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NOBODY SAID WISDOM comes disguised as something warm and fuzzy.

Heck, it’s usually quite the opposite. Usually, it’s dark and painful and an experience that you wouldn’t imagine sharing for all the money in the world.

Until, that is, you realize you’ve attained it. Then, you can look back at being 22 years old and getting discarded by the only profession you ever cared for as being a good thing. Then, as Liberty High product Chris Gruler says now, recalling how you were betrayed by your most valuable asset — the one that had netted you $2.5 million — doesn’t lead to irrational thoughts.

“Two years ago, when I was going through my spell, I remember saying that I’d give my bonus away in a heartbeat to be a starting pitcher in the major leagues,” Gruler says. “Now?”

Now? Well, it’s amazing what time and tough love can do. Then, Gruler was an angry, confused bonus-baby-turned-bust with a drinking problem. Now, at 25, he comes across as a grateful and self-assured professional who’s trying to use his experience as a vehicle to teach others.

He’s doing so through ProtégéBranding.com, a business he has founded with close friend Erik Averil that seeks to help athletes maximize the value of their name. And at least initially, this latest venture seems to carry as much promise as Gruler’s baseball career once did. Former All-Star second baseman Roberto Alomar and track star Allyson Felix already are counted as clients.

“We wanted to create streams of income through athletes through the Internet,” Gruler said by phone from his Arizona-based offices. “A lot of athletes don’t understand the value that their name has, and that’s something we’re trying to capture from every one of our clients. We deal with Web development, unique memorabilia, and content that we can sell to help the athlete connect with fans on a personal level. It’s been quite an educational process.”

Yes, but nothing like the one he received in the days that followed the unceremonious end of his baseball career. That moment came when Gruler’s cell phone rang on a February afternoon in 2006, and the voice on the other end, a representative of the Cincinnati Reds, delivered harsh news.

“You’re finished!”

It was, Gruler says now, his nightmare come to life. Four years earlier, the Reds had made him the third overall selection — behind Pittsburgh’s Bryan Bullington and Tampa Bay’s B.J. Upton — in baseball’s amateur draft. He sported a 96-mph fastball and a curve that was so devastating that Reds Hall of Fame catcher Johnny Bench said it was better than fellow Hall of Famer Tom Seaver’s.

But Gruler’s right shoulder derailed his route to Cooperstown. He noticed it was tired after his first professional season, and it never felt right again. He had multiple surgeries to fix the problem, only to run into more complications. The bottom line, he acknowledges now, is that “my shoulder was unable to hold up to the rigors of professional baseball.”

And in the immediate aftermath, Gruler says he couldn’t deal with that reality. He says he developed a drinking problem “as a way to mask my pain,” that he couldn’t sleep, that his mind never stopped racing. It was a runaway pattern that didn’t change until, at his parents insistence, he started journaling his feelings.

The result, he says, was “250 pages of jibberish,” much of which he says will be recounted in a book he’s in the process of writing. But more important than the content in the book were the lessons he came to realize, the ones he is trying to apply in this new stage of his life.

“He’s always been a compassionate, genuine guy, but some struggles he’s gone through have helped him understand that you’re not defined by the sports you play but by the character you build,” Averil says. “To see him go from being a first-round draft pick to a solid human being who looks out for other people’s best interests, that’s really what it’s all about.”

That discovery also seems to have restored Gruler’s good feelings for the game, and that, in turn, seems to have refueled his passion for life.

“The whole part of starting this business was to help other athletes not have to go through what I went through,” he says. “We want to set them up so that when their sport is gone, they have other streams of income and a sense that what they did mattered. My own personal experience has played a huge role in where we are. Would I give all the knowledge I have now for a chance to pitch in the majors? I can’t really say I would.”

Clearly, wisdom is a pretty powerful thing.