Yahoo Sports senior MLB analysts Jake Mintz and Jordan Shusterman talk with the Kansas State University shortstop about how his major league dream began and when he found out he could get paid to play baseball. Subscribe to the “Baseball Bar-B-Cast” podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you prefer.
Video Transcript
It seems like you’ve had ambitions of becoming a professional baseball player for quite some time.
So when, when, when did that dream begin?
How far back does it go?
When Ken said, “Yes, I’m going to be a professional baseball player while I’m still in high school.”
To be honest, I was a switch hitter.
For me, I just wanted to hear about it until I got the offer.
So our Hit-Ko-Ko-Way scouted me as a switch hitter. I remember I wanted to be a switch hitter as a major leaguer. But I didn’t have as much power as Jace, so I had to give up. I want to hit home runs, but I can only hit home runs from the right side.
So I removed the one that was stuck to the right side.
And then, I guess in my junior year, I was like, “Okay.”
Well, you can do this.
absolutely.
It’s funny because when I was a senior in high school, I didn’t know you could make money in this sport.
I continued volunteering until I reached high school, probably around second or third year of junior high school.
So I thought, I thought, I can do this.
But how do we survive?
And then everything started to come together and they were like, “Oh, yeah, they got paid and someone signed a $100 million deal.”
And I thought, Oh my goodness, that’s exactly what’s happening now.
So, do you have an older brother?
You played basketball in college, right?
What was it like knowing that there was someone out there who knew some of the things it takes to be a successful baseball player and could follow that same path?
That was amazing.
To be honest, my dad never played baseball, he ran track and played football.
So, my older brother played baseball and that helped me out a little bit. He was kind of my role model and I looked up to him and felt like if I wanted to be a defensive player in baseball, this is what I had to do.
So having him play baseball and, like I said, being a role model, really helped me and motivated me because whenever we would train together, we would always compete against each other and I always wanted to be better than him.
