Like a lot of ex-big leaguers with his pedigree, Brad Lidge stays involved in and around the game. The former closer, a two-time All-Star and a World Series champion in Philadelphia in 2008, works as a special assistant to the Phillies’ front office, co-hosts a show on SiriusXM’s MLB Network Radio channel four days a week, and coaches his son in baseball and his daughter in softball.
But once a year for the last five years, Lidge and his family have traveled to Europe so he can pursue his other passion: Ancient Roman archaeology.
“In baseball,” he explained to For The Win by phone, “it always felt like we had a ton of downtime on the road, so I started reading books about ancient history and world history, and just found myself really enjoying learning about that. I told myself that at some point, when I retire, I’d like to do something in a different world, other than baseball.”
Lidge finished his bachelor’s degree after his playing career ended and enrolled in a Master’s program in archaeology and ancient history at the University of Leicester, in England. He did most of his coursework online, but the degree requirements included field work at sites around Europe. He participated in his first excavation in 2013 at Carsulae, in central Italy.
“I didn’t know what to expect the first time I went over there,” he recalled. “You basically grab a trowel, and you learn all the techniques for excavating your quadrant, or your trench, and the different things you need to look for. You pick up on a lot of things – what to identify, if it’s ancient Roman pottery, or just a rock or whatever….We did the site of where the ancient Roman baths were, so we found some jewelry and all sorts of small artifacts there.
“You end up finding a lot more coins that you might think – all kinds of odds and ends. When you pull a piece of pottery out of the ground, you don’t know if you’re going to find a 1 inch by 1 inch shard or, like, a whole jughandle.”
Lidge (right) and his son, Rowan, washing and sorting artifacts found at the excavation site at Carsulae. (PHOTO: Brad Lidge)
This summer, Lidge worked at a site in the English town of Lincoln – his fifth excavation, but his first outside Italy. The academic, European setting typically offers him anonymity at first, but there will invariably be a few American volunteers or students at every site, and eventually someone will make the connection.
“Usually there’ll be someone there that says, ‘Hey, are you the same Brad Lidge that played baseball?’ I’ll tell them I am, then word kind of spreads around quickly. One cool thing about this is you feel like you’re in a different world out there, everyone working with different goals in mind, but we’ll end up, inevitably, talking about baseball.”
Though the treasure-hunting aspect of archaeology is romantic, artifacts found at excavation sites are carefully documented and become property of local governments for safe-keeping, research or display. And, Lidge explains, the archaeologist’s real goal is not to find the most valuable remnants of a past civilization, but those that offer the most insight into history.
“It’s not so much looking for the Ark of the Covenant or the Holy Grail, it’s about finding the artifact that helps define the entire site,” he said. “When we were near Orvieto, it was an ancient Etruscan site and an ancient Roman site, and we were trying to figure out how the ancient Romans used the site. There seemed to be a lot of little pools of water, which the ancient Romans had built, and we were trying to see if they were following a water cult and find evidence of cultic practices there.
“So we were looking for little statues, artifacts that would’ve let you know if they were worshipping certain gods. It kind of rewrites the whole history of the area. What you’re hoping to do is dig your trowel in the ground and come across something that is very rare, but also very significant for the site.”
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