Brody Stevens' death brings reactions from baseball people who knew comedian/actor

Tom Gatto

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Brody Stevens' death brings reactions from baseball people who knew comedian/actor image

Brody Stevens earned fame as a comedian and actor, but before he hit the standup circuit he was Steven Brody, pitcher, Arizona State.

He kept baseball in his life — which ended Friday in a reported suicide at age 48 — after switching to entertainment, and he used his diamond experiences to aid his performance.

"I think there is an overlap there, for sure. There is a body-language reading that needs to be done when you pitch. You look at the hitter’s eyes, or how they react to a certain pitch, and it’s a similar thing with an audience. It could be how are they sitting.  How are they laughing? There are a lot of variables," he told the Arizona Republic in 2015.

MORE: Notable sports deaths of 2019

Stevens made friendships during his career with a number of baseball people — many of them had ties to his favorite team, the Cubs. Some of those people posted remembrances on social media after learning of his death: 

Tom Gatto

Tom Gatto Photo

Tom Gatto joined The Sporting News as a senior editor in 2000 after 12 years at The Herald-News in Passaic, N.J., where he served in a variety of roles including sports editor, and a brief spell at APBNews.com in New York, where he worked as a syndication editor. He is a 1986 graduate of the University of South Carolina.