Chasing your dreams, if you aim high enough, and work hard enough, will afford you some pretty cool experiences. My name is Alex Hale, and these are my baseball stories...
Area Code Games Part III: The Sick Changeup
"Imagine a stadium that, for six consecutive days and 12 hours per day, holds 400 major-league scouts, 180 college coaches, 75 agents, and a large media contingent. The games start at 8:30 AM, and the day's final game concludes around 9 PM." That's the Area Code Games. It's not played on separate fields. No one is bouncing from one field to the next. For 240 players, they get to go through the toughest job interview a high school player can ever experience.
"A player cannot attend the Area Code Games and hide,"
-UCLA Head Coach John Savage.
It was hard not to be a little starstruck at first. All the guys I had read about in Baseball America were there. By this point, you'd thought you'd see it all. Then you see 8-1st round picks, 2 dozen future major leaguers, on the same field, and you start seeing things you've never seen before.
(2004 MLB Draft 1st overall pick - Matt Bush, who to this day made the single most incredible throw I've ever seen on a baseball field)
Watching a game before us, I saw a shortstop field a relay throw on the left field line. He caught the ball, and was standing flat footed, when someone yelled "ONE!".
What I saw with my own eyes, was the closest thing I'd ever seen to a ball being fired out of a cannon to first base. The ball looked like it was going to hit the ground, and then hit another gear, before hitting the first baseman's mitt. The entire stadium went dead silent, and the shortstop just smiled as he walked back to his position, like "yeah, ya'll ain't seen that $h!t before huh?" He would end up being the #1 overall pick in the 2004 MLB draft, his name was Matt Bush.
As we got ready for our second game, we had started to notice that our coaches were really familiar with some guys, especially a couple pitchers. The players acted like you would with an uncle, or a cousin, laughing, joking, telling wildly inappropriate stories and asking equally inappropriate questions to head scouts of a Major League organization.
Were these kids just really dumb? Maybe they didn't understand proper social etiquette? Or maybe, just maybe, they were really used to having their asses kissed by everyone, including these scouts, because they were just that good...
This brings me to my "Sick Change-Up Story".
By now, we'd seen a lot of guys throw really, really hard. We'd seen guys that I'm pretty sure had never had a bad pitching outing in their lives, carve up the best hitters in the country for 2 innings like it was nothing. And then there was this shaggy haired, skinny lefty on our team, who looked like an emo stoner kind of kid.
Why was he on our team? I don't even remember him from tryouts. Why is he always hanging out with the scouts, and why do the scouts act like high school girls around him, all giddy and chatty?
Naturally guys start talking to him, trying to figure out his story. First someone asks how hard he throws. Fair question right?
"Aww, I don't throw very hard man, but I got a sick change-up, a sick change-up," he says, laughing like he has never had a care in the world.
The guy is 6'0" and 160 lbs soaking wet, he's from Alexander, AR, and by the way, he's a year younger than us. Not only did he get invited to the top high school tournament in the nation, scouts are drooling over him so bad they had to see him early. There's maybe a handful of players in the country who used to get invited to this thing a year ahead of time, and apparently, the skinny lefty from Arkansas who acts like a surfer, is one of them.
Not satisfied with his answer, players kept asking, "Come on man, what's your deal? Do you like, throw 100?"
"Haha, no way, I don't throw very hard, but I'm telling ya, I got a sick change-up."
The rest of us kinda look at each other in the dugout like ummm...Wtf?
So eventually Emo-Shaggy-lefty-mop-top from Arkansas comes in to pitch during the third game. He's younger, so he's only going to get an inning. Don't want to hurt the kid's confidence too bad right?
He jogs in from the bullpen for his inning, at Long Beach State's field, and LOBS a ball to home plate. Like he didn't throw a pitch in the bullpen and forgot to play catch, type of lob.
One of my teammates is stunned, he goes, "is he serious?" There's a radar gun in the dugout one guy is keeping an eye on, providing the dugout with pitch by pitch updates during the warmups: 79....81...83...85....87....he's good to go, no change-up in warmups, no breaking ball, topping out at 87?
How did this kid get here?
Now one thing I had learned by this point, was everyone had their own "thing." Something that they did better than just about everyone else. It may not be obvious, and often times wasn't, but guys didn't get to where we were without something a little special. We were about to find out what that was.
First guy steps to the plate. Shaggy's hat is cocked so far sideways we're not sure if he's trying to be cool or has forgotten he's wearing a hat. The lefty winds up, so relaxed I'm expecting him to throw about 79 mph, then SSSSS-Pop! - 91 mph. The next pitch folds the right handed hitter, which isn't normal for a lefty curveball, strike two. Blows him away with a fastball, 92 mph - strike three. Next hitter, he doesn't get as cute, fastball, fastball, curve - strike three. 2 outs. Finally, he goes fastball, fastball, now 93 mph and then everything he does looks like fastball number 3 is coming, as he proceeds to throw the nastiest, snap-hooking changeup I had ever seen. 73-mph. A full 20 mph off his fastball. Hitter never had a chance...
He walks off the mound, to a slew of guys greeting him at the front step of the dugout, guys who'd all pegged him wrong, he was in fact "A Dude" (baseball term for exceptionally good baseball player). His name was Travis Wood. He was committed to Arkansas and would go on to be a 2nd-Round pick in two years and pitch in 298 games in The Show.
He gets to the dugout, and the first thing he says with a big smile, "I told you! I told you guys! Did you see that change-up?! Filthy!" It made us all laugh, every kid in the world was going out there every day to throw as hard as they could. Travis just wanted to show you his change-up....
Here was the scouting report for Travis out of high school:
"2004 National Showcase - Jun 18, 2004 - PG Grade: 10 (out of 10)
Travis Wood is a slim lean very athletic 6'0/160 LHP from Alexander, AR. He is a very quick armed southpaw who threw 91 mph with life on his two-seam fastball in Tropicana Field. His second best pitch was a sinking very good 73 mph change up and he also throws a real good curveball. He is one of the very best LHP in the 05 class. He is athletic, ran a 6.85 60 and shows very little effort and makes everything look easy on the mound. His command is excellent with all 3 pitches. He can pitch at any college in America and he's All American caliber. Pro scouts are going to follow him closely and they know he will not stay at 160 lbs. This is a very special lefty."
For more on the Area Code Games, here's a great article:
Here's a quick list of guys you may have heard of that were at this tournament, back in 2003:
Homer Bailey
Matt Carpenter
Justin Upton
Lucas Duda
Yovanni Gallardo
Phil Hughes
Mark Trumbo
Matt Tuiasosopo
Zach Putnam
Erik Davis
Ryan Howard
Blake DeWitt
Travis Wood
Mark Rogers
Trevor Plouffe
Greg Golson
Andrew Romine
Scott Elbert
Jackson Williams
Joe Savery
Kyle Russell
J.P. Padron
Those are just the ones that stuck out when I looked it over. 75% of the players in the tournament would be drafted at some point either out of high school or college. Full list click the link below:
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