Padres' Mike Clevinger recounts terrifying experience on flight to rehab start

What was supposed to be a routine rehab start for San Diego Padres pitcher Mike Clevinger turned into a harrowing travel experience recently.

Clevinger is preparing to return to the majors after Tommy John surgery, and the Padres sent him to El Paso to make a rehab start for the organization’s Triple-A team. Clevinger flew to El Paso from Phoenix on Monday, but at one point he genuinely feared that the flight would be his last.

“We were up at like 30,000 feet elevation, the light comes on to move about the cabin,” Clevinger said, via Kevin Acee of the San Diego Union-Tribune. “And then next thing you know we’re nose diving hard and the air pressure drops in the cabin. The A/C turns off. The captain goes on yelling. The oxygen masks come down, (the captain yells), ‘Put your oxygen masks on! Put your oxygen masks on!’ We’re (stomachs) in our throat for 25, 30 seconds. I thought we were just going to the ground, dead.”

Clevinger said that the passenger sitting next to him was knowledgeable about planes and tried to reassure the pitcher. Those efforts did little when Clevinger heard only one engine working and smoke began to fill the cabin. The Padres pitcher said he was so sure the plane was going to crash, he tried to text his fiancé and his mother, but froze up.

“I couldn’t type. I was, like, frozen,” Clevinger admitted.

Obviously, Clevinger lived to tell the tale. The plane made an emergency landing in Tucson, and he was able to take an Uber back to Phoenix to board another flight.

Scary mid-flight incidents like this are rare, but not impossible. One NBA team had a similar experience last season. Fortunately, Clevinger is all right, but he sounds like he was understandably shaken up.