In October 2023, Jacob Marlowe’s big-league dreams came to a screeching halt.

It wasn’t anything Marlowe was doing on the mound holding him back. In fact, he was pitching as well as he ever had in his first fall camp with Florida State. Instead, Marlowe’s lifelong heart condition had flared up, suddenly forcing him to pause baseball and undergo surgery.

“We had to stop what we were doing as far as baseball season and refocus on his health and what his best options were,” Shawn Marlowe, his father said.

After two open heart surgeries and around 25 pounds lost, Marlowe is working his way back to form as an elite left-handed pitcher with a devastating putaway changeup. His collegiate career started with two successful seasons at the University of Central Florida, where he pitched in 87.2 innings with an impressive 3.42 strikeout-to-walk-ratio in his sophomore season.

Despite missing his first season at FSU due to the surgeries, Marlowe is set to return to in-game competition for the first time when he takes the mound for the Whitecaps in the Cape Cod Baseball League’s 2024 season, putting his path to the Majors back into motion. The journey has been a whirlwind for Marlowe, but he expects the moment he steps on the mound in a Whitecaps uniform to be one to remember.

“It’s going to mean the world to me,” Marlowe said “It will be my first time in an actual game-like scenario that I'll be back and that's probably the most exciting feeling I can have.”

Marlowe’s battle to have a normally functioning heart has been playing out since birth, according to his mother, Janet. At first, doctors called the condition a heart murmur. Following multiple checkups, they realized the murmur wouldn’t go away and believed Marlowe had aortic stenosis — when the valve narrows and blood fails to flow normally.

Eventually, they diagnosed him with a leaky heart valve that would need to be fixed with surgery — likely when he was in his 30s. It was a setback for Marlowe, but it did not fully affect his aspirations as a youth athlete.

Marlowe had to make small changes: playing flag football instead of tackle, wearing a chest protector under his baseball uniform and lifting lighter weights. These alterations slightly stunted his progression.

“I couldn't lift as heavy as I should be because they don't want to put stress on the heart,” Marlowe said. “And that kind of inhibited me from going to my max potential.”

Though his heart condition posed some challenges, Marlowe says they were never something he ever really felt. He would at times notice little things and overthink issues but it never limited his ability on the field. Marlowe — originally from Naples, Florida — starred throughout his youth career, emerging into a college recruit and even earning the Southwest Florida High School Player of the Year honors for his senior season performance at Barron Collier High. His early success led him to UCF.

At UCF, in his freshman season in 2022, Marlowe threw the most innings among freshmen and established himself within the pitching staff. A year later he built further upon that success in a strong sophomore campaign, highlighted by a performance versus then-No. 21 Florida State in which he posted 7.0 innings while allowing just one earned run and striking out five in a 6-3 win over the Seminoles.

Two years of collegiate success gave him the chance to join Link Jarrett’s FSU team following his sophomore season. Marlowe made the transfer and was excelling in fall camp until a regularly scheduled checkup.

“I was caught off guard because I was told throughout my years in college that I'd be fine throughout the whole thing,” Marlowe said.

After evaluation, doctors said they didn’t like what they saw and recommended surgery. He then sought a second opinion in Naples, which confirmed the advice. With guidance from his family, Marlowe discussed with a doctor in Boston over the phone. The doctor thought maybe he could avoid surgery for a year. But Marlowe then went in person to get further evaluation and was recommended not waiting and getting the procedure done sooner than originally expected.

In his aortic valve, all the leaflets merged into one, causing blood to get pushed back into the heart in the aorta. Marlowe’s aorta became arrhythmic and the left ventricle was enlarged.

“He (Marlowe) just wanted to get it done,” Shawn said. “He knew it was going to come at some point in his life. Unfortunately, it came now so we talked about the bad things and the good things that come about it.”

On Oct. 23, Marlowe underwent open-heart surgery at Massachusetts General Hospital. Doctors attempted to repair the valve by cutting it into two leaflets. The surgery seemed to be successful but days later his numbers were dropping rapidly and something wasn’t right. Doctors rushed in, inserted a temporary pacemaker and decided Marlowe would need to go through surgery again.

This time, Marlowe went through the Ross procedure: where doctors remove the aortic valve and put the pulmonary valve in its place. Then a donor pulmonary valve is put where the pulmonary valve was originally.

The second surgery put Marlowe in a much better place mentally and physically. Knowing he would be okay, the focus quickly shifted back to performing on the mound.

Marlowe’s high school coach, Charlie Maurer, put a baseball in his hand to symbolize what he had to work toward. He had made it and recovered. Maurer wanted Marlowe to realize that baseball was his real end game.

“Everyone's like, ‘Man, we just hope he lives,’” Maurer said. “You can't think like that. It needs to be ‘I want him to get back on the baseball field at the level he was at.’”

From there, the on-field work began. Marlowe returned to Tallahassee, this time around 25 pounds lighter. He would have to work to gain his weight back while returning his arm to peak form.

According to FSU strength and conditioning coach Jamie Burleson, Marlowe’s doctor was in favor of pushing Marlowe to his limits, getting blood pumping through his body and heart. Already in his third collegiate season, Marlowe was experienced in the weight room but this was unlike any other test he had gone through previously.

Burleson and Florida State athletic trainer Phil Montano guided Marlowe with taking it slow on the conditioning side, starting out with mainly cardiovascular-based fitness to get things moving again. On the lifting side, they started light before building up volume week by week.

“He didn't let these surgeries stop him,” Janet said. “He didn't let these surgeries define him. I think if anything, it made him stronger.”

Meanwhile, Marlowe’s been working with FSU pitching coach Micah Posey to work his arm back to form. It was undoubtedly a struggle at first, Marlowe said. One issue was that he was a pitcher who often threw with a scapular load — also known as throwing with the chest. Because of having his chest cut open just months earlier, Posey said that, at first, Marlowe reported feeling some stretching in his chest when throwing.

It freaked Marlowe out a bit, but his doctor assured him that nothing was wrong. Posey and his staff started Marlowe off slow, throwing from 60 feet then to 90, 120 and 150 for 2 weeks. Then he moved into throwing bullpens near the end of March and later facing live hitters with his velocity working its way back and the shape of his offspeed finding itself.

As of May 13, Posey reported Marlowe was at about 85% of what he had seen from him in the fall, a big step just under seven months after two open heart surgeries.

Though Marlowe didn’t grace the mound for the Seminoles in 2024, he’s been able to be around the team as they cruised to the No. 8 seed in the NCAA Tournament and advanced to Omaha for the College World Series. FSU features Whitecaps alumni like James Tibbs and Jaime Ferrer along with a cast of future ones like Marlowe, Drew Faurot, DeAmez Ross and Marco Dinges.

The idea of pitching for the Whitecaps and returning to the mound has pushed Marlowe throughout the spring and he joined the team despite FSU still being in the College World Series.

“It's given me something to look forward to,” Marlowe said. “Continuing being able to do something that I love, it's a passion and I'm glad that I'm still able to do it.”

Playing in the CCBL has been a goal of Marlowe’s since the end of high school, per his father. Now, after recovering from two open heart surgeries, the league gives him a chance to return to his passion. The moment he steps on the mound will be a big one for Marlowe and his family. But those around him expect him to naturally turn into his typical self.

“I think (there will be) a lot of emotions,” Maurer said. “But I think with him, and he's so competitive, I think that'll go through his head for like five seconds. And then I think it organically will just turn into ‘I gotta get this dude out.’”

Title photo credit goes to Julianne Shivers