Gang life tugged at Astros' Chris Devenski, but baseball gave him a way out

By Hunter Atkins, Houston Chronicle
http://www.houstonchronicle.com/sports/astros/article/Gang-life-tugged-at-Astros-Chris-Devenski-but-12254221.php#photo-14289906

Chris Devenski was missing.

Unlike the other incoming freshman baseball players at Golden West, a junior college in Huntington Beach, Calif., Devenski did not show up for his physical. Hours passed before a coach informed his parents.

"I knew where he was," said Mike Devenski, Chris' father.

Mike did not know for sure. He had a premonition. It was based on the long-simmering concern that delinquency would derail his son's path to college and professional baseball.

Mike and Shirley Devenski had raised their twin children, Chris and Amanda, in a one-story Victorian bungalow in Santa Ana, the second-most populous city in Orange County.

The Devenskis made a modest living moving and refurbishing furniture. Their neighbors traditionally had been working-class Hispanics. Then an influx of low-income families moved into new garden apartments built across the street.

Chris' childhood friends - a group that had bonded over skateboarding, playing football in the street and buying chips from the food truck on the corner - did not share his ambitions. After high school, they had lost interest in higher education and most things that extracted them from the apartments. They began associating with the gang-affiliated clique in the neighborhood.

"Those kids ain't going nowhere," Mike said. "Those people were getting notorious. Especially at 18. All they want to do is get high."

After living in the Victorian house on Washington Avenue for 25 years, Mike had begun the process of moving his family out of Santa Ana and into a condominium 20 minutes away in Artesia.

"If I didn't," Mike said, "we would've been dead. Sooner or later."

Turning point

Mike had kept his son out of trouble countless times before, but when he sensed that Chris skipped the physical to loiter on the block and hang out through the night at one of the garden apartments, he was afraid to intervene on his own.

"I don't know if there are any guns up there," Mike said. "I don't know if I need a crowbar."

With no sign of his son by 4 a.m., Mike called the police.

An armed gang-prevention police unit entered the apartment. The young men inside had been drinking and smoking, but they were asleep at that hour.

Chris woke up with a flashlight in his face and officers yelling at him to leave. He found his dad waiting for him in the street.

"That was the turning point," Devenski said recently. "Anything could have happened in there.

"I was getting to a point where I was down for my neighborhood: Ride or die. But everything after that hit me."

Devenski refocused on school, unexpectedly rose to Major League Baseball and now is set to make his postseason debut as perhaps the Astros' most critical relief pitcher in the opening round against the Red Sox.

He keeps in touch with one of the eight friends from his old neighborhood. Devenski could not find the others on Facebook. He said most of them wound up "doing dead-end jobs," homeless, incarcerated or dead.

"If I had stayed there, that would've been me."

Birth of a strut

More good influences than bad ones from the neighborhood stick with Devenski. He walks like a Wild West outlaw approaching saloon doors. Ambling side to side. Fists clenched. Chest puffed. Neck exposed.

"With his arms down and guns drawn," said Golden West coach Bert Villarreal.

Devenski is armed, instead, with one of the best changeups in baseball.

"When I'm on the mound, I'm not showing weakness or vulnerability," said Devenski, who earned his first All-Star selection this season.

He adopted that strut as a kid. He had felt nervous walking past the clique of older boys dressed in baggy shirts and returning dagger stares. Devenski steeled himself with the same posture they used.

Walking around like that fed an inherent confidence that Mike said runs in their family.

"The Devenski swagger," Mike said. "Everybody knows we're not rich people. We're working folks. We have to prove something."

Chris, 26, is listed as 6-3, 210 pounds. Mike, 66, is 5-10 but built from more than 40 years of heavy lifting. He runs M&M Moving and Storage, but his knack for restoring discarded furniture earned him the nickname Dr. Junk.

Junkyards. Recycled metal. Sidewalk giveaways. Mike viewed trash heaps as treasure troves. Chris precociously developed the same eye for aesthetics.

Baseball offered the most frequent escapes for Devenski. He passed the Los Angeles Angels' stadium on his ride to school, trained at Chapman University, attended games at Cal State Fullerton (Chris would transfer there after two years at Golden West). But his entire family shared a passion for art. They attended poetry readings at Bowers Museum. They charmed celebrities Kirstie Alley and Drew Barrymore while antiquing in Hollywood.

Around age 11, Devenski started appreciating blue-collar labor and high-culture accouterments.

"It was more vibrant in Hollywood," Devenski said with wide eyes.

His new city has inspired him the same way.

"I love Houston, man," he said. "It's like a mixture of everything: the music, the culture, the artwork, the people, the buildings, the landscape, the structures. Just something I've always dreamed of."

On a sunny September morning, Devenski rattled off Houston's perks while standing before one of its hidden gems in EaDo. Nothing diverges from his aggressive mound presence like his awestruck reaction to graffiti.

The art of expression

Although the Mayor's Office of Cultural Affairs finances some meticulously detailed murals, Devenski prefers the "throw up" style, a quickly spray-painted design with colorful bubble letters that is apt for street graffiti.

Devenski admired a mural by artist Fernando Carlo, known as Cope2, that spans the side of a warehouse off St. Emanuel Street. Cope2 fills the space with repeated, overlapping depictions of "COPE." The way the paint appeared to drip from the "E" reminded Devenski of painting fences in Santa Ana.

The old neighborhood is where he first fell in love with graffiti. As a child, he rode in the back seat of his dad's 1988 Honda Civic and peered out the window at tagged freight trains. He then started doodling his nickname "Devo" like a throw-up.

When home, he therapeutically pencils in an adult coloring book and pens a spiral notebook with freeform illustrations, like his No. 47 in Astros orange-and-black, and motivational phrases.

He champions graffiti as a form of self-expression that often reveals beauty amid urban decay.

"We may not have the money for this, for that, but this is my canvas," he said. "I'm gonna let the world know who I am."

His identity is clearer today than it had been in Santa Ana. Like the contrasting properties that straddled Washington Avenue, Devenski tried to keep his feet in two different environments.

Baseball offered him a promising future, but it felt like a betrayal to the friends he would have to sacrifice first. He worried they would think he was "some soft guy" for committing to college ball. He craved street credibility, no matter the criminality that complicated it.

"They were gang-banging," he said of his post-adolescent crew.

Adults continued to shepherd Devenski until he believed in himself as much as they did.

"It took awhile to sink in his head that there's a better life out there," Mike said.

Mike had a devoted ally in Villarreal at Golden West. Devenski was sheepish and slow in adjusting to college life. He did not miss any more team obligations, but he skipped meals. Villarreal noticed his star pitcher/shortstop had lost weight.

"I don't have money to get anything to eat," Devenski explained.

From bags to the bigs

From that day on, Villarreal made sandwiches for two brown bag lunches. He also walked Devenski through the financial aid process to afford textbooks.

A year later, Villarreal said, Devenski "started becoming a man." He helped jettison Devenski to Cal State Fullerton, where the Division I exposure helped him get drafted in 2011 by the White Sox.

"Nobody knew he was going to be big leaguer," Villarreal said.

Villarreal credited Devenski's exceptional work ethic. Sitting in the Minute Maid Park dugout, Devenski said he would not have made it so far without the brown bag set aside each day in his coach's fridge.

"It was an act of love," Villarreal said. "I have tears in my eyes right now."

Devenski continued to stir emotions over his success. He cried last season before his Astros debut.

When the Astros visited the Angels last month, Devenski invited Estuardo Rodriguez, the first friend he had made in Santa Ana and the only one still around, to the game. Rodriguez, his mother, his girlfriend and three friends watched in disbelief. They had not seen Devenski pitch since he left the neighborhood.

"Maybe it gave them a little inspiration," Devenski hoped. "If you chase your dream and you want to do good for you and your family, anything can be done."

That realization overwhelmed the Devenskis, too. Before a home game last April, Mike, Shirley and Amanda visited Minute Maid Park for the first time. They gathered behind home plate. Mike looked at his son, tall and ready with his starched white jersey tucked in.

"I started crying," Mike said. "We all started crying."

Devenski never had seen his father like that. The family came together on the dirt for a group hug.

"It's been us four," Devenski said. "Really, I haven't had much else."

After so many years of the family's sacrifices, hard work and harder decisions, Mike kept staring at his son in wonderment, thinking: "How did you ever get here?"