University of Tennessee Athletics
Headley has ingredients for future big leaguer
April 10, 2008 | Baseball
By Brian Meehan, The Oregonian??
Portland Beavers outfielder Chase Headley is the highest rated prospect in the San Diego Padres organization.
The elements that distinguish Headley, though, are harder to gauge than his time in the 60-yard dash.
Baseball can grind the most ironclad egos into dust if you die a little too much with each at-bat.
Football, basketball and ice hockey are more demanding athletically, but baseball assails the mind and the heart like no other game. At 23, Headley has built his approach to embrace this fact of life on the diamond.
"Without a doubt, baseball has to be the hardest sport mentally and emotionally to play," said Headley, the third baseman on the Tennessee team that made the College World Series in 2005.
"You know you are going to struggle," he said before the Beavers' 8-3 loss to the Sacramento River cats on Wednesday night. "And you have to just keep going through it. . . . It is going to happen. It is not if, it's when."
"My thing is, and it doesn't always work this way, but I try to tell myself I want to come up in my fourth at bat and whether I am 0 for 3 or 3 for 3, I want to feel like I am 3 for 3. I want to have the confidence not to let previous at bats affect that at bat. I think that is the biggest thing, staying in the moment."
At present, Headley is staying in the moment in Triple A, even though many observers predict he will be in the big leagues soon.
"He has all the right ingredients, not only on the field but off the field as well," said Beavers manager Randy Ready, who managed Headley last year when he was the Texas League player of the year with the San Antonio Missions. "He has a ton of guts. He is very determined. That is part of what his whole game has been to date."
Over the winter, the Padres asked Headley to switch from third base to left field, largely because of the presence of Kevin Kouzmanoff, 26, at third. Padres manager Bud Black called Headley to discuss the change.
"I told him I was all for it if it was something that would give me a chance to be there a little bit quicker," he said.
Aside from an emergency assignment at Tennessee his sophomore year, Headley had never played outfield. He grew up in Colorado Springs, Colo., and played shortstop or pitched. He was all-state three times and played four years of varsity baseball. He was valedictorian of his senior class at Fountain-Fort Carson High School, where almost half the students come from military families at Fort Carson, the Army base south of town.
But Headley was only lightly recruited. The University of Pacific, Brigham Young and Kansas were the biggest schools to approach him. He went to Pacific but transferred to Tennessee after his freshman year.
"I wanted a chance to play for a national championship," he said. "At the time, I didn't think there was much of a chance for that at Pacific."
He had begun switch-hitting in the back yard as an 8-year-old. The summer after his freshman year in high school, he tried it in a game. And he never reverted to hitting right-handed all the time, which is typical of Headley's all-in approach.
"A lot of guys have the ability to do it but when you are younger and used to hitting like .450 or .500, you don't want to turn around and hit .250 from the left side," Headley said. "I stepped right in and to be honest since the first at-bat I had left-handed, I've never taken an at-bat opposite of what I should."
He takes swings both ways every day in practice to keep sharp. He says he has more raw power from the right side but because he gets three times the at-bats from the left side, it evens out. Last season at San Antonio, Headley batted .364 from the right side with five home runs and 23 RBIs. From the left side, he hit .319 with 15 home runs and 55 RBIs.
Ready believes Headley is capable of being a successful big league hitter right now.
"Given the opportunity, yes," Ready said. "A couple of things factor into that, his knowledge of the strike zone, his patience at the plate and his ability to cover all pitches left and right handed."
Ready says the Beavers are surprised at how quickly Headley has adjusted to left field. The biggest challenge is learning to read the trajectory of the ball off the bat and taking a true, efficient path to a putout.
"I can't outrun mistakes in the outfield," Headley said. "I have to make sure I get a good read on the ball and take a good route."
Though Headley has not quite achieved his big league dream, life is good for the former academic All-American from Tennessee. He is playing ball for a living and engaged to be married on Nov. 15 in Knoxville, Tenn., to Casey Scott, a woman he met in college.
"It is an awesome time," he said. "I am excited to come to the park every day. I know there is a chance I could be in the big leagues in the near future but it really doesn't affect me. Obviously, financially it affects me when I am up there. And that is where you want to be. But with the exception of that, it is the same game.
"We get to come out here and play a game for a living. And it's fun . . . I am just going to try to get better every day. I think when the time is right, it will happen."
For Chase Headley, it is no accident that time is coming soon.
