Some retired MLB players become coaches. Some retired MLB players became broadcasters. Former All-Star closer Brad Lidge chose a different path.
The Houston Astros and Philadelphia Phillies standout, who retired from MLB in 2013, is now a working archaeologist and recently joined the Board of Advisors of the Penn Museum, one of the largest archaeological museums in the United States.
Lidge told the Philadelphia Inquirer back in 2024 he was preparing to pursue a Ph.D in the field and he’s been busy since then, working on digsites and researching the Etruscans, an ancient civilization in Italy swallowed by the Roman empire. His interest in the field reportedly goes back to his world history classes in high school, and it wound up being his post-baseball passion.
From the Penn Musuem:
“When I was first trying to figure out what I was going to do after baseball, I had a strong inclination toward religious archaeology. My bachelor’s degree was in religious studies, so I thought about going to the Holy Land to excavate. But by then my kids weren’t as little, and for the first time, we had a summer available to us as a family. I thought it might make more sense to look at Europe.
“The Roman Empire is a great way to look at religions. I initially started in central Italy, not far from Rome, and did an excavation in the ancient Roman city of Carsulae. On day one, as a volunteer student, I found a coin in a bath complex. It was a bronze coin, not silver, but it didn’t matter—at that point I realized that I loved doing archaeology and I wanted to keep going. My master’s degree was largely spent in ancient Roman studies.”
Drafted out of Notre Dame, Lidge continued working on his bachelor’s degree at Regis University during his playing career and graduated in 2008, per the Inquirer, then got his master’s degree in ancient Roman archaeology at the University of Leicester in 2017.
He got into the Etruscans while working with Dr. Anthony Tuck and has since published a couple of papers with him. He told the Penn Museum a book might even be on the way, about ancient Etruscan symbols called sigla.
Lidge made approximately $55.3 million in MLB salary during his playing career, per Spotrac, and the Penn Museum notes he is now a leading donor to their excavation project in Abydos as well as the Penn Museum Annual Fund.
He says he’s all in on his second career:
“I’ve put all the chips on the table to be an archaeologist. I didn’t want to retire and just read about archaeology—I wanted to engage in it physically. As early as 2010, I met Jennifer and Josef Wegner and we got to look at some amazing Egyptian artifacts together. Even the things in storage blew my mind. That was when the light switched on. I realized I wanted to be an archaeologist.
“The stress is different from baseball. There are deadlines and publications, but it’s a healthier level of stress. The really unhealthy stress is what a closer feels during a Major League Baseball season. If you mess up with a trowel and break an artifact, you’re going to feel bad. Tony might scratch his head and try to glue it back together, but only a handful of people will ever know. Giving up a home run in the World Series is a different kind of pressure.”
Lidge played 11 seasons in MLB, and is most remembered for throwing the final pitch of the Phillies’ 2008 World Series championship. He had an up-and-down career, as often happens with relievers, but was one of the game’s best relievers when his fastball-slider combo was working.
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