Going with the Pitch: Adjusting to Baseball, School and Life as a Division I College Athlete (Second Edition)

Table of Contents

Editorial Reviews

Dedication

Website

Introduction

Part 1- Freshman Year

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Part 2- Sophomore Year

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Part 3- Junior Year

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Part 4- Senior Year

Chapter 50

Chapter 51

Chapter 52

Chapter 53

Chapter 54

Chapter 55

Chapter 56

Chapter 57

Chapter 58

Chapter 59

Chapter 60

Chapter 61

Chapter 62

Chapter 63

Chapter 64

Chapter 65

Chapter 66

Chapter 67

Chapter 68

Chapter 69

Afterward

Acknowledgments

Appendix

References

Editorial Reviews

"'Going with the Pitch' is a must read for athletes who want to get a mental edge. Ken, during his college career, figured out the same mental skills we teach at Personal Best Mental Toughness Training and applied them to actual, on-the-field situations, which ultimately led to his success and enjoyment. A thoroughly enjoyable and informational read!"

-Pete Moscariello Co-Owner, Personal Best Mental Toughness Training

"Do you want to know what it's like to be a Division I baseball player? Ken Jacobi lived it. If you want to find out what it's like to scrap for hits and live the dream of making it to the NCAA regional, 'Going with the Pitch,' puts you on the field from the first day of fall ball to the last out of the season."

-JJ Cooper, Managing Editor, Baseball America

"Ken Jacobi has captured the essence of what it is to be a college baseball player. He journals his four years at Binghamton and tells the story of wins, losses, workouts, classes, roommates and parties - all the things a college ballplayer deals with. It brought back memories of my own time as a college player. Well done!"

-Dr. Mike Gustafson, Executive Director, National College Baseball Hall of Fame

"If you are connected to college baseball in any way, 'Going with the Pitch' is a must read. Having been around amateur baseball for over forty years I can honestly say that Ken captures the spirit of the collegiate game like no other book written. I would recommend this to any player or his parent who wants to know more about the ins and outs of college baseball."

-Jerry Ford President/Owner, Perfect Game USA, the largest amateur baseball scouting service in the world

'Going with the Pitch' tells the true story of what college sports is like as told from an insider." If you are an aspiring student-athlete this book was made for you. I highly recommend parents, players, and coaches alike read this book. Your perspective afterwards won't be the same."

-Dominick J. Ferraro, CEO, THR College Planning, LLC. 12 years’ experience college recruiting and placement process

Dedication

To my teammates:

Who helped make my experience at Binghamton what it was.

To my mom, Marilyn, and Bob Costanzo:

For both of your continued support throughout college (and after) both on and off the field.

To Tanya Popolizio:

For putting up with my antics, frustrations, and thousands of rewrites over the revision process, as well as for simply being there for me.

To my stepmom, Kathy:

Thank you for caring as much as you did. I am forever grateful.

And to my father, Paul:

This book could have never been written without you, in more ways than one. Thank you from the bottom of my heart for your time and support.

Website

Visit GoingwiththePitch.com: The official book website

Contact the author at GoingwiththePitch@gmail.com

GOING WITH THE PITCH; by Ken Jacobi

Introduction

All great journeys start by leaving home and that too is where mine began. Car is all loaded up, I told my dad as I slammed the trunk door shut, pinning the overflowing boxes of clothes up against the inside of the window. We’re good then, he yelled back from inside as he filled up his mug of coffee. I will need a Binghamton cup soon you know, he commented as he took a sip.

For the next three hours I stared out the window, only breaking my gaze to make nervous small talk so that my folks up front knew I was still breathing. With images of my house still etched into my mind, the car finally came to a halt. I fought the tears away, struggling to process the sudden end of one era and the raw beginning of the next. My dorm is the one on the left, I said to my dad as I unclicked the seatbelt.

Welcome to Binghamton. I turned to see a student dressed in a crisp green polo and light brown khaki shorts who was as chirpy and overly-happy as you’d expect one to be who volunteers to greet new students at the dorms. Can I help with your bags? she asked. I gave a slight nod of acceptance and looked up at the dorm. Holy crap, I said in a hushed voice. Here I am.

The words still reverberate in my mind as if I heard them just a few hours ago. You will be a totally different person when you graduate in four years. These were my stepmom’s final words as she and my dad said their last goodbyes. They hugged me, wished me good luck, and then turned and walked out of my dorm room as if they were just going into the kitchen for a quick snack. But this time they were leaving for good.

The silence poured into my new room as I stoically watched my dad’s SUV pull out of the parking lot and disappear around the bend. It was as if I had suffered a traumatic experience and refused to let my true emotions escape. Instead, I blankly looked out at the parking lot now void of the SUV and sighed, my heart heavy. I then looked down at my packed bags still fully stocked for the journey ahead and took a mental snapshot, instantly cataloging it into my long-term memory. Next to the luggage were my newly purchased textbooks, these roadmaps still in their plastic seals waiting to be used. Not one page had yet to be turned. And those walls, the white walls that I stared at. There was no personality or character yet, a literal blank slate.

These walls were going to quickly be filled in the next few months like a detective pinning clues to a bulletin board. Each item would be connected, the entire map soon enough representing my time as an undergrad. As I sat there alone on my bed, I tried to imagine what college would be like, how all the pieces of the investigation would fit. I knew how the movies portrayed it. I knew what my mind thought it would be like. I knew what the college review sites had to say about it. But in reality I had no idea what I was about to experience. The baseball, the classes, the friends and the memories to come were all still ahead of me. This was day one of my expedition.

My extraordinary experience at Binghamton University, located in the rolling hills of upstate New York, captured a special, life-changing voyage that began with a simple We love you. Best of luck, from my dad. I had known for quite some time that college was quickly approaching, but like that of a distant city skyline which steadily grows bigger and bigger as you approach until suddenly you are off the highway and smack downtown, it came much too quick. Nevertheless, after the hugs, kisses, and handshakes, reality began to set in; I was on my own. Now it was solely my responsibility to become the different, better person my stepmom had prophesied.

Four years later, I could finally confirm her prediction was dead-on.

College was a great time. Being a college student-athlete made for an even better time. That is not to say there weren’t low points, but my four years at Binghamton offered everything that a full college education is supposed to. To see the stark difference first-hand between an incoming freshman who didn’t have these four years and a graduating senior who did, and how the former became the latter was a wonderful transformation to witness.

A freshman could sometimes disguise himself on the field as being older and more mature, but that illusion quickly vanished when around my classmates for even a little while. I came to learn that a freshman just hadn’t had the life experiences of a senior, and no amount of home runs, touchdowns, or three pointers in one semester could change that. It was only when I was a senior looking back that I realized how far removed mentally (and physically) a senior usually is from a freshman. It would take a full four years as a Division I athlete for me to understand this.

This story is about how my time at college transformed me from the young freshman sitting naively on my bed on move-in day into the confident young adult of today. It describes my ride as a student, as a baseball player, and as a person. It is a documented record of how I became that totally different person and how baseball, school, and life were the platforms for this transformation.

Quickly, Binghamton University and upstate New York became my home. The snow-covered hills became the comfortable backdrop to which I awoke each morning. It was a life that became so normal and so consistent that the concept of it ending was incalculable. But as the days became months, and the months turned to years, I slowly began to see that college would not last forever. What I saw when reflecting on my time at Binghamton was a collage, years of scattered memories that only when deciphered and properly organized represented my story of growth, heartache and love.

For four years, I was fortunate enough to play Division I college baseball. Though my story is not filled with All-American accolades and trophies named in my honor, it does convey the very real life lessons and experiences that many student-athletes encounter. Being a college athlete is so much more than just competing on a field. You can only juggle two balls at a time, sports and school, and if you try to juggle a third ball (social life) you’ll surely drop them all, our assistant athletic director used to say during his start of the year speech. Well, we defied this little analogy and juggled five or six balls simultaneously. This story details my juggling expertise.

Coming into college, I had wanted a scholarship for reasons that far outdistanced the obvious one; reduced tuition payments, though I was sure my family was more than happy with this benefit. For me however, the scholarship went above pure financial incentives. It also was a sign of pride that I was good enough to be endorsed with real money by coaches who were paid to win. Having that unwavering support became the key reason I turned down other offers at non-scholarship programs. The scholarship proved that I was a good player, but it also proved that I had someone in my corner.

Like so many northerners, I had dreams of playing down south, where sunny skies and warm breezes would greet me each morning. I am a southerner at heart who just happened to be born in Connecticut, I’d tell people after complaining about an early spring game in the mid-40s. I had always assumed I would right this wrong come college. There were plenty of good baseball colleges down south that also offered the high academic level I sought and saw nothing to prevent me from going down there.

This was the subject of my first lesson: Plans have a way of changing.

As I woke so many mornings to see snow on my Binghamton windowsill, I was constantly reminded that I did not make it down south. Nor did I forget this turn of fate when, in the on-deck circle in a mid-April game, I could see and feel the snow gusting at my face. Binghamton is about as far away from Florida as you can get, geographically and meteorologically. Weeks can go by during the long and cold winter stretch without the sun paying its respects even once. Waking up at exactly 7:52 AM every morning for my first class (every minute of sleep counts in college) and immediately seeing my breath as I exhaled became the norm. Dusting snow off of my car was a daily ritual. Skidding on the icy roads was a common practice. But this was the place where I got to play DI college baseball, where I got to make my pilgrimage up to the Baseball Gods.

I was a talented baseball player, but had a few shortcomings that held me back, all of which became apparent at college. As a result, I lived on a bobbing scale, always one slight touch away from falling out of balance. I had all of the tools and dedication to be a superstar, but also possessed the all too real possibility of mediocrity. Like the slow ticking second hand of a grandfather clock, progression is slow and painful to watch if you continue to stare, but breathtaking if you look only periodically. The minutes in-between each glance are where this book occurs and where I learned how to keep my scale in equilibrium.

Baseball is a game of failure, but wherever I turned I only saw accounts of success; a memoir of a recruit who committed to the University of Florida, a player's experience in the Minor Leagues, a biography of a Hall of Famer. There was nothing to represent the vast majority of the athletic population that wasn’t going to play in the fabled Southeastern Conference. I searched for something more, but found nothing but my own writings and journals staring back at me. Where was the story about the people who had to fight and struggle to succeed? I wanted to hear from someone who didn’t necessarily hit .405 with 22 home runs in college.¹

Most of us aren’t first-round draft picks, and it seemed too often that the few who did sign $2 million contracts were the ones telling their stories. This memoir plays out a much different scenario than that of the rich superstar. It reflects what happens to many thousands of students across time and space. It is the simple story of an 18 to 22-year-old kid just trying to figure out life, while also having to worry about Corporate Finance exams and breaking balls. It is my insight into college baseball, but more importantly, it is my insight into what is it like to be a college athlete.

Going with a Pitch is a learned ability for most. Adjusting to the location and speed of a pitch is not something that comes naturally to a lot of people, myself included. One must be taught and reminded to not do too much with the ball and to instead simply use the angle, direction, and trajectory of the pitch to one’s advantage. In other words, take what is given to you and make the best of it. Not every pitch is meant to be a home run. Understanding how to succeed regardless of where the ball is thrown is something only acquired through time, trial and error, and experience.

This is a long learning process that for most starts as a small child, a baseball card, and a miniature piece of leather stitched together. Baseball is a passion that extracts out the spectacular from the ordinary, but this comes with a cost. Patience, faith and determination must all be pledged without question or regret. The game must be allowed to implant itself in your heart, body, and soul if you are to overcome its many challenges. Only then can one truly be at peace with what is and always will be to me the best game in the world.²

The only real game in the world, I think, is baseball...

You've got to start way down, at the bottom, when you're six or seven years

old. You can't wait until you're fifteen or sixteen. You've got to let it

grow up with you, and if you're successful and you try hard enough, you're

bound to come out on top, just like these boys have come to the top now.

~Babe Ruth, in his 1948 farewell speech at Yankee Stadium³

This text is my journey of leaving home and of the sacrifices and costs I incurred on my excursion through the thick jungle of college and college baseball. It is my story of growing up with the game, and how learning to Go with the Pitch was responsible for me making it out of the wilderness intact and better for it.

PART 1- Freshman Year

Chapter 1

The days leading up to college are like those last few exhilarating moments on a roller coaster before the big first drop. High above the skyline, the slow ascent is nearly complete; the SATs have been taken, the suitemates have been assigned, the bags have already (or nearly) been packed, and for the athletes the recruiting process has already been completed. The clinking chain lifts you ever so slowly, the adrenaline increasing with every ticking second. All that is left to do is make sure your keys are safely in your pocket, take a deep breath and enjoy the beautiful scenery one last time before the ride sets off. And then swoosh, the journey begins.

The summer before college was filled with moments of anticipation that hadn’t yet materialized into substance. Another weekend, another BBQ, another chance to answer Where are you going to school? when asked. The quick reply was, Binghamton University. I could answer in two words and then take my hot dog and move on to the next conversation. When pressed though on how I had ended up choosing BU, I needed a bit more time to answer.

If I had to pinpoint an exact moment I started my path to Binghamton University, I would tell them it would be the day I was admitted to Hopkins School in 9th grade. However, I could argue that my journey actually started four years earlier when my brother, Eric, was admitted into Hopkins. If he hadn't attended, I doubt I ever would have, and if I never made it to Hopkins, it’s a safe bet that I would have never made it to Binghamton, I’d conclude with, still offering just the tip of the iceberg.

Hopkins, a co-ed day school made up of seventh through twelfth graders, rests upon a sloping hill overlooking downtown New Haven, CT and Yale University. Founded in 1660, the brick façade buildings erected throughout the campus presents an Ivy League feel forced into a high school setting. Intended to act as an elite college-prep institution, Hopkins is home to some of the most talented students from across the state.⁴

While at Hopkins, words like budget cuts and deficits were still years away from my vocabulary. Perched on the hill, Hopkins remained in a bubble; an isolated world all to its own. Class sizes were small, report cards were thick (consisting of multiple paragraph evaluations from each teacher), and school spirit was strong. I could never have imagined myself four years later wandering across an expansive state university of 14,000-plus students, where a small freshman introductory class meant only one hundred students.

During the turbulent fall and unrelenting winter my closest friends and I poured over the books, but come springtime baseball moved up in importance. Academics and the stress of getting good grades were always present, hovering over us like the Black Riders from The Lord of the Rings, but baseball provided us the pleasure we so desperately longed for in-between studying calculus and reading portions of Othello. As much fun as baseball was however, by the start of my junior year it was time to start thinking seriously about not just where I wanted to go to college, but about the baseball recruiting process as well. I had no clue what to do. Fortunately, I had my dad there for support. Unfortunately, he began the process as equally inexperienced as I was.

I knew I had to attend showcases, events where a player highlights his skills in front of recruiters. I also knew at some point I would have to contact coaches. Besides that I was a novice to the process, stumbling through online message boards and outdated magazine articles. Like so many other pursuits, I figured that if I was a talented player who worked hard, the offers would miraculously come my way. It did not take long to realize just how many great ballplayers were out there and that the head coach from the University of Florida was not going to magically show up at one of my games.

Come the summer following my junior year, I had a decision to make. Should I play locally or decide to forgo playing on a summer team and instead concentrate on training and touring showcase events across the east coast? With my parent's strong support, we decided for the latter. Compiling a list of which schools would be a good fit for me both academically and athletically, we went about creating a blue print for the summer. It was my responsibility then to contact the coaches and supply them a schedule of where I’d be playing. Sending them my statistics and a video would only initiate the process; I knew the coaches would need to see me in person before they would have any serious interest in me. Of course as it worked out, I did not send any information to Binghamton University.

Getting recruited was a numbers game. How many players were competing for a limited number of spots? How many spots did the coaches need to fill? How fast could I run the 60-yard dash? How tall was I? How much did I weigh? And finally, what were my grades? Throwing these numbers into a formula was a good place to start for sorting out the chaotic landscape of recruiting. Fairly soon into this process I realized some of these numbers were to my advantage, such as my GPA and bat speed, while others were to my detriment, such as my average 5’ 11", 175 lb. frame.

With this, there were two main types of recruiting events that I could attend; the showcases I had initially known about or a newfound idea of showcase tournaments. Showcases gave me the opportunity to display my tools and capabilities by performing various skills upon request, but underscored my slow running time and allowed me to too easily blend into the greater population of players. A showcase tournament on the other hand consisted of playing live games in front of coaches. This allowed me to present more of my intangibles, but was a bit more risky as it was hit or miss which coach was watching at any given point of the game. Plus, my opportunities here were always limited to the chances I was given and the balls that came my way.

Nonetheless, inputting each alternative into the equation, I opted to focus more weight on the showcase tournaments, thinking that these had a higher expected return. This decision unknowingly continued me down my unlikely path towards Binghamton.

Why don’t you come down to Florida to play on this team I am a part of? Josh asked after I ran into him at an AAU event that summer. I had met pitching phenom Josh Zeid, an eventual 10th round pick by the Philadelphia Phillies who threw well over 90 mph, during my freshman year of high school. Blasting an opposite field home run off one of his tailing fastballs, I caught his attention and respect, and soon thereafter we became friends. It has the potential to help you get a lot of exposure, he had told me. After driving to Long Island for a meeting about the team, I decided signing up for any showcase tournament with a lot of coaches in attendance was a chance worth taking.⁵

Once in Florida I quickly realized though that the trip was not going as I had hoped. It became apparent by the second game that I was a bench player on a team which already had their starters predetermined, and was due to get zero exposure. This is a complete waste of a weekend, I complained to my dad. It pained me endlessly to sit on the bench for an entire week while I had to watch other players have the opportunity to showcase their skills. The only good that came of the week seemed to be an automatic invitation to a top showcase run by Perfect Game in Florida the last weekend in May -- my prom weekend. At least I got something out of this, I bemoaned on the flight home.

One of my major priorities for selecting a college was to find a southern school, and I figured the only way to get there was to be seen by southern teams. Thus, throwing more variables and figures into the master equation I decided to skip prom and make the trip down south. I need to go where the exposure is, I told my friends when they asked why I was missing prom.

Any serious athlete will attest that he or she must miss numerous social events, family BBQs, and parties for the sake of sport. Over the years I got used to the fact that I was a baseball player first, and that it required an immeasurable amount of sacrifice. But at the time missing the big dance seemed like more than I was willing to give up. It is going to be a wild night, I would hear in the Commons while lounging around between classes. I spent one night weighing the pros and cons of attending each event when the Baseball Gods did me a kind favor by dropping a bowling ball on the pro-showcase side of the scale. I have to try to do everything I can to get a scholarship, so regrettably I can’t go, I told my disappointed friends.

My dad and I headed to Florida and the Perfect Game Sunshine East Showcase hoping that this trip would turn out a bit better than the previous one. Perfect Game is the premier showcase organization in the market, attracting large numbers of college coaches in both quantity and quality, so it made sense to attend this event as I knew it would increase my exposure. Still, I didn’t like to think about all the sacrifices that were being made -- the time, the effort, and now the huge financial burden put on my entire family. As the plane slowly elevated into the sky I could not ignore the fact that the stakes were suddenly a lot higher. All of my long tosses, lifts, and batting lessons were investments that I had financed over the years. It was now time to begin cashing in on them.

Though I had my flaws at the plate, I was a talented senior and knew I would find a home somewhere. As I took the field on a bright sunny morning under the Florida skies, I was as confident as ever that by the weekend's conclusion I would be well on my way to being admitted to a southern college.

I am not a morning person, so a showcase starting at 8 a.m. didn't flatter me. Running a 60-yard dash at 8 a.m. really didn’t flatter me. I fought the dash with tooth and nail as the exhibition did a poor job measuring my actual game speed and base running instincts. There were ways to improve my slower sixty time, such as taking running lessons, but it came down to prioritizing what I wanted to work on. I wanted to be successful in games and so I spent the majority of my limited time in the batting cage and on the field.

With this approach though, I never fully tapped into my potential in the 60-yard dash. My poor form and approach hurt my speed, while lifting weights tightened up my muscles. I knew what most of the top colleges were looking for in terms of 60-yard dash times, and I simply did not make that cut. It was my Achilles heel, and greatly impacted the evaluation of many coaches. I understood the importance of speed and that coaches needed some type of metric to separate the players, but it seemed cruel that this one device was the primary tool used to detail how fast a player was.

This was never more true than during that first humid morning at the Sunshine East showcase when the race seemed much closer to a 90-yard trot. The sensation of running in slow motion encompassed my entire body as I tried mightily to get my heavy legs to churn through what felt like a pond of water. As I crossed the finish line, I knew I was in trouble. The board flashed a 7.5. Even for me that was bad, and I knew it was a death sentence for an outfielder. Due to time constraints everyone will only run it once this morning and that’s it, the organizer announced. I felt like I had gotten knocked out in the first round of a game show. I had barely been there long enough for the crowd to know my name before getting banished. I am done, I thought to myself. No one is going to recruit me now. And then the Baseball Gods, having gotten in a few laughs, released their grip on me. Anyone who wishes to run again will get the chance at the end of the two day showcase, the organizer followed up with.

The rest of the weekend passed by fairly uneventful. It was excruciatingly hot and after two days of games under the sun, my body was one big cramp. As I was packing my bag and making my way out of the dugout on Sunday evening, I heard a loud voice announce the words that changed everything. Anyone who wants to re-run their sixty can do so now on field number four. Great, I thought. It hurts to walk, my hamstrings have contracted to the size of walnuts, and I haven’t slept in three days. How am I possibly going to run sixty yards, and do it faster than the morning before?

Still, I couldn’t leave the showcase with a 7.5 recorded time, so there was little choice but to try to run the cursed race again. And as I started to run, my body magically began to loosen up, almost as if some invisible force was pushing me along. At the finish line I saw 6.9 flash on the screen. However, the delay from when I saw the 6.9 to when I actually finished the race caused the screen to flicker 7.03. I decided to run it again. This time I ran a 7.09. Again I ran it and finished with a 7.03. I knew I had a sub-7 race in me so I trotted back to the start line to try again. There was no one else left running at this point so I had the whole track to myself. It was my goal to break the 7-second mark and I wasn’t leaving Florida any other way.

In my last attempt I trotted in at 7.27. I was mentally and physically done, but still had no interest in quitting. As I started to jog back towards the starting line the coach running the dash called me back. What were you clocked throwing? he asked. That’s not bad, he said after I gave him a satisfactory answer. You know, we have an ‘invite only’ showcase later in the summer in Wareham, Massachusetts. You should come. Though I never did run a sub-7 race at Sunshine East, I left the field thinking I had won a moral victory by being persistent. I could not have imagined how much more important it was than that.

The rest of the summer flew by as I started talking to a mix of Division I and Division III schools, each of which sent me their pamphlets and literature in bucket loads. Gathering information was not a problem once I knew where to look. Facebook, YouTube and online blogs exploded onto the recruiting scene, and combined with college rankings and review sites, I was provided with nonstop material to absorb.

Never before was there so much accessible information regarding the schools, players, and coaches. Instead of hiring a company to film me and send a video across the country I could now have my dad press record on the digital camera and upload the video instantaneously to an unlimited number of viewers on the internet. Instead of going to the library to research US News & World Report school rankings, I could simply create an online account and with a click of the mouse have more information at my fingertips than an entire library volume. Instead of writing a long handwritten letter to a coach, I could now email twenty different coaches with twenty slightly different notes about my upcoming schedule within the same night.

Of course this tool could also become a serious detriment as now coaches acquired ten times the number of videos compared to just a few years prior. There was also now so much information online that no matter what topic I looked up someone was always criticizing it and installing doubt in my mind. And there were now online photos and comments that had to be censored and monitored which before would have been kept private.

Still, I began to understand the process better as time progressed and learned such things as the distinction between what real interest was and what being part of a mass mailing list was. Letters were slightly above meaningless. Personal emails were good. Phone calls were even better. Invitations to visit were the best. I also spoke with my high school baseball Coach, Bob Hart, and my guidance counselor to discuss which schools made sense for me; city versus suburb, liberal arts versus business, large school versus small school. All questions that a year prior I had never even considered asking myself.

As the fall of senior year approached and school began, I had my list narrowed down to four or five schools that had shown serious interest in me. Still, even with all the calls and letters I was receiving on a daily basis, I could not fully grasp the concept that they needed me. No matter how good a coach is, without bringing in top talent he will not survive more than a few seasons. I was always under the faulty mindset that the coaches who were interested in me were doing me a great favor. I never considered the fact that I would be doing the coach a great favor as well by going to his school. Because of this insecurity, I wasn’t aggressive enough when talking with a potential future head coach. Thus, I failed to continually ask important questions that should have been asked, such as how many outfielders he was planning on bringing in, for fear that I would push away the coach. I was so concerned about me needing them that I lost sight that the recruiting process was a two way street.

Things were still very much up in the air when I attended my last showcase of the summer in Wareham, Massachusetts, home of the Cape Cod Baseball League Wareham Gatemen, and location of the ‘invite only’ showcase I received from Florida all those months back. And there, for reasons only known to the Baseball Gods I had one of those weekends where everything went right. I put three balls over the fence in batting practice with the ease of a sprinter running downhill, and continued to rake the ball throughout the scrimmages.

I sometimes wondered what would have had happened if I had just an average weekend there, but the fact was that I didn’t have an average weekend. I had a brilliant weekend, and the assistant coach from Binghamton University, Coach Mike Collins, was there for the entire show. Hello this is Ken, I said into my cell phone on the drive home. Ken, this is Coach Collins from Binghamton. Is now a good time? Sure, I responded, struggling to remember why the foreign name Binghamton sounded familiar. And then I remembered; a seemingly random tournament I had played there two years prior as a sophomore in high school.

Binghamton is in the rust belt, and is one of those places that only looks beautiful in grainy black and white pictures dating back to 1943, when manufacturing was still king. Like so many American towns the city had suffered hard times in more recent years as business after business departed for greener pastures. When I arrived for the tournament I saw the aftereffects; buildings with no tenants lining the streets and underfunded public services. The college looked like a plain manila envelope with no character and I left the weekend feeling sorry for those who had to stay there permanently.

Don’t discount them, my mom told me the next day after the phone call. They have a great reputation academically, the baseball team is clearly heading in the right direction from what I’ve read, and there may be scholarship money available. Thus I decided it was well worth using Binghamton as one of my five official visits, as defined by a planned trip financed at least in part by the school.⁶

There, I got to see the college town from a student’s perspective, and my opinion shifted dramatically. Despite the pitfalls, I was able to see myself thriving there. And as time passed I realized that the city and its surrounding areas actually had a lot to offer and contained many hidden gems disguised into the dreary surroundings. More importantly though, I immediately connected to the people I was going to be spending the majority of my time with; the baseball players.

It was a Sunday night when I took my visit and so most of the student population was huddled up in their rooms in recovery mode from the weekend. It was scramble time for them with papers and exams to worry about that on Friday night had seemed so far away. I met the younger baseball players living in the dorm and introduced myself to what turned out to be my future friends. I did my best to put on a great first impression, but to those guys I was just another recruit in a long line of potential players. Most of them just said hello out of courtesy and went back to their rooms.

One of the few players though who didn’t have a lot of work, Ryan James, was kind enough to bring me to the baseball house. There, in downtown Binghamton I laid my eyes on the infamous Baseball House, known simply as the RE. I walked up the red creaky fire escape for the first time, wondering why we were using this entrance, but was too afraid to inquire any further.

It was one thing to see the freshmen players living together in a dorm room. It was another to see the juniors and seniors all together in their house. The dichotomy was readily apparent between how nervous I was and how comfortable and at home they were. The guys had set up stadium seating with the couches and were drinking beers and chatting while watching the St. Louis Cardinals - Florida Marlins playoff game. This is exactly what I’d being doing if I was home right now, I thought. To me that was a very good sign. I think this is a place I can see myself fitting in at. I can see spending four years here, I said to Coach the next morning. After the meeting, I headed back to Connecticut with a totally different attitude about Binghamton and the baseball program. I’m glad I decided to take the visit because if I hadn’t, I wouldn’t have considered Binghamton as an option, I told my parents once I got home.

I weighed the pros and cons for a number of days trying to figure out if Binghamton was the right place for me to play baseball. The town and climate clearly had issues, and I didn’t think the baseball field was up to DI standards. Still, the guys on the team looked like good people, it was a reputable academic school, I had a scholarship offer, and I was assured on my trip that in the next few years there would be a brand new turf stadium. (I graduated with the stadium still two years away from completion.) The school also had an amazing modern Events Center for training and a great weight room. The hitting cages were among the best in the northeast. It definitely looked like a place I could flourish at.

On a late November afternoon, just hours before the signing deadline, I went to my kitchen table and signed my National Letter of Intent with Binghamton University. At the end of the day passing on all that Binghamton had to offer for the off chance that I would get into an Ivy League school or just to avoid the cold weather was too much to give up. The generous scholarship offer and guarantee that I would be admitted into the well-regarded School of Management were the clinchers.

It seemed surreal signing the form. The years of hard work and stress had paid off. I was now excited to finish up my senior year and get started at Binghamton. I had a coach waiting for me who really liked me, and the scholarship to back it up. I expected great things.

But plans and expectations have a way of working out much differently than anyone can anticipate. Unbeknownst to me, Coach Collins, who had done the bulk of the work to recruit me, was on his way out at Binghamton. Before I had even taken one step on campus, my primary supporter had departed.

Chapter 2

I sat staring at my new computer screen as Microsoft Windows loaded up. Over the years I would learn that a college student’s abuse of a computer tended to significantly shorten the machine’s lifespan. A laptop can only withstand so many illegally downloaded movies, Pitbull songs pulled off the shared network, spilled drinks, and webpage views of offshore sites that had can’t miss Cliffs Notes on the book you almost got to read. By senior year in fact our computers had become so deathly slow that professors stopped giving in-class online quizzes because half the students needed thirty-minutes just to boot up their laptop. But those last dying days for my computer were far off, and before I knew it my new computer was up and running, successfully passing all of the Binghamton University security checkpoints.

As my computer finished booting, I patiently waited for my suitemates to arrive. Browsing aimlessly around the Binghamton online portal, it dawned on me that I had nothing to do. There were no responsibilities, commitments, paper deadlines, or practices. I had no worries, drama, or bills to concern myself with either. I knew this could only last for about two minutes, but as I clicked on the random link about the blue bus service used to get around campus, I embraced the calmness. Put five other guys in my suite, twenty-five guys on the field, four classes on my schedule, and seven nights a week in the dorms without any parents, and I knew that soon I would have a very full life.

This didn’t mean however that I was free from such burdens as anxiety and uncertainty, feelings very much hardcoded in with the day one blues. Everything was new, which consequentially made everything feel uncomfortable. As I walked around campus during my first few days the buildings and flow of students in and out of the Lecture Hall, which housed the largest classrooms, seemed surreal. No matter how many stereotypical college images were thrown at me, it still didn’t seem like it was my time to be there.

Some students experience the Freshman 15, a phenomenon used to describe freshman putting on fifteen pounds in their first semester due to a change in diet and lifestyle. I ran into something quite different, "the Freshman Fall. A play on words, I used it to describe a freshman’s struggle during the first (autumn) semester of college. Whenever I began to struggle and fall," I couldn’t help but dream of being back in high school, walking through the familiar halls with my best friends. Reflecting back on the safety and shelter that I felt in those corridors, my homesickness would shrivel away, if only for a moment.

During the day I was fine, but at night when the lights were dimmed in the dorms and the noise of five guys bustling around the common room had subdued for a moment, I would think about my family and wrestle with the fact that they were not in the next room over. The plunge into loneliness soon ceased as new memories and people filled in the empty space, but the silence of my first few nights at school was deafening.

Four years later as a graduating senior sitting in the visitor’s dugout during my last game, I struggled to form a solid picture in my mind of the freshman who felt so far from home during the Freshman Fall all those years before. That person was so long gone that the best I could do was close my eyes and see the shadow of a kid stumbling into the dorms on move-in day with boxes full of folded clothes and unassembled IKEA furniture.

At home I had my parents there to push me and look over my shoulder, but as a new member of the Binghamton community there was no one (yet) in my corner to steer me back on the path if I ever took a misguided step. And with our intense fall schedule, it was easy to miss a stone while bouncing from one rock to another across the stream. We as freshmen baseball players quickly tired from our fast paced lives, finding ourselves in a precarious situation. On one front we were eager to venture out and see the (college) world, yet like a pup having just left the litter, were still unsure of what the limitations were in this new landscape.

No matter how tired we were from a day of Economics 101 and Business Statistics, followed by Fall Ball, we found a way to muster enough energy for our new social lives, whether that meant going out for a few drinks or simply playing Halo in the dorms. It was in these moments where we began to get comfortable with each other and with the concept of college in general. Through all of the hardships that came with being a freshman, we still had fun, genuine college fun.

This constant wear and tear could catch up to you quickly however and before any of us knew it guys were caught sleeping on the couch instead of being at class taking their quiz. I was amazed to see that even by October kids were skipping classes, failing exams and missing assignments, but understood to some extent how difficult a transition it was for most. Schoolwork for me was luckily the easiest part of the change. While other kids were struggling to write essays, including my suitemate’s infamous essay about Gladatorial Combat (a semi-fictitious word at best and certainly a bad choice to use as a title for a college essay), it was life as usual for me in that department.

The social scene was a bit more strenuous of an adjustment to make. My friends and I enjoyed our time in high school, but we always thought that college would be some sort of Holy Trinity for us where we could go out, meet people and party without having to worry about all the logistics that made these activities a nightmare while at home. We somehow failed however to consider little things like getting up early for classes or practice the next day, actually getting into bars as a minor, and spending money that we didn’t have on beverages.

It didn’t take long for the six freshmen ballplayers put up in the suite together to form a bond and tackle these problems together. Within an hour of solitude following my family’s departure, my suite quickly sprang to life as five guys and their families invaded the area with all in the move-in stereotypes imaginable; Gatorade® 24 packs, complimentary Binghamton Student Life reusable shopping bags, and Walmart mirrors to hang on the back of the door. After the first few transitional nights, the central room was rarely quiet again, even at 3 a.m. when I was trying to sleep. It seemed someone was always awake, and I quickly learned that in college your sleeping pattern is much different than in the real world. In a flash these five strangers became my best friends as we shared the same collective life and rode the same up and down roller coaster.

From poor tests in the classroom, to break ups in the dorms, to slumps on the field, we were there to help each other out and pick each other up. I was thankful I didn’t have the pressure and stress of trying to find kids who shared my interests, as they were found for me. Joining my soon-to-be best friend Jeff Dennis in the suite was Kyle Klee, Tom Carberry, Bobby Warner and Michael Quinn, my roommate and other soon-to-be best friend.

Quinn embodied the idea that baseball players, by default of failing seven out of ten times, are humble. Unlike the stereotypical jock, Quinn was able to partake in long talks about foreign policy and our current welfare system, in which baseball never came up. But, he could also spend hours dissecting our team and where exactly we needed to improve. When he left the program two years later, a part of me was crushed. By my junior year however, with only three of the original six freshmen remaining in the baseball program, I had already accepted the inauspicious fate of our recruiting class.

The six of us formally initiated our friendship the first night we were all together without our parents, and didn’t look back from there. Heading downtown for the first time, the rundown city that I had remembered during my visit was now sprawling with college students, food stands, and a night life. Though from my fresh viewpoint downtown appeared to be bustling, our version would be a cruel joke to someone from a real city. It was just one street with a row of bars and clubs, but on those first nights out I could have sworn I was in Vegas.

The Baseball House was within walking distance to the bars so we headed there first. The location was really the only redeeming quality of the house at 23 Henry St., now known to all as the RE. The place was a dump consisting of every negative connotation you associate with a college frat; beer cans scattered everywhere, three day old pizza petrifying on the kitchen table, and bathrooms which would repulse cockroaches. An expert real estate broker could find no better place to house fifteen college baseball players.

The inaugural walk downtown afterwards was an absolutely terrifying experience. I didn’t look twenty-one and had no clue how I was going to get into a bar. Little did I know that at a select few favorite spots being twenty-one was encouraged but by no means necessary. We eventually fell in love with one particular hangout named Uncle Tony’s as it met our three criteria; we could get into the bar, we didn’t have to pay a cover, and there were a lot of girls. That they religiously played Journey’s Don’t Stop Believing and Bruce Springsteen’s Glory Days only added to the good vibes, as did the fact that it became the de facto BU athletics’ watering hole. The moments in the bar blurred by, but one would be hard-pressed to find a more fond memory of college.

Huddled up in the corner of the dimly lit bar on night one, I took note of how comfortable and confident the older guys seemed to be with their mannerisms. It was as if I was looking into a snow globe, watching little figures interact in their world. I felt like an outsider. People huddled around the upperclassmen as if they were sharing some thrilling story about their safari in Africa over the summer. All of the freshmen refused to budge from the corner, not ready for casual mingling yet. Soon though, we too would make our footprint and by the end of the fall it wasn’t as easy to pick out the freshmen anymore.

And then of course, there was adjusting to Baseball. I never formally heard that Coach Collins, the man who had recruited me, left but assumed the rumors to be true when I read a news article that he had taken the head coaching job at Bloomsburg University, a Division III college in Pennsylvania. Little did I know at the time, but the change in coaches would have profound consequences for my baseball career. The person I had in my corner had simply departed. Worse, due to a small back injury which I sustained during the fall of my senior year, Coach Collins was the only one of the coaches who had seen me play before signing day. By the time Head Coach Sinicki saw me on a baseball diamond, I was already a committed Bearcat.

The replacement for Coach Collins was Coach Ryan Hurba. I could tell immediately that I’d get along with Hurba, but that far from proved if baseball-wise we came from the same school of thought. Anyone will attest that the coaching staff has a huge influence on a team’s character and make up. With the arrival of Coach Hurba our team, unknowingly at the time, would dramatically change. It was not made better or worse but it soon became apparent that the direction of the team was pointed at a new target. I had fit very much in line with the prototypical player Collins brought into the program and related to the culture he seemed to pass down to the team. Although our head coach was still there, the change in assistant coach profoundly and lastingly changed this dynamic.

As freshman year progressed I started to realize that my class was in a gap year. Sinicki had been at Binghamton University for the previous thirteen years and helped the program transition to Division I. Understandably he had an unwavering loyalty to his remaining older players, guys who were with him during the process of converting from a Division III team into a respectable Division I program. Coach Hurba, on the other hand, was brand new and obviously would put his faith in his new recruits as they came into the program. Thus, my class was too young to be among the veterans in Sinicki’s corner and too old to be among the new recruits in Hurba’s corner. It was a potential recipe for trouble.⁷

This all too common story of a regime change seemed like an isolated event occurring in lonely upstate New York. I mistakenly thought I was in a unique situation and began to close myself off to the world when I realized the precarious situation I found myself in. But as I met more players in similar situations throughout the years, I realized that there was nothing exceptional about my position. It was being repeated all across the country. Whenever a new coach came in, he instinctively wanted to play his players, who were usually described as having God-like talent. He needed to prove quickly that his guys could get the job done, and it made him look good when his guys succeeded. There were always players caught in the middle that had to push harder to succeed.

Being stuck in the middle would become a recurring theme. I was a talented ballplayer but like so many Minor League lifers, was perpetually one break away from being called up. Even many of the great ballplayers need a gentle push or two from the Baseball Gods. Having been a college student-athlete for barely two months however, I did not grasp the cracks in the engine under the hood of the car. On the surface everything looked nice and shiny, but underneath there was an accident waiting to happen.

Chapter 3

The Golden Age of baseball was a time of simplicity and purity when TV deals, arbitration, and corporate luxury boxes didn’t exist, and where mystique and folklore were allowed to grow rampant. Having finished high school baseball just a few months earlier I had very much lived in my Golden Ages, experiencing the greatest moment in my baseball career up to that point by defeating high school rival Hamden Hall in the Divisional Championship. The victory had rejuvenated many of the positive feelings that a four-year-old feels playing catch for the first time. Striking out the last batter from atop the mound in a relief appearance was permanently glued into my mind as what baseball should make me feel and experience inside.

After the game I sat with my friends on the field and watched the warm sun melt away the last of the day. We refused to take off our grimy jerseys because we all feared the same thought; the next level will be different. We were not sure how, but we all worried that the innocence of the game would disintegrate with the new pressures of college baseball.

As I walked back to our locker room a champion, I felt satisfied that I had found such a content mental state. There had been days not so long before when I despised waking up and going to the field. Perhaps I put too much stress on myself or perhaps as a teenager I simply became more interested in hanging out and going to the movies than of going to the field to play two. I had wanted to quit, but with some persistence decided to see how I felt once I got to high school.

It had taken a lot of work, time, and effort to rekindle the flame that had almost been smothered. Even as a young teen I knew that once the light burnt out, it almost never relit. Being so close to hitting that low, I broke down and cried once at home after the championship game. I was obviously happy about being part of one of the most remarkable comebacks of my career, erasing a major late inning deficit, but more importantly I recognized that there was nowhere else in the world that I would have rather been than on that field.

Baseball was fun. Like a little child looking forward to Christmas morning I genuinely enjoyed what I did every day. The teenager from