Derrike Cope was planning on professional baseball being his career. The Chicago Cubs and Baltimore Orioles were scouting Derrike during his high school days, but Derrike's father Don insisted he take the scholarship that Whitman College offered. In 1978 with Derrike playing catcher in a collegiate baseball game in Walla Walla, Washington, his plans for a baseball career immediately changed. He went to retrieve a wild pitch and when he turned to throw back to the base, his knee gave way. It turned out that the medial collateral and anterior cruciate ligaments were severed.