ROCK-SOLID FOCUS
REED HAS ABILITY TO REJECT ADVERSITY AND EXCEL
A.J. Reed’s talent brought him to the Astros. The way he handles situations he doesn’t want to be in might keep him here. He displayed it while cameras, microphones and cellphones cluttered the view from his locker Friday in the clubhouse. He stood at his locker for three interview sessions in 15 minutes. He delivered lines about being excited and “playing hard and doing what I can.” • Reed, 23, didn’t appear interested in being there in that moment, batting 0-for-15 to start his career, but nerves didn’t overcome him. He stood tall, spoke clearly and looked reporters in the eye — the same way he did after Friday’s Astros win, after he recorded his first major league hit, walked and lifted pressure off his shoulders.
His first major league home run came a day later.
On the field and at his best, he’s exciting. As a junior at Kentucky in 2013, he was the consensus national player of the year. The lefthander sent balls soaring, and he dominated on the mound.
But the thing that allows for that excitement is Reed’s steadiness off the field.
That is what propels him.
“He’s able to minimize the periods when things aren’t going great,” said Auburn assistant coach Brad Bohannon, who recruited Reed to Kentucky. “He’s able to limit the valleys. He’ll try to give you the country Indiana (persona), but he’s a smart dude.”
Teammates notice this ability, too. Take Danny Worth, 30, an infielder who spent part of this season in Class AAAwith Reed.
“He’s never, like, afraid,” Worth said. “Guys get nervous in situations. Guys get nervous when they slump. You can see them push the panic button and change.”
How long did it take Worth to learn not to panic? “Shoot, years,” he said. Who else has Worth, a former Detroit Tiger, seen with that quality at a young age?
“Miguel Cabrera,” Worth said. “He’s like that, too.”
Reed, a first baseman for the Astros, hoarded blue ribbons as a boy. Hewanted to see how many he could bring home from school field days. He wanted to win.
Bowled over
He always has been result-obsessed, his mother said. He encouraged her habit of keeping all of his home run balls from the time he was 8 through high school. She keeps them in wicker baskets on a shelf about a foot from the ceiling of her home. For one Christmas, Reed bought his mom two dark brown baskets.
“He knew I needed some storage for them,” Debbie Brownfield said.
As he grew older, he learned the results he wanted took more time.
One early morning, when Reed was in eighth grade, he asked Terre Haute South High School baseball coach Kyle Kraemer for advice: Should he attend the coach’s hitting league, a glorified practice that included different hittingbased competitions each Saturday, or an out-of-state bowling tournament.
Kraemer told Reed to pick baseball, to pass up the immediate gratification of a tournament to practice another sport.
“I’m glad you chose the hitting league over bowling,” Kraemer texted Reed when he received the promotion to the majors. “And I’m glad I got to coach a major leaguer instead of Pete Weber.”
There have been other moments when people around him remember his mother applying another layer of seriousness to his athletics. Brownfield said he began lifting weights in earnest before his ju- nior season in high school, when he hit .478 with 18 home runs and put himself in more scouts’ heads. During his junior year of college, when he became the third unanimous national player of the year in Southeastern Conference history, he spent four to five hours a day in the batting cage.
“He always has worked, but there was a different level of commitment from him and his teammates,” former Kentucky assistant coach Brian Green said. “He drove that.”
Brownfield said her son has never told her what drives his baseball dreams. He doesn’t talk to her about his motivations. Not “even as a little boy, he never carried on conversations about these things.”
“I think it was because he didn’t know his own father,” she said. “I think he wanted to prove something to this guy who didn’t want him.”
Reed’s wife, Shelbie, said the motivation stems from proving something to himself.
“He wants to show he could be the best dad ever one day,” she said, “by pursuing this profession, starting a life, playing baseball.”
Defining summer
Reed’s coaches at Kentucky said his successful junior season, which put him in position to go to the Astros in the second round of the draft, was partially the result of an upsetting summer. He didn’t make the USA collegiate national team roster. The USA coaches told him he needed to hit to all parts of the field and not just pull the ball, a suggestion Kentucky coaches had made.
Reed said Friday this wasn’t related to his later success.
He seems to shrug off low moments.
During the Astros series against the Los Angeles Angels last week, when Reed went 0-for-10 with five strikeouts, he celebrated his seven-month anniversary with his wife one night and had dinner at the Disneyland Hotel with Green another night. He didn’t worry. “It’s almost like he knows he’s going to be good,” Worth said.