Daschbach highlight just part of big year
On his way to Stanford as a first baseman, Andrew Daschbach received a tip from exGiants first baseman J.T. Snow, a superb fielder in his day.
Snow was a baseball parent at Sacred Heart Prep in Atherton, where Daschbach was a three-sport athlete. The advice was to pitch a tennis ball against a wall from close range, forcing quick decisions on whether to snag it forehand or backhand with his first baseman’s glove.
Daschbach said he performed that drill on Stanford’s squash courts and it was helpful.
What Snow didn’t prepare him for was catching a pop-up barehanded, as the sophomore did last weekend in a game against Washington State. He ran in from first, tracking down a pop by catcher Robert Teel, who — on his way up the line — inadvertently knocked off Daschbach’s glove.
So Daschbach made the grab with his bare hands, barely in foul territory. Teel would have been out, anyway, because of runner’s interference, but Daschbach got his moment of fame. The Pac-12 Network’s clip of the play was shown on ESPN’s “SportsCenter.” It has been seen more than 1.9 million times on Instagram.
“It all happened so fast, it was instincts taking over,” Daschbach said. Teel “kind of threw me off when he bumped into me. I had to refocus and find it and make the grab. It was one of the weirdest plays I’ve been a part of, that’s for sure.”
Right after the game, he found he had about a hundred text messages.
The next day, when he came to bat, he told Teel, “Thanks, man. You got us both some media coverage.” Teel replied, “Yeah, that’s what I was telling my buddies. If I wouldn’t have done that, we wouldn’t have been” on“SportsCenter.”
Even without the catch, this has been a banner season for Daschbach and his teammates. He’s hitting .300, and his 16 homers and 60 RBIs are the most by a Stanford player in a decade.
The No. 3 Cardinal (43-8, 21-6 Pac-12) play a three-game series at Washington starting Thursday, needing one win to clinch their first conference title since 2004. Stanford is 2½ games ahead of Oregon State and three ahead of UCLA and Washington going into the final weekend of the regular season.
The season has been a dramatic turnaround for Daschbach. With Matt Winaker (now a Mets farmhand) a fixture last season at first base, Daschbach hit .183 in 60 at-bats as a freshman, playing mainly in left field. Over the summer, however, he found his stroke. He hit .321 with eight homers for the Newport (R.I.) Gulls in the New England Collegiate Baseball League.
“It was huge for me,” he said. “It was a big confidence booster. I went from six months without finding success at the plate to stringing together a great summer. I started making some adjustments with my lower half, driving through the baseball.”
Last year, he felt musclebound from high school football and decided to loosen up with pilates and yoga classes. In the offseason, he also spent plenty of time in the weight room.
He’s 6-foot-3, 225 pounds, and was good enough at tight end and middle linebacker at Sacred Heart to be recruited by Arizona State, Oregon State and some Ivy League schools. He considered trying to play football at Stanford, his father’s alma mater.
“I thought it would take two or three years of hard work on the football field before I got some playing time, if I were to get time,” he said. “Coming into baseball, I had a chance to play right away. It was a pretty easy decision for me.”
Head coach David Esquer stuck with him even when he was slumping this season. Daschbach then clouted two homers and had five RBIs in a win at UCLA on April 7. That ignited a stretch of six homers in seven games, including a grand slam in an 11-6 comeback win against Arizona State.
“He’s a great lesson that not everyone gets to come into college baseball and perform right away,” Esquer said. “Sometimes it takes a little patience and a little work and some adversity to come back from. …
“He’s got a great attitude and disposition for baseball. He doesn’t get too low and doesn’t let the adversity affect him.”