Dr. Brad Lidge? The former Phillies closer has found a new thrill: Pursuing a Ph.D. in archaeology

Almost 16 years ago, Brad Lidge stood on a mound in South Philly, fired a slider to Carlos Ruiz, fell to his knees, and looked to the sky. That image of his celebrating his 2008 World Series-winning strikeout was instantly woven into Phillies lore. It’s hanging in the rafters above the concourse at Citizens Bank Park. It adorns the wall just outside the home clubhouse.

A lot has changed since then. Lidge, 47, now spends his days 4,268 miles away, on an entirely different mound, in the Italian village of Murlo. The former reliever is not a former reliever there. He is a practicing archaeologist, just like many of the scientists he works with.

Lidge finds it thrilling, in a different way. Certainly not in a chest-pumping, heart-pounding, Game 5-of-the-2008-World-Series kind of way, but thrilling, nonetheless. On Sunday afternoon, he gave an example.

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“The first site I ever excavated was Carsulae, in 2014,” Lidge said. “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.”

He is not a novice in this field. Lidge has taken an interest in ancient history since high school. He chipped away at his bachelor’s degree throughout his 11-year playing career, and graduated with a bachelor’s degree in religious studies from Regis University in 2008.

He signed a one-day contract to officially retire as a Phillie in 2013, and got his master’s degree in ancient Roman archaeology at the University of Leicester in 2017.

Now, he’s embarking on a new challenge: Getting his Ph.D. None of his former teammates are surprised.

“He would talk to us about it,” said former starter Joe Blanton. “I mean … to a point we could understand. But I think it’s super interesting.”

“No, I’m not surprised,” said one of Lidge’s bullpen mates, Chad Durbin. “I’m going to have a tough time calling him doctor, though.”

Lidge was not shy about his passion for archaeology. He’d often read books at his locker. He’d talk to teammates who were interested in the topics he was interested in — while indulging the occasional joke or two.

Durbin was often at the helm of this, and after spending hours and hours with Lidge in the bullpen, he knew exactly what to say.

“We’d bait him with, ‘The Bible says that 4,000 years is it — that’s it,’” Durbin said. “And he’s like, ‘Oh, no, carbon-dating this and carbon-dating that.’ It would just to get him going. He’s like, ‘That’s actually impossible. The science says this.’ And I’m like, ‘I don’t know, the Bible says this.’”

Lidge tolerated it.

“I do remember, in Houston and in Philly, it was just a lot of like, ‘Why the hell are you doing this?’” Lidge said. “’What are you doing this for? Why?’”

But despite the teasing, he stuck with it, and found that his passion for history actually helped him on the field. If Lidge had a bad outing, he’d come home and read about ancient Roman civilization, or Etruscan civilization, or Christian apologetics. It cleared his mind.

“For me, it was much better, especially after a bad game, to sink into a different topic altogether,” he said. “Get your mind away from it, and then come to the field feeling refreshed every day. Because otherwise you can really dwell on stuff. I mean, you can stew in your own head for a long time. You’re better off just escaping from it when you can.”

Now that escape is his full-time job. After he retired, Lidge spent a few years working as a guest instructor with the Phillies and cohosting a radio show on MLB Network. He studied toward his master’s degree on the side, and visited Murlo as often as he could.

But this year, he decided to dive headfirst. He quit his radio job, and began to research Ph.D. programs. He has yet to settle on one yet, but knows what he wants his focus to be.

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“Etruscan sigla, and a more generalized archaeology of ancient Italy,” Lidge said. “I’m trying to find a way to sync those two topics together.”

The Etruscans were an indigenous people who lived in the Tuscany region of Italy. Lidge focuses on the period from 800 B.C. to 500 B.C. “Sigla” were the symbols the Etruscan people used to communicate.

Lidge has published research on this topic with Tony Tuck, who teaches at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Tuck and Lidge examined symbols carved into pottery and roof tiles, and found that while many symbols were carved in tombs, they were also inscribed at an ancient Etruscan workshop in Murlo. They concluded these symbols were likely meant to quantify materials used at the workshop.

It is a small piece, but given the dearth of information about the Etruscan language, it is a meaningful one.

“For me, it’s amazing to kind of know that that is something that’s still out there that we don’t really know about,” Lidge said. “And then specifically, these symbols are really mysterious because they’re not really documented at all. It’s been really, really exciting to get to understand something like that in much more depth than really anything I had done in the past.”

Lidge spent the past weekend with other Phillies alumni at the ballpark, reminiscing on old memories and celebrating the past and the future. His teammates had plenty of questions about his new day job.

“There was a lot of, ‘So, do you dig dinosaur bones?’” Lidge said. “Which, of course, is paleontology, not archaeology, but, you know.”

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He doesn’t dwell on the semantics. Lidge was more focused on enjoying time with old friends, and soaking up the place he used to call home. Next year, he’ll grab his pickax and shovel, and fly to Murlo, where the locals don’t know about his 41-for-41 save season in 2008, much less about his wicked slider.

“Whatever I did in baseball is kind of irrelevant out there,” said Lidge, who had 225 career saves with the Astros, Phillies, and Nationals. “We’re looking at various things to study in our lab and trying to compare them to whatever. I want to be able to have an accomplishment besides what I did on the baseball field.

“I mean, nothing is going to surpass this,” he said, gesturing to the field. “But contributing to the way we interpret history, in any way, would feel very much like a rounded life for me.”