Ashley Eckstein, who is known as Ahsoka Tano in “Star Wars” and Jan Brady in “The Brady Bunch in the White House,” knows something about Hollywood.
So, when she says the story of meeting her husband, World Series MVP David Eckstein, is something out of a Hallmark movie, she is absolutely correct.
The star-studded couple is coming up on 21 years of marriage, but their relationship began with just a look.
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David Eckstein had been overlooked his entire baseball career, both literally and figuratively, as he stands at 5 feet, 6 inches.
The two-time All-Star knew he wasn’t the five-star prospect who was going to blow people away with his impressive power or sizzling arm. So, Eckstein created his advantages through his unbelievable attention to detail, relentless work ethic and ability to win the mental game on the baseball field.
So, when Eckstein, whose extremely regimented game-day routine begins the moment he wakes up, lost focus for five seconds because he locked eyes with a beautiful young woman in the stands while at the top step of the dugout celebrating a run, he was mad.
“Get focused on the game, I barked at myself, disappointed that I would ever let something break my concentration,” Eckstein wrote in his book “Just Enough.”
“I couldn’t believe I had let a fan break my routine.”
A few weeks later, Los Angeles Angels Vice President of Communications Tim Mead called Eckstein with a pitch. A publicist reached out to him wanting Eckstein to go a movie premiere with an actress.
These types of pitches to Mead, or attempts to set Eckstein up on a date, weren’t uncommon. In fact, Mead normally deleted most.
But not this one.
Eckstein was apprehensive about the situation and looking for a way to get out of it, but Mead was firm. He had a feeling and urged Eckstein to call.
After some research with his sister, Christine, Eckstein decided to pick up the phone and call.
While the call went well, Eckstein told Ashley Drane he wouldn’t go to the premiere. Not until he met her in person beforehand.
The Angels were out of the postseason hunt, but the season was still going on. Drane was filming an episode of “That ’70s Show.”
While the timing wasn’t just ideal, it ended up being perfect. They settled on Monday, which was Drane’s 22nd birthday.
And Drane’s 22nd birthday wasn’t just any birthday. It was her golden birthday.
“In fourth grade, my fourth grade teacher told the whole class. He said, ‘Something special will happen on your golden birthday. Like when you turn 10 on the 10th. Well, my birthday is September 22nd and so ever since I was 10, I was waiting for my golden birthday when I would turn 22 on September 22nd,” Ashley told OutKick in a recent interview.
“And I believed him that something special would happen. Well, I didn’t try for it. But because he didn’t agree to go to the premiere and he said, ‘I have to meet you prior, the only day we both had free to meet was my golden birthday.’ So, I had a date with number 22 on my golden birthday, September 22nd when I turned 22.”
David, through his prudent research with Christine, discovered it was Ashley’s birthday and brought a gift.
He was also wary of the Hollywood star potentially turning her nose up at his car. David was driving an “old clunker” with 150,000 miles on it, but that didn’t bother Ashley at all.
In fact, it was Ashley’s car that told David all he needed to know.
“It probably started when she pulled up in her old Toyota Corolla that had the missing door handle, the duct tape on it because then I was like, ‘OK, she’s real. That’s the type of girl that I could see myself with,’” David told OutKick.
“Once I met her that night, we kind of knew.”
A couple of months after they started dating when Ashley told David a secret she had been keeping. She was the girl in the stands who broke David’s fierce concentration in the dugout.
What David didn’t know? Ashley attended that game wearing her favorite number, Eckstein’s jersey number, No. 22.
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Relationships and romance are hard in general, but especially so when both people in a relationship have incredibly demanding schedules.
David, a professional baseball player, and Ashley, a Hollywood actress, had to work as a team to make it work. David, like the excellent leadoff hitter he was throughout his 10-year career, took the same approach to his relationship and set the tone early.
“David from the very beginning, he said, ‘I’m going to let you know I don’t play games. I like you and I’m going to be very upfront with you from the beginning,’ and he said if we’re going to do this together I just want you to know we’re a team and he said what I do is a reflection of you and what you do is a reflection of me so moving forward if we’re in this we need to think of each other with every action and everything we do,” Ashley said.
“And I really appreciated that because it totally changed my mindset and we have — we’ve been a team ever since.”
David said that once you find your best friend, you can work through anything. For the two-time World Series champion, that meant Ashley had to sit through a baseball season with him.
“The other thing I said early on, and this is why I did not put a ring on her finger earlier, was you need to sit through a baseball season with me because I’m a different person because once baseball season starts. I’m so locked in, but I need you to understand that that part of that time is very precious to me, but it doesn’t mean I’m not thinking of you and don’t care for you,” David said.
David’s rigid approach to baseball made him appreciate Ashley’s similar outlook toward acting.
“I also understood her roles when she goes on set, because of my baseball career, I understand what she’s doing. So, I thought it was actually a perfect mix for us to balance both worlds of her being the actress and me being a baseball player and but when we get to together, we really enjoy our time,” David said.
Ashley understands that romance is so much more than what is portrayed on TV and in movies. It’s about being there for the other person even when it doesn’t look pretty.
“You put each other first and if you go into it with that mindset you’re both going to be taken care of. I also joke with him sometimes romance just — it looks different. Sometimes romance is just him getting up to get me coffee when I have a busy day or doing the dishes. Yes, sometimes romance novels and romcoms, they give you a version of romance in your head and you think that that’s what every day is like, yeah, but no, sometimes romance is just show — continuing to show up for someone, even when it just doesn’t look pretty,” Ashley said.
“But when he was going through a rough time one season, I didn’t know what to do for him. But I knew he liked fried chicken. And so, I found the perfect recipe. So, when he came home, even if it was a bad game, it was the perfect fried chicken. It’s just showing up for that person and putting each other first.”
While the beginning David and Ashley’s relationship was out of a fairytale, reality hit them hard.
In 2008, David was with the Toronto Blue Jays and in the midst of a difficult season, and the two poured into each other and God.
“I’ll never forget there was one season. I mean, I’ll say it. He wasn’t happy. It was when he was with Toronto,” Ashley said. “2008 was just a really hard, hard season. It was a hard season. And, um, nothing made sense. Absolutely nothing made sense. And what led up to that moment was horrible. I mean, some horrible things happened to him. And I just remember both of us, he didn’t cry, but you could tell he was in despair. He was at at very low point. A very, very low point. And we both sat in church and he was silent and I just cried and and we had no other nothing else to do other than just say, ‘Okay, it’s all right. All right, God, it’s in your hands.’”
“‘Whatever, whatever you want, we will go wherever. We will do whatever. We’re going to do it together. But we just sat there in desperation and said, ‘Okay, whatever is meant to be is meant to be.’ And then he got traded.”
Toronto wasn’t easy for Ashley either. If she wasn’t aware of just how ruthless Hollywood was, she found out when she moved north of the border to be with David.
“I did end up walking away from my career, but he always came first, and he in turn, he’s always put me first and it worked out, but it is hard. It’s hard,” Ashley said.
“All of my agents and managers dropped me. I was a full-time working actress, live action, television, series regular. I mean, I had a lot and then just like that they were just like, ‘Oh, you can’t be here. You can’t audition. You’re not flying in on every whim.’ Well, literally the exact quote was, ‘If you’re not auditioning, you’re not making money. And if you’re not making money, you’re no good to us.’ And then like that, I had nobody.”
David played two more seasons after he was traded from Toronto and retired. Not because no one wanted him, as he had more contract offers in free agency than he ever had before, but because it was his turn to support her.
“I actually had more contract offers in 2011 than any other time I was in free agency but I had made the decision. Ashley had started her company ‘Her Universe’ and she basically she gave up her career as an actor. They all gave up on her when she made the move to Toronto to come be with me,” David said.
“I had made a decision that I was going to go be with her after the 10th year. And so, yeah, I walked away from all the contract offers even during the season and even after the 2011 season, I got called again to come back and play, but I already made the decision. Yeah. And we went out and created ‘Her Universe.’”
For Ashley, it all ended up working out in the end, as “Star Wars” came along around that time, and she called what happened “the biggest blessing.”
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In addition to being an actress and a former athlete, Ashley and David now have another title: authors. The couple wrote books and released their “his-and-hers” books on Sept. 8. David’s is a memoir called “Just Enough,” while Ashley’s is called “Lucky 22.”
David always knew he wanted to write a book once he was done playing; it just took about 15 years after his playing days. Ashley’s inspiration for writing the book stemmed from a “crazy idea.”
“I just had a crazy idea. Once we started working with Blue Box Press and since they specialize in romance, how David and I met really is like a Hallmark movie. We didn’t try for it that way. It just happened that way. And whenever we tell the story, everyone always says that’s a Hallmark movie. That — that needs to be a Hallmark movie. And so it’s only one chapter in David’s book and it only deserves to be one chapter because he has a lot of story to tell. But I had a feeling that people are going to want to know more,” Ashley said.
“So I went to Liz and Jillian, the owners of Blue Box Press, and I said, ‘Okay, I have a crazy idea, but what if we do a his and hers version and what if we do a romance novel, Lucky 22, inspired by our true love story.’ So, mine is fiction, but it is very much inspired by our true story. And it’s about 90% true.”
For David, reading Ashley’s book allowed him to see things from her perspective and reflect on who he was.
“It was very interesting for me because she told it from her perspective like how it all came about of meeting me and I really realized how really regimented I was and how I was so focused on my career and my routine and stuff and then seeing it from her side of it, the opposite side. Kind of being all lonely going through this world where everyone thinks it’s so glamorous and having to fight through it and stuff,” David said.
“It definitely brought some tears to my eyes. It definitely made me reflect on the person I was during that time period because in the sense of like I was so focused in on my career and being the best husband at that time in my mind thought I had needed to perform on the baseball field.”
On the flip side, Ashley called David’s story the “greatest underdog story” that had yet to be told. While the book runs through David’s World Series run with the St. Louis Cardinals in 2006, Ashley said it’s just as much about life than it is about baseball.
“People think they know his story. They think, you know, they know him as the scrappy player that had heart and, you know, the little engine that could, you know, David versus Goliath. They think they know his story, but they truly don’t know everything that he went through. And the beautiful part about his story is you don’t need to know anything about baseball to be inspired by Just Enough. In fact, many people that have read it, our publishers, they know zero about baseball. And that — everyone like they call with tears in their eyes. Literally, our publisher is — who is a good friend of ours. She called and apologized. She goes, ‘I’m your friend.’ And I can’t believe I didn’t know everything you went through,” Ashley said.
“And we’re like, don’t apologize. I’m actually grateful to hear this reaction because, this is not a baseball book. This is a book about family, faith, also faith in yourself, and never giving up and perseverance and it can relate to everyone.”
The power couple also may have etched their names into the history books.
“I don’t think there’s been another husband and wife that have dropped a book on the same day,” Ashley said.
