After An Injury Derailed His MLB Career, ‘Landman’ Star Billy Bob Thornton Worked As A Roadie For Johnny Paycheck

I’m starting to think that Billy Bob Thornton might actually be the most interesting man in the world.

He’s one of the biggest names in all of Hollywood in the modern day, but before everybody knew his name, he was a nobody just trying to make it. It’s hard to imagine that the actor known for such classic films as Sling Blade and Bad Santa was struggling to get his foot in the door, but like many that chase the dream of becoming a movie star, Thornton’s life wasn’t all glitz and glamor initially.

Long before Billy Bob was the star of the hit Paramount+ show Landman, he was broke and trying to make it in the City of Stars. Thornton moved to California in the 1980s originally trying to make it in music, with the plan to fall back on acting. When things weren’t progressing on the music side of things, he decided to try out a little acting gig on the side. For his first job, which just required him to say one line, he was paid over $350.

From that point on, he knew he wanted to be an actor.

But even before that, there was another potential career path that Billy Bob Thornton was exploring. In a recent interview with SiriusXM PGA Tour (why he was on that program, I have no idea), the 70-year-old actor revealed that he was a promising athlete in his younger days growing up in Arkansas.

He described himself as one of the best junk pitchers in the area, which got the attention of the Kansas City Royals:

“I grew up as a baseball player. I played football in junior high through the 10th grade, then realized that they didn’t have much use for a 140-pound free safety. So I thought, ‘Either I’m gonna quit this or I’m gonna get killed.’ I’d rather get killed by getting hit in the head with a baseball, I guess.

I was a junk pitcher, and kind of a local, high school baseball hero. When I was a senior, my record was 8-1, and I led the league in strikeouts. I didn’t throw real hard, but I had a lot of junk. Somebody saw me from the Royals organization and said, ‘You need to come to our camp.'”

Billy Bob Thornton does kind of sound like a scrappy relief pitcher, does it not?

The actor did end up going to that camp that the Royal put on. But unfortunately, disaster struck not even an hour into Thornton being there. His dreams of playing baseball professionally went out the window with one errant throw that hit him in one of the worst places that it could have:

“I was there for about a half an hour before I got my collarbone broken. I was standing over by the first base coach’s box talking to a guy. They were taking some infield practice, and the third baseman threw over to first base, first baseman wasn’t looking and it hit me right in my collarbone. After I got over that, I just hit the road as a roadie with a sound company and worked for a lot of bands.

I worked for Johnny Paycheck on a few shows and lived to tell the tale. I had been in bands since I was a kid. That’s all I ever wanted to do was music, and baseball was my life. And then somehow, my friend Tom Epperson, he wanted to go to California and be a screenwriter. He said, ‘Go with me, maybe you can be an actor.’ I said, ‘I don’t know anything about acting.'”

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Sucks that his baseball career didn’t pan out… but I’d say Billy Bob Thornton has done quite well as an actor and writer. Sometimes the cosmos sorts things out as they are supposed to be, am I right?The post After An Injury Derailed His MLB Career, ‘Landman’ Star Billy Bob Thornton Worked As A Roadie For Johnny Paycheck first appeared on Whiskey Riff.