Brandon Magee is trying to make it in football and baseball, but he’s not a star in either sport.
Magee is a backup linebacker for the Browns who is trying to stick as a minor leaguer with the Red Sox. He is currently at extended spring training in Fort Myers, Fla., hoping for a spot on the Greenville Drive – Boston’s Single-A affiliate.
“The hardest thing about doing it is I don’t see family at all. I hardly see friends at all,” Magee told the Akron Beacon Journal.
“I haven’t had a steady girlfriend for years due to my schedule. I’m only 23, and in the offseason, people like to go to the beach, and I can’t even do that.”
Magee was signed by the Cowboys as an undrafted free agent in 2013, but was cut after he suffered a concussion in preseason. He signed with the Browns and saw action in eight games before tearing his pectoral on Dec. 1.
He recovered in time to report to Red Sox spring training to continue his two-sport dream. He will miss the Browns’ voluntary workouts on Monday, but the former Arizona State linebacker does plan to fully commit to football when mini-camp opens April 29.
He had his reservations about missing voluntary workouts, but said new Browns coach Mike Pettine reassured him it would be all right.
“He thought it was awesome,” Magee said of Pettine. “It kind of surprised me coming from an NFL coach, but he was fully supportive of what I was doing. It felt great because growing up, you have a lot of people that say don’t do this, don’t do that. To have a new coach who hardly even knows me say, ‘Congratulations on playing in the NFL and playing pro baseball, that’s a huge accomplishment,’ that was huge for me.”