Arrighetti balances baseball, family (and sleep!) with twin boys
This story was excerpted from Brian McTaggart’s Astros Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.
HOUSTON -- The room that Spencer Arrighetti and his wife, Zaxlee, were in while she was undergoing an ultrasound during a routine pregnancy checkup last year got small in a hurry after the couple heard these five words from her doctor.
“Do my eyes deceive me?”
Arrighetti looked at his wife in disbelief and then came more words, the kind that change your life forever: “There’s two of them.” The Arrighettis were expecting twins. Identical boys Luca and Nico were born on March 18. Arrighetti flew from West Palm Beach, Fla., to Houston at the end of Spring Training to be there for the birth.
“Obviously, when you find out that you're pregnant, it's such a big celebration, and then you hear two, and it's like, ‘Oh my gosh, how are we going do it?’” Spencer said. “I feel like we've done a really good job so far.”
Arrighetti, the 26-year-old starting pitcher who’s 7-2 with a 2.57 ERA in 11 starts for the Astros this season, said the first few weeks of fatherhood were scary. He had the same feeling most first-time fathers do. How am I going to manage this? Am I going to mess them up?
“I feel more responsible than ever for the way that I carry myself and for the way that I am at home, the partner that I am to my wife,” he said. “It's made me a lot more grateful for her in ways that I didn't know were possible. I mean, obviously, the life that we live is a lot different than most people, and she makes it easy for me to do what I still need to do to be good at my job, which includes sleeping. She's taking the brunt of that. It’s been an amazing journey.”
Ah, yes, sleep. If you’re a parent of a newborn, there’s never enough. If you have infant twins, it’s a commodity. The Arrighettis have people that help them get sleep at night, and Spencer said his wife makes sure he gets the rest he needs to be able to perform on the field.
“She really does do a lot for them, especially the midnight feeds and stuff,” he said. “She knows that I can't be good at pitching if I don't sleep well, so she really does do a lot in that regard. ... I'll go to bed my normal time, wake up my normal time, and she kind of just does all the things in the middle, and it's nice. Obviously, I help and I do stuff when I wake up in the morning, but she does let me sleep, which is nice.”
The twins are barely 3 months old, but they’ve already changed Arrighetti as a man. He tries not to curse as much around them, even though they don’t know what he’s saying. He tries to be on his phone less and stay engaged with them as much as he can.
“I guess, right now, it's a little bit easier just because they're a little less aware of what's going on,” he said, “but I definitely have taken a look in the mirror and tried to decide who I am going to be. Not just who I am now, but when they do start to understand more my habits and the things that I say.”
Arrighetti said he wants to be able to give his kids the kind of life he’s never had.
“We weren't financially well off when I was growing up, and there were things that I wanted, things that I needed, but sometimes had to wait, and that is what it is,” he said. “I want to be a good provider. I want to be a good support for them. I want them to feel like they can always be honest with me and feel like their dad understands.”
One of the boys is already favoring his left hand, which makes Arrighetti smile. He always wished he was a lefty. As soon as they’re capable, the twins will have a baseball glove, bats and footballs in their hands. Dad can’t wait.
“I have a nephew who’s 2 now, and all he ever wants to do is hit the baseball, throw the baseball,” Arrighetti said. “He watches my games, and my older brother will send me videos of him trying to mimic my pitching. I just hope they're like that, honestly.”