Former MLB All-Star closer Brad Lidge accomplished a lot on the diamond.
He ranks high on the all-time career saves list, and he was instrumental in the Philadelphia Phillies winning the World Series back in 2008.
Lidge wants to continue his work playing in “dirt” — just not the kind you see on a pitcher’s mound.
In a recent interview with the Philadelphia Inquirer, Lidge, now 47, lives in the small Italian village of Murlo, where he works as an archaeologist.
“The first site I ever excavated was Carsulae, in 2014,” Lidge told the outlet. “The first day, I’m digging around the complex, and within probably five minutes, I scraped some soil off, and bang! There’s two Roman coins there. And I was just like, ‘Oh my god, this is incredible.’ Just kind of a lucky, lucky deal.”
Lidge earned his archaeology degree from Regis University while playing professionally. He went on to get his Masters from the University of Leicester in 2017, just five years after officially retiring.
He’s kind of like a modern day Indiana Jones — minus the action and adventure.
Lidge said in the interview his next goal is to get his Ph.D., having been fascinated with history since high school.
“He would talk to us about it,” former starter Joe Blanton told the outlet. “I mean … to a point we could understand. But I think it’s super interesting.” Another teammate, Chad Durbin, said he’s not surprised by Lidge’s Ph.D. pursuits. “I’m going to have a tough time calling him doctor, though,” Durbin added.
He hopes his doctorate will focus on Etruscan sigla and a generalized study of archaeology of ancient Italy. “I’m trying to find a way to sync those two topics together,” he says.
Etruscans sigla is described as “a mode of communication by making marks that are not developed texts of language with immediately recognizable words” by the International Etruscan Sigla Project. It sort of sounds like ancient history meets cryptography, which is really cool. The Etruscan culture thrived in Italy from around 800 B.C. to around 280 B.C., when the Romans decided that they were in charge of everyone, according to World History.