Knights’ closer turns out lights
UCF’s Tucker flips switch, dominates batters
It takes only three words to sum up Bryce Tucker: Why so serious?
They appear on the underside of his ball cap, written in black marker on the brim. Tucker uses the words to refocus himself during those times when he’s in a tight situation in a game, which can be fairly common as the UCF baseball team’s closer.
“I look to what’s going on with my brim and realize that this is a game,” he said. “I can calm down, take a breath and get comfortable.”
However, those three words don’t often conjure an image of calm. They are popularly recognized as the motto of a fictional psychopathic supervillain. That mindset is part of Tucker, too.
“I’m a huge fan of the Joker and Heath Ledger’s portrayal of the Joker,” he said. “That really stuck to me after watching [‘The Dark Knight’]. It’s just a movie, but still, what he was able to do with himself, acting with that character, and I really grasped that.
“I like to think of myself a little bit as that kind of a Joker persona.”
His teammates do call him “Joker,” but more due to his comedic nature than something more sinister. Thus, staying within the Batman universe, perhaps Tucker is more like TwoFace, because there are dual personalities at work here.
Off the mound, Tucker is very
much your typical college junior. He loves playing video games and goes to the gym four times a week. UCF pitcher Eric Hepple describes him as “a good hang-out guy. He’ll sit back, lay back, just watch TV, just chill, talk about anything.”
Given his easygoing demeanor and his lanky 6-foot-3 frame, Tucker looks like he’s cut right out of a Ron Jon Surf Shop ad, especially before he sheared his straight, shoulder-length blonde locks earlier this season. On the mound? “Scary,” said Hepple. “He’s a crazy dude,” said first baseman Rylan Thomas.
“I couldn’t carry that personality that I do on the mound all the time or I’d probably be in jail right now,” Tucker admitted.
Tucker can’t explain his transformation other than to say that when he knows he’s about to make an appearance with the game on the line, “something in me just kind of switches.”
During his freshman year in 2016, Tucker worked as a starter and a reliever, compiling an uninspiring 5.40 ERA. Then Greg Lovelady came aboard as the Knights’ new head coach in 2017 and moved Tucker into the bullpen full-time. Even he didn’t know what was beneath the surface of the left-hander until he saw Tucker in action.
“He gets his first outing last year and it’s like, ‘Whoa, who’s that?’ It was a different player,” Lovelady said. “It’s just when the line’s crossed and there are people in the stands, Bryce morphs into this really confident, little-bit-nuts kid and it works for him.”
Since the start of the 2017 season, Tucker owns a 1.84 ERA across 63 and 2⁄3 innings. He hasn’t been quite as effective this year, largely due to an increased walk rate, but Tucker is averaging nearly 12 strikeouts per nine innings and opposing batters — whether it’s due
to his low-90s fastball, deceptive changeup or emerging slider — are hitting just .185 against the Lake Brantley graduate.
He will play a key role in UCF’s push to make a deep run in the American Athletic Conference Tournament. The No. 5 Knights will open today at 9 a.m. against the No. 4 seed East Carolina at Spectrum Field in Clearwater.
“You’ve got to take it personal when it’s you versus a hitter and you’re coming in late in a game,” Tucker said. “It’s always close. You’ve got to be extremely competitive, have a lot of fire under you. And treat it as personal.”
Lovelady recognizes that for closers to function in such a high-pressure role, where the line between success and failure is razorthin, the best ones probably need to have a screw loose.
He said the best ninthinning men he’s ever coached “were like Jekyll and Hyde.” But even Lovelady,
in his decades around the game, had never seen something like what Tucker did on April 11 at Miami.
He entered the game against the Hurricanes with the Knights leading 4-0 in the ninth. Then he issued a walk and and hit back-toback batters. Now the Hurricanes had the tying run at the plate with nobody out, and Tucker was in one of those pressure situations that he has said forces him to dial up his focus even more.
“That’s when your goosebumps start coming in and you start tingling and you really start living,” he said.
Strikeout, strikeout, strikeout. Game over. Knights win. The supervillain has arrived to save the day, and “scary” Tucker is fully revealed.
As the final strike popped the glove of catcher Logan Heiser, Tucker whipped his left hand across his chest four times and stomped toward Heiser, who was probably expecting an enthusiastic hug or high-five.
He got something a little extra: A firm headbutt from Tucker right into the catcher’s mask. Heiser is jarred backward by the impact but stays on his feet. Tucker, without a word spoken, just turns around and walks off toward his teammates.
The highlight went viral as ESPN and MLB Network get a taste of the full Bryce Tucker experience.
Two days later, Tucker works himself and UCF out of yet another jam to secure a one-run victory over Cincinnati. After the game and now back outside those lines, he has resumed life as that happy-go-lucky college junior. He tells reporters his days as a viral sensation are over.
“I mean, who headbutts a guy with a helmet?” he asks rhetorically with a laugh.
Bryce Tucker does. But it’s a different kind of Bryce Tucker.