Expect Realmuto to catch on quickly at first base
MIAMI MARLINS
JUPITER – The Miami Marlins’ grand spring-training experiment — teaching catcher J.T. Realmuto to play first base — moved into the more tangible realm of exhibition games recently. It went smoothly and will continue apace over the next week and a half of spring training and into the regular season.
The experiment is, of course, hardly grand or daring or all that adventurous. The consensus from the Marlins is that Realmuto, who converted from the infield to catcher when the Marlins drafted him in 2010, is plenty athletic enough to make that transition and play first on occasion.
Need proof of that athleticism? There’s plenty. Just ask those who knew him as a kid growing up outside Oklahoma City.
“We were loaded with cats,” said Gary Rose, the coach of Realmuto’s state title-winning football team at Carl Albert High in Midwest City, Okla. “J.T. was the No. 1 cat.”
Realmuto’s schoolboy legend has only grown with the passage of time. Yes, he was a three-sport athlete — football (quarterback), basketball (power forward), baseball (shortstop) — and a legit Division I college football prospect. But more than the gaudy statistics, what stands out years later are the ridiculous things he did on the field.
Wayne Dozier, who won five baseball state championships at Carl Albert, recalls one particular play in a state semifinal Realmuto’s junior year. An opposing batter sent a grounder to the shortstop-third base hole, and he was so sure he had a single to left field that he rounded first base, as one does.
Turns out, Realmuto reached the ball and threw to first for the out.
“He thought there was no way J.T. got to the ball,” Dozier said. “That’s how deep in the hole he went and how strong his arm was.”
Chad Carman, a former Phillies minor-leaguer, was three years ahead of Realmuto in high school and had heard the stories about the hotshot middle-schooler coming up.
“Then he comes into the locker room,” Carman said, “and as he’s every bit as big as all of us seniors.”
Realmuto, Carman said, took to the high school game immediately. Realmuto’s freshman season in the spring of 2007 started with a hit streak of 20-plus games. It ended with a state title in which Realmuto — younger than almost everybody else but playing shortstop and batting in the middle of the order — got the big hit, a two-run double in what had been a scoreless game.
There are tales from the gridiron and hardwood, too, like the time Realmuto the QB carried the ball 38 times for 200 yards in an upset win over a top team in the state. In basketball, Realmuto said, his job was to defend the biggest guy on the other team.
“You hate to see your quarterback lower his shoulder and run over people, but he did that all the time,” Rose said. “No one ever caught him. If he got loose, they never caught him.”
But baseball was always No. 1. Consider: One year, when the basketball team’s season ended in the state tournament, Realmuto woke up the next day and played in a baseball game. And hit two home runs.
As much as Realmuto is an athletic freak, in the context of his family he’s practically normal. His father, David, and sisters, Ryan and Amanda, played collegiate baseball/softball. And his mother, Margaret, is the oldest of 10 siblings in the Smith family that — along with in-laws and, now, a very decorated next generation — is royalty in the world of American amateur wrestling.
John Smith, Oklahoma State’s wrestling coach and a six-time world champ (including two-time Olympic gold medalist), is one of Realmuto’s uncles.