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ATLANTA — Eager to find somewhere that would give him a chance to play college ball, Brendan Donovan was willing to play everywhere, and that’s how he found himself at third base in Panama City, Florida, gasping for air because of a bad hop and a baseball to the neck.

About to start his senior year at Enterprise High in Alabama, Donovan attended a showcase for the region’s top players at a panhandle junior college. He went with no offers and one goal.

“I was trying to do everything I could just to get recognized,” Donovan said this past week before preparing to lead off for the Cardinals. “I threw from the outfield. I threw from third. Threw from behind the plate. Wasn’t very good. But I was like maybe someone will like it. I just wasn’t getting any traction. Maybe they don’t like me at shortstop. Maybe I just need to go all over the place.

“So I went all over the place.”

His rotation for attention eventually put him at third base between a row of college coaches along the dugout and a strapping first baseman trying to impress them with his arm strength. The first baseman overcooked a throw to third, and Donovan instinctively dropped down to smother the bounce. The ball hit the lip of the infield, caromed off Donovan’s neck and rolled toward the coaches at the dugout. He went to retrieve it and was asked if he was good.

Donovan summoned enough air to reply: “I’m good.”

“I was not good,” he said. “I was pretty messed up. I couldn’t breathe.”

The throw hit him so close to his throat and so hard that it crushed his chain and left an indentation of the cross. It also left a good impression.

South Alabama’s head coach Mark Calvi jotted down a name.

“I’m like, alright, this kid likes to play,” Calvi said. “He wasn’t a coveted recruit. He had no plus-tool. He’s got the makeup, and he’s got that ‘it’ factor. The dude didn’t start on third base, man. He’s a self-made player. That’s what he is. He’s a self-made player. No one grabbed him and yanked him up to the big leagues. He has earned everything. He’s a self-made college player. He’s a self-made big leaguer.

“He put himself in that position,” Calvi said, “and he’s not letting go of it.”

As goal-oriented now at 28 as he was at 18 and raised in a military household to be disciplined and determined, Donovan sets achievements he’d like to reach for each season. On Tuesday evening, he checks off one for 2025. The Cardinals utility fielder is set to appear in his first All-Star Game when Atlanta’s Truist Park hosts the 95th Midsummer Classic. Elected to the National League roster by his peers and the only Cardinal selected, Donovan’s .297 average is tied with fellow All-Star Freddie Freeman for second in the NL.

He arrived in Atlanta on Monday morning, a day later than planned because Sunday’s rain delays at Busch Stadium caused him to miss his flight. The Cardinals arranged a private jet from ӣ����Ƶ for him and his family, Donovan said. He added it was his first time on a private jet.

How he got to Atlanta was comfortable and direct.

How he got to the All-Star Game was neither.

Getting there took a road paved by the willingness to play anywhere.

“I think part of that is the military upbringing: Just make it happen. Just solve the problem,” Donovan said. “I think having to play everywhere has made me who I am as a player, made me — sports is a great teacher for life — who I am as a person. If I would have just played one position and I wasn’t highly drafted and I wasn’t considered a prospect, would I find a way to get into the lineup, would I find a way to get to the major leagues? Probably not. I didn’t know it at the time. At the time, I was like: How is this going to be great for my career? It’s probably been the greatest thing that ever happened to my career.

“Being an All-Star?” he then added when asked where that honor fit. “It’s one of those things you always dream about when you close your eyes and you picture yourself. You see World Series. You see All-Star.”

Finding somewhere

Born in Germany while his father, Jim, was stationed there with the U.S. Army, Donovan was first introduced to baseball at 5 by his mother, Lisa, after the family relocated and lived in Clarksville, Tennessee, right across the state line from Fort Campbell, Kentucky.

One of Donovan’s friends was going to play T-ball, and Lisa Donovan asked if Brendan wanted to try it. His father, deployed overseas at the time, had northeast roots and kept hockey sticks around the garage, not bats. Donovan’s only experience holding a stick for sports was on a frozen pond or hard concrete. When he grabbed a bat for the first time, he held it like he would a hockey stick, then brought his hands together. That is how his left-handed swing was born.

His mother set up a tee and practiced with him, offering this instruction:

“Try to hit it hard.”

When the family moved to Alabama, there weren’t many frozen surfaces to use hockey sticks — but baseball? Baseball was everywhere. Amidst the moving and his father’s active duty, sports, Donovan said, became a constant he could count on anywhere. An anchor.

As Donovan neared graduation from Enterprise, he thought about going into the military, like his father. But he first wanted to pursue baseball.

Intrigued by the showcase and assured by how he saw Donovan play later, Calvi gave him that chance at South Alabama.

The coach was on the bus back from the Sun Belt Conference tournament and an extra-inning loss in the championship on a grand slam when his phone rang. It was Donovan, the incoming recruit. He told Calvi it was a great season and he heard about the tough loss.

“That will never happen on my watch,” Donovan stated.

When he arrived on campus that fall and started fall workouts, Calvi instructed his coaches to get Donovan a bigger bag. The freshman needed it for all the “different gloves I told him to have on him all the time,” Calvi said. The Jaguars’ infield was set, but the coach wanted to get Donovan’s bat in the lineup. That meant time in the outfield and also staying sharp at several infield positions. As the fall continued, Donovan struggled.

He hit poorly.

He fielded worse.

Trying to play everywhere felt like he could play nowhere.

“If I caught the ball, I sailed it,” Donovan said. “Most of the time I didn’t even catch it.”

During one round of batting practice, Donovan recalled how he couldn’t get pitches out of the cage — the “turtle” — and slammed his bat against its side. Calvi told him to sit in the visitors dugout.

“I’m like in a dungeon,” Donovan recalled. “I’m in timeout.”

In a phone interview this past week, Calvi re-created several conversations between the two, and Donovan’s reply was usually, “Yessir, yessir.” When he told Donovan that day he would not play in the scrimmage, the reply was different: “No. No.”

“I’m like, ‘Listen, man, you’ve got a chance to play this game for a long time,’” Calvi recalled. “I said, ‘You’re going to be a manager’s dream one day.’ He was looking at me like, ‘What are you talking about?’ He’s 1 for 21 and he’s made six errors in the outfield and infield. I said, ‘Your best tool is your toughness and your willingness to play other positions. Get good at it.’”

At one point early in his career at South Alabama, Donovan filled out a bio questionnaire for the media guide, and one of the questions was, “Favorite athlete?”

He thought of a big leaguer who played multiple positions, hit .300 and represented the Cardinals at three All-Star Games but rarely at the same position.

He wrote down: “Matt Carpenter.”

The position Calvi expected Donovan to play was Carpenter’s first as an All-Star, second base. But he never did at South Alabama. As a junior, he filled in for an injured teammate at shortstop and helped lift the Jaguars back to the championship game in the Sun Belt tournament, the one they lost the year before he arrived. In extra innings, with the winning run on third, Donovan singled for the walk-off clincher.

“He said it would never happen on his watch,” Calvi said. “And when he was in position to back that up, he did it.”

Playing anywhere

The Cardinals scout who followed Donovan that junior year, Clint Brown, shared this description with the club: “A player who may have limitations, but wherever the ceiling is, he will break through it.”

Evaluations from president of baseball operations John Mozeliak and Gary LaRocque, the farm director at the time, mentioned how Donovan was “relentless in his pursuit to get better.”

The Cardinals drafted him in the seventh round in 2018, the same year they took Nolan Gorman with their first pick. It wasn’t long before the high school slugger was drawn to the college ballplayer who sure didn’t get flustered by a bad round of batting practice.

“It may not seem like it now, but I could get frustrated and hotheaded,” Gorman said. “I wanted to be around him. I wanted to be like him. I wanted to do the things he was doing.”

They would advance together and be united by position, too.

With Gorman at third, Donovan moved to second.

When the Cardinals acquired Nolan Arenado and Gorman moved to second, Donovan moved to shortstop, maybe left ...

“So I was like, where do I go?” he said. “I know. I need to go everywhere.”

He realized quickly why in the days leading up to his promotion to the majors in April 2022 the Cardinals had him play first base. In his first big league start for the Cardinals, he played first. In his second start, he played third. Three days later, he was at second. A week later, shortstop. Donovan’s first four starts in the majors were at four different positions.

That morsel of trivia was actually a harbinger as he won the National League’s first ever utility fielder Rawlings Gold Glove Award in 2022. The Cardinals boast more Gold Glove winners than any other organization, but they have only one rookie who won one: Donovan.

When he found out, Donovan called Calvi.

The kid willing to play anywhere to get noticed, the college leader able to play everywhere to contribute and the rising pro who always had somewhere to play to stay in the lineup had a big league honor to tie all of those moments into a theme he felt all along.

Even as that bruised formed on his neck, versatility was taking him places.

As he tugged on an All-Star cap Monday in Atlanta, Donovan said he wasn’t sure what inning or what position he’ll play in the game. Fitting.

But he knows exactly where he’ll be.

In Atlanta with the other stars.

He was asked what he’d tell that kid trying to catch his breath.

“Good job,” Donovan answered. “Toughness will get you further than you think it will. You never know who is watching. And to play every moment like it’s your last because you never know — it could be. These moments are what got you here. Don’t forget that. Play like that kid, and you’ll continue to climb.”