SAN DIEGO _ Tyler Adkison woke up in a hospital bed four years ago with 18 of his teeth either chipped or missing, his jaw wired shut and his face feeling more like he'd gone 12 rounds than nine innings.
Adkison, an outfielder at San Diego State, had been hit by a fastball during a bunting drill that ended the 2015 season for him three weeks before it began. Even more concerning, the gruesome injury jeopardized his baseball career.
Adkison spent a week in the hospital, much of it thinking about his future.
"I asked myself, if baseball was gone tomorrow, which, at that point, looked like it could have been, what would I do next?" said Adkison, then a sophomore business major at SDSU. "At that point, I had no answer. I was scared. It was an eye-opening moment."
Adkison looks back now and says: "That's the best thing that ever happened to me in the worst way possible."
He says it because the worst moment of his life forced Adkison to ponder Plan B just in case Plan A didn't pan out.
"I lived my whole life as an athlete, and that's all I knew," Adkison said. "That kind of woke up the after-baseball side of me.
"I started taking school more seriously after I came back. I did the (SDSU) entrepreneurship program and all this extra stuff."
Adkison approached business the same way he did baseball. He originally came to SDSU because he wanted to be coached by Hall of Famer Tony Gwynn.
"Basically, I just tried to surround myself with people who were successful," Adkison said. "Just like in baseball, whether it's a training camp or something, to surround yourself with players and coaches that, high tide lifts all boats, let's all go up together. I tried to do that in both dimensions of my life."
Adkison did recover. He returned to the Aztecs for the 2016 season. He earned All-American honors the following year, was drafted by the Dodgers and set off on his professional career.
While most minor leaguers chase big league dreams until no one will issue them a uniform anymore, Adkison gave up a promising pro career less than a year after it began.
He is the founder and managing director of BlockTerra, a mixed-asset investment firm for the next generation of global finance.
Within six months of startup, the company was valued in the millions.
"It's a great example of what you can do with your opportunity in a college setting," SDSU baseball coach Mark Martinez said. "What's so cool about it is there's so many opportunities at a big university like San Diego State, in a great city, to meet people and network and the whole thing. Look what he's doing now, and he's just starting."
