Friday, June 26, 2009
Pulaski's oldest player off to nice start
MATT GENTRY The Roanoke Times
Brandon Haveman (left) is introduced with the rest of the Pulaski Mariners at Calfee Park in Pulaski. Haveman, who is 23 years old and the Mariners' oldest player, was a 29th-round draft choice out of Purdue University earlier this month.
Ray Cox covers recreational, high school and college sports in the New River Valley. If you have information you’d like featured,
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Ray Cox
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Brandon Haveman's professional baseball debut arrived in the bottom of the ninth inning of a game that looked as though it was over before it was over.
The Pulaski Mariners, for which he is newly employed, were wrapping up a melancholy opening night of the Appalachian League campaign five runs in arrears to the Danville Braves. Haveman, a 29th-round draft choice out of Purdue University earlier this month, entered as a pinch hitter.
The Mariners, victims of 17 strikeouts and self-victimized by four errors, were down to their last out.
Haveman, a left-handed hitter listed at 5-foot-9, 165 pounds, had two strikes on him when he smoothly stroked a single up the middle off right-hander Tyrelle Harris, who had entered the game at the start of the frame. That delivered Julio Morban, aboard with his second single of the evening, with the third and final Mariners run of the night. Cesar Fuentes followed with Pulaski's 18th strikeout and that was that.
In the lengthy postgame clubhouse seminar conducted by manager Jose Moreno and his coaches, the list of positives to go over was not extensive. Haveman's pinch-hit RBI would have qualified.
At age 23, he's the oldest player on a young team. The Zeeland, Mich., native was a four-year college player, the first two at Lake Michigan College, a junior college.
When the Mariners picked Haveman, they were drafting a hitter. That's what he's done at every level. As a junior in high school, he hit .478. Juco All-American as a freshman, he hit .470 with eight doubles and five triples. He led Purdue both years with his bat and was named All-Big Ten this spring. He was league champion in batting average overall (.422) and in conference games (.464) as a senior.
A baseball is not all he can hit.
"I was around a scratch golfer in high school," he said. "Finished fourth in the state high school tournament for the biggest schools as a senior."
Yet there was never a question what he would do in college.
"I had a few offers to play college golf, but I wanted to play baseball," he said.
When college was through, he expected to be drafted. The family stayed near the phone as the process unfolded.
"It was more anticipation than nerves," he said of his emotions that day. "There was definitely some anxiety. It was definitely anxiety, stuff like that, more than nerves."
When Haveman had his first pay-for-play hit earlier this week, his contract was seven days old.
Haveman isn't a big guy, especially for an outfielder, and he doesn't hit with much power: six home runs in two years at Purdue. He has no lack of confidence, though, and not in an obnoxious way. An illustration was provided when somebody mentioned he must have been pretty smart to get into Purdue.
"I don't know if it's smart," he said. "I think it was more baseball talent than anything."
They wouldn't dispute that at Purdue, where he's now the career hitting leader with a .399 average. The glove he made good use of, as one error as a senior indicated. Haveman can run some, too. He was 8-for-9 in stolen base attempts this spring.
On the Mariners, he fits in with bat, arm and feet.
"We've got a lot of fast guys," Moreno said, "Dwight Britton, Jarrett Burgess, Brandon Haveman, Julio Morban. We've got the kind of team to do the little things."
For a small-ball devotee such as Moreno, Haveman is just his kind of player.
From the player's standpoint, that's good. On the other hand, there is always pressure on the manager to play the guys with the larger contracts, the dudes who went in the high rounds, the ones who commanded the handsome signing bonuses, the ones the organization has the heavy investment in.
Guys such as Haveman have more to prove than the big-money boys. That's just the way it is.
A pinch-hit, two-out RBI in a game that was all but in the books is a good start.
