9 Reasons to Follow College Baseball: Boyz II Men

This is part two of our weekly series on 9 reasons to follow College Baseball.

Boyz II Men: Watching them grow

■ In the Spring of 2004, I often saw a young Mizzou ballplayer sitting in the stands behind home plate during games, charting pitches and having a good time talking to friends. He was a pitcher, but he didn't see a lot of mound time during his freshman year - about 20 innings pitched. I really didn't know much about him.

Then I watched him pitch against Southwest Missouri State in a mid-week contest. He wasn't entirely successful, but his fastball was getting the attention of the batters, the fans and a few scouts in the stands.

This was the first glimmer I had seen of the potential of this young prospect from Chesterfield who had been so highly spoken of as a recruit.

At one point during that season I received an e-mail from someone sharing this kid's last name, telling me that I really needed to learn to spell it correctly, because I was going to be writing it a lot. It was not Sherzer, but Scherzer.

Going into the following season, all of a sudden Tim Jamieson and the expert prognosticators were predicting that Max Scherzer was going to be the leader of the Tiger pitching staff - the kid who had been somewhat wild on the mound, but mostly on the bench.

The rest, as they say, is history.

I've written more than once about the joys of watching young recruits arrive at Mizzou and develop into leaders on the team:

• Jonah Schmidt: I still remember the first time I met Jonah, at the First Pitch celebration prior to the 2008 season. He was like an excited little kid, just thrilled to be there with all these fans and all these former Tigers. Oh wait. That was his dad.
  
  It's been a blessing to watch Jonah develop from a fun-loving all-or-nothing swing for the fences freshman into a fun-loving bat-control specialist, accepting the role of Senior leader. And he still has the best hair on the team.
  
  
• Aaron Senne: One of the small highlights of the season for me was the weekend when Jim Senne introduced to me a young man who had driven all the way to Columbia from Rochester, MN to watch Aaron Senne play ball. Turns out this was one of Aaron's coaches along the way, in Legion ball (I did not catch his name).
  
  As the team played Texas Tech that weekend, I was not sitting far from Aaron's old coach, who had claimed a front row seat for himself. At one point, when Aaron hit a long ball that he stretched into a double, the coach's face lit up like the 4th of July. He turned around to Aaron's dad and I could easily read his lips amid the crowd noise as he shouted, "We taught him to do that! You and I taught him to do that!"
  
  
• Kyle Gibson: I remember coming across a picture of Kyle Gibson when he was just a recruit out in Indiana somewhere. Gibson is probably thankful I lost track of the picture at some point, since it shows him sitting in the dugout hamming it up with his finger up his nose.
  
  My first impression of him as a freshman at Mizzou was that he must have escaped from a Tim Burton movie, all long arms and thin legs and sharp angles. I recall Tex Little referring to him as a "tall drink of water".
  
  Those long limbs stayed long, but they filled out with muscle over his three years at MU, making him the dominant pitcher he was in 2009.
  
  Everyone knew he was going to be great, but he really grabbed the baseball world's attention on the day of his first Big 12 game this season, against the mighty Longhorns.
  

If you follow Mizzou Baseball, or any college baseball team, you'll see a lot of history as it happens. Those recruits that you read about on SimmonsField.com, the ones with the fresh faces and big league dreams, come to MU their freshman year and discover a new world.

They've grown up being the best player on their team - on every team they've played on. Maybe even the best player in their city. They've been treated like a star throughout their growing years.

And then they have to compete with a bunch of other best-in-their-town players for the few open starting positions on the team. And they have to learn how to pitch or hit against Division I competition - and then against Big 12 caliber opponents.

Not all of them make it. Some never make the team. Others rarely crack the starting lineup. But all of them pour their hearts, their lives, their entire beings into the game.

And they get better.

Every year the college baseball fan says good-bye to Juniors and Seniors who they've watched change from those wet-behind-the-ears newcomers into seasoned veteran players. You can see the uncertainty and, yes, the fear, in the eyes of the young ones. And as the seasons pass, you see the deer-in-the-headlights look turn into the eye-of-the-tiger look.

And then another crop of young kids comes along. And we do it all over again.

You don't get that same sort of experience following Major League baseball. When an MLB player gets traded or leaves as a free agent, it can be difficult for the fan to let go.

But when a college player leaves, the fan looks on with an almost parental pride, knowing that three or four years at Simmons Field has turned this kid into a man.

I watch Max Scherzer on TV these days, confident and poised on the mound, or fielding an interviewer's questions with the experienced manner of a professional, and I always chuckle. Because I can still see that kid in the stands, laughing with his friends like a kid.

And it makes me think of the kids I saw in those same seats this season, the ones who were wondering all season whether they'd ever get to play more. They should know that they're in the right place, the place where boys become men and where dreams come true.