.

In a sectional game his junior year against rival Hanover Central, Mastalski failed to record an out, facing just seven batters in a 22-2 Andrean loss.

At that point, Phiskur wasn’t sure he was tough enough to pitch at the varsity level. It got to the point where Phiskur wondered if Mastalski should just focus on golf.

Golf, at times, seemed like the safer path. Mastalski was good, good enough to make a run to the state finals, and for a stretch, Phiskur even allowed him to split time between the two sports, something he had never done with any other player.

It didn’t always sit well with the rest of the team. There was a sense, at times, that Mastalski was getting special treatment. Showing up, doing his work, then leaving for the course.

Before his senior year, that changed. Phiskur told him to choose. 

It didn’t happen all at once.

Even after choosing baseball, even after working his way back from illness, there was still a gap between what Mastalski could be and what he was. Phiskur saw it. The arm was there. The understanding was there. The consistency wasn’t.

Because of the early season sickness, Mastalski’s first start of his senior season didn’t come until Andrean’s 11th game, a road matchup against Brother Rice, then the No. 1-ranked team in Illinois.

It was a warm day with the wind blowing out, the kind of conditions that tend to favor hitters.

Mastalski wasn’t dominant, but he didn’t have to be. Over five innings, he allowed three runs — only one earned — on four hits, striking out three and walking one. When he left, the game was tied.

What stood out wasn’t the pitching line. It was how he handled it. At one point, after working through a difficult inning, Mastalski came back to the dugout and told the coaching staff he probably had one more inning left in him. That was it.

Phiskur let him go back out. Mastalski worked through the top of the order and came back to the dugout. He told Phiskur he wanted another inning. 

“We knew he had the ability,” Phiskur said. “But we just didn’t think he had enough balls to be a really good pitcher. He showed it that day.”

Something had changed. The command sharpened. The confidence followed. The frustration that used to linger started to fade. 

“I don’t know what happened,” Phiskur said. “He just became really good. He became tough. All of a sudden, he started dominating the strike zone. His confidence level shot up out of the sky.”

The next test came against a familiar opponent. Hanover Central had been a problem for Mastalski.

So when Andrean matched up with the Wildcats again late in his senior season, Phiskur wasn’t planning on leaning on him when it mattered most. It was more of a test. 

Mastalski didn’t ace the test, but he passed.

He pitched well in the regular season matchup, helping Andrean win 11-5. That was enough for Phiskur to trust him again in the sectional championship, against that same Hanover Central team.

This time, Mastalski delivered. He allowed two runs in a 5-2 win, beating the team that had always seemed to have his number. 

The inconsistency that defined his earlier years had given way to something more reliable. Something tougher. 

Inside Indiana’s clubhouse, Mastalski isn’t just the pitcher who fought through setbacks.

He’s Doug.

There’s no real story behind it. No meaning. No explanation.

Back in high school, one day as an underclassman, an older teammate walked up to him and said, “What’s up, Doug.” Mastalski didn’t know who Doug was.

He does now.

The name stuck. It followed him from Andrean to Bloomington, resurfacing after a conversation about old nicknames with teammate Evan O’Neil. O’Neil picked it up, started using it, and before long, everyone else did, too.

It fits. Mastalski has never taken himself too seriously, the kind of personality that makes him an easy target in a locker room and an easy presence to be around.

In the months since the accident, teammates have made a habit of reminding him to look both ways when crossing the street, a running joke that hasn’t gone away.

“I get chirped all the time,” Mastalski said. “It’s all in good fun, though.”

Mastalski’s first opportunity at Indiana came with a jolt of adrenaline.

The debut, against Bradley, wasn’t about dominance. It was about proving he could compete again. The nerves were there. The buildup was real.

So was the relief. 

He got through it — an inning of work against Bradley, allowing a run on one hit, striking out two while walking and hitting a batter, needing 30 pitches to record three outs in a game already out of reach.

The true turning point came later.

SEE ALSO: Freshman arms offer Indiana baseball a glimpse into the future in win over Xavier

In mid-March, Indiana traveled west to face Oregon, a borderline top-25 foe at the time and, for Mastalski, one of the biggest moments of his young career. The role was different. The expectations were slightly raised.

This time, everything clicked.

Over two clean innings, Mastalski delivered in a high-leverage spot, a performance that shifted how he was viewed inside Indiana’s bullpen. 

What got Mastalski to that moment was repetition, consistency and detail. The same things Mercer had emphasized from the beginning. 

After that Oregon outing, the conversations around Mastalski changed. He wasn’t just an option anymore, he was a leverage arm. The coaching staff made it clear: they were going to need him, multiple times a week and in meaningful spots.

“He’s been a dog for us the whole year,” Indiana reliever Kaden Jacobi said.

The numbers reflect it. Mastalski has logged 34.2 innings this season — the sixth-most on the team — and carries the fourth-best ERA among Indiana pitchers. Among Indiana’s underclassmen relievers, no one else has thrown more than 12.2 innings.

The pitcher who wasn’t supposed to matter this quickly has become one of the most relied-upon arms in Indiana’s bullpen.

A year ago, it was strep throat that left him 25 pounds lighter, struggling to get through the early weeks of his senior season at Andrean.

This year it was a car.

Different circumstances, both at the onset of a pivotal season. Same kind of reset.

There’s familiarity in that process now — the lifting, the recovery, the heat pads, the mobility work.

The slow climb back to where he was supposed to be.

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