GIANTS FANS CAN ONLY HOPE HUNTER BISHOP PICKS UP WHERE BARRY BONDS LEFT OFF.
Serra High and ASU grad Hunter Bishop gives hope for a homegrown star who can swat baseballs into Mccovey Cove and snare balls in the outfield for years to come. It’s been awhile since the Giants had one of those.
Amonth before the 2019 Major League Baseball draft, the heavy hitters from the Giants front office gathered in a small room inside the organization’s minor league complex in Scottsdale, Ariz. President of baseball operations Farhan Zaidi and amateur scouting director Michael Holmes were there to meet with one of the top draft-eligible prospects in the country, the player’s father and his agent.
It’s not unusual for major league executives to talk with prospective draft picks. It is to ask Barry Bonds to tag along.
“He’s a huge Serra Padre fan, literally the first thing he said to me was ‘Gotta keep it in the brotherhood, man.’” Hunter Bishop said. “It was pretty cool.”
With the No. 10 pick in the draft, the Giants didn’t know if Bishop — a power-hitting center fielder from both of Bonds’ alma maters, Serra High and Arizona State — would even be available. They could dream on the idea anyway.
“The power was just a perfect fit,” Zaidi said. “So it was really about both sides getting to know each other better and we thought it would be cool for Barry to sit in and for them to have that exchange with the Serra connection, the Bay Area connection.”
In the days leading up to the draft, there were rumors the Texas Rangers would step in and snag Bishop with the eighth pick. There were rumblings a rough sophomore season might hurt his stock and force teams in the 10-to15 range of the draft to reconsider.
Bishop knew all along the Giants wouldn’t let him get away.
“They pretty much just told me how much they loved me and if I get to that pick, they’re not going to let me go,” Bishop said.
Before he began his quest to follow in Bonds’ footsteps from Serra to ASU and eventually the Giants, Bishop modeled his athletic career after another famous Padre.
“This guy was going the Tom Brady route,” Serra football coach Patrick Walsh said.
A San Carlos native, Hunter followed his older brother Braden to St. Francis in Mountain View before transferring to Serra in San Mateo after his sophomore year. He played quarterback and joined the baseball team, but unlike Braden — an outfielder for the Seattle Mariners — Hunter, his parents and his coaches saw a future in football.
A teenager who swung golf clubs instead of baseball bats said he never took to the main position he played: pitcher.
In the hours leading up to his debut on the mound with the Padres, Bishop went into his head coach’s office and admitted he wasn’t ready.
“Hunter came into the office and he wanted to talk and he said, ‘I just don’t feel comfortable on the mound,’” Serra coach Craig Giannino said. “I said, ‘Really?’ and he said, ‘I just don’t feel like I really know what I’m doing.’ ”
Telling his coach was the easy part. Telling his dad, Randy, was another story.
“I’ll never forget when I told him I was going to start hitting,” Bishop said. “He sat me down on the couch, dead serious, and said, ‘You might need to look into a fraternity or something like that in college.’”
The father thought his son’s baseball career might be over on the spot.
“I’m a total realist,” Randy said. “No one at Serra knew Hunter and Hunter had not even come close to playing the outfield or hitting at all. So I just assumed, well, the only way you’re going to make the Serra baseball team is if you pitch.”
As Bishop transitioned from the mound to the outfield, an injury zapped his arm strength and forced him to move from quarterback to wide receiver on the football field. In the final weeks of his junior baseball season, Bishop still envisioned himself following through with his commitment to play for Washington Huskies football coach Chris Petersen. Baseball scouts had other plans. “Hunter called me and said, ‘I got this call from this guy and I’ve made the Under Armour All-american team.’” Randy said. “I was like, ‘What?’ I call this guy back and said, ‘Hey, is this a joke or what?’”
Hunter had barely played the outfield during his junior season at Serra, but scouts salivated at the raw potential he showcased in batting practice.
“You really never know, but you couldn’t deny the toolset,” Giannino said. “The speed, the wiry strength, the quick twitch, the hand-eye coordination.”
Evaluators watched him run a blazing 6.5 60-yard sprint at the Area Code Games in Stockton and Bishop told them he’d soon run routes at Washington. They watched him crush home runs at
Wrigley Field before the All-american Game and he insisted he’d crush defensive backs with the ball in his hands.
“My phone started ringing off the hook after that from Fullerton to Stanford, to Cal to you name it and I was like, ‘Guys, he’s playing football,’” Randy said. “But hey, we’ll come out and visit.”
The only high-profile baseball program the family didn’t see in-person was Arizona State. On the recommendation of assistant Ben Greenspan, Sun Devils head coach Tracy Smith made one last plea.
“I’m driving over the Golden Gate Bridge and my phone rings and it’s Tracy Smith from ASU and he said, ‘Hey, I’m calling you as a father and not as coach,’” Randy said. “‘You need to let your son play baseball because he’s going to be a big leaguer. I just want you to come here, I will introduce you to our football coach, I will allow Hunter to play two sports, but I need him to play baseball.’”
By the middle of his senior year, Bishop, his parents and his high school coaches realized there wasn’t much of a decision to make.
“It came down to a lifestyle choice in his senior year. It was very apparent that he had some tools in baseball that could lead to a 20-, 30-year career,” Walsh said. “We all know football is more of a short-lived career, particularly at the wide receiver position.”
At 17 years old, Bishop realized he had his whole life ahead of him. A conversation that took place two years earlier made him realize what a luxury that was.
“I remember one day I got home and my parents sat me down,” Bishop said. “I was young and I remember my dad, the strongest dude I’ve ever known, he was bawling. My mom was straight-faced, super strong about it and they told me.”
Bishop’s mom, Suzy, had been diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s disease.
“I remember, my brother was taking it pretty harshly in college,” Hunter said. “That’s when I kind of knew something was not good. Fast-forward to my senior year of high school, my senior day, she could barely even walk on the
field.”
Early-onset Alzheimer’s disease is a rare form of dementia that causes a person’s brain cells to waste away. As Randy describes it, it’s an “insidious disease” that “we wouldn’t wish on anyone.”
Suzy’s diagnosis devastated the family, but inspired Hunter and Braden to devote their lives to a new mission. Together, the brothers started the 4MOM Foundation, a charity with the goal of fighting for the world’s first survivor of Alzheimer’s disease.
“We had the idea of how could we make a difference?” Hunter said. “We should start a foundation. At first, he had the platform with UW, I was still in high school, he got it off the ground running and he wrote 4MOM on his arm every single game.”
Hunter eventually brought the 4MOM mission and his fundraising efforts with him to Arizona State, where he burst onto the scene with a .301 average and .847 OPS as a freshman en route to earning Honorable Mention All-pac-12 honors. Less than two years after learning to play the outfield, Bishop received buzz as a prospect who could be chosen in the top three rounds of the 2019 MLB Draft.
He admitted he saw the hype and for the first time in his baseball career, felt the pressure to live up to it. At the same time, Suzy’s health continued to deteriorate and Hunter felt her emotional absence.
“I didn’t appreciate her enough, to be honest, and I don’t think any kid does,” Hunter said. “My sophomore year I started realizing how important it is to have a mom. Just the situations you go through in college, you don’t always want to talk to your dad.”
As a sophomore at Arizona State, Bishop’s average dropped more than 50 points, his slugging percentage fell by 75 points and his interest in the game disappeared altogether.
“He didn’t want to play anymore, he just wanted to come home and be with his mom,” Randy said. “Hunter was her baby.”
Bishop’s on-field struggles couldn’t compare to the emotional trauma of watching his mom suffer, but by the end of his sophomore year, he began to see baseball as a coping mechanism.
“It’s hard to produce when a ball is coming 100 miles per hour at you when your soul is dragged down by very real-life things,” Walsh said. “But I think he and his brother have found this opportunity through this very tough, difficult, dark time and then used baseball as a way to celebrate his mom’s life.”
He spent the summer playing in the prestigious Cape Cod
League and returned to Arizona State as a transformed prospect and a transformed person. During fall exhibitions, Bishop estimates he hit 25 home runs and remembers the two he launched in a matchup against a Texas Rangers minor league squad as a turning point in his development.
“That sophomore year was probably the most helpful thing for me,” Bishop admitted. “Because I think if I would have killed it sophomore year, you never know, I could have gone into junior year and thought ‘I have to do this for the draft.’”
When his junior season at Arizona State began, the draft mattered little to Bishop. By the end of a remarkable season in which he hit 22 home runs and posted a 1.227 OPS, Bonds led a contingent of Giants executives who told Bishop they wanted to make him a homegrown star.
“He’s the best hitter to ever play the game, I don’t care what anybody says,” Bishop said. “So just to pick his brain, hear what he has to say about the swing, different situations he encountered, for everything I had been through whether it had been my mom or
struggles or super good moments, just to sit there and realize where I am now, it was unbelievable.”
On June 3, 2019, a then-20-yearold center fielder received the call every young athlete dreams about. When the Texas Rangers passed at No. 8 and the Atlanta Braves had other ideas at No. 9, the Giants brought Bishop home.
“I say it all the time, he’s representing the greatest city in the world,” Giannino said. “There’s a lot of pride that’s there for that.”
A high school quarterback and scratch golfer admits he never saw a career in a Giants uniform coming. The most tragic part of Bishop’s journey is that since the middle of high school, he did see a future his mother wouldn’t be a part of.
“With this disease, you know,” Bishop said.
On Oct. 5, 2019, Suzy Bishop died at the age of 59 after a five-year battle with Alzheimer’s disease.
At points in his grieving process, Hunter has felt guilty for taking her life for granted and sorrow for the moments they won’t share together. Together with his brother Braden, the family channeled their emotions into finding a cause far greater than what sports can offer.
“The way we view it now is we’re our mom’s legacy and we’ll do whatever we can do to make a difference and make other families at some point never have to deal with it,” Bishop said. “But for now, how can we make it as easy as possible for families who have to go through what we went through?”
His baseball career, unlike most top prospects, has still been relatively brief. Yet just six springs after moving from the mound to the outfield, Bishop has the potential to rise quickly through the Giants’ minor league system.
“You make him in a video game, this is how you draw him up,” Giants farm director Kyle Haines said. “The size, the speed and I know everyone talks about that, if they don’t know him, but I feel fortunate that I get to know the person.”
His fundraising efforts with the 4MOM Foundation have the potential to skyrocket too. During his pre-draft meeting with the Giants, Zaidi set aside time to discuss Bishop’s journey and learn about the adversity the family has faced.
“I recall Farhan saying, he can’t imagine how Hunter has dealt with it and come out on such a positive note,” Randy said. “That he doesn’t know if he could have done that when he was Hunter’s age and it just shows Hunter’s drive and his whole commitment as a human being.”
As 4MOM hosts more events like the Cheers4mom holiday fundraiser that raised more than $20,000 in December and the upcoming CARE4MOM conference scheduled for January 2021, the Giants plan to work with Bishop to spread awareness of the foundation.
“It’s hard to learn about the family story and what they’re doing without being touched,” Zaidi said. “I would imagine we’ll be doing a lot with them going forward.”
The baseball player, Hunter Bishop, has the potential to become a homegrown hero. The person, Hunter Bishop, is already using his spare time to improve the lives of others. If the engaging, charismatic slugger reaches his potential with the Giants, his combination of talents can change the fortunes of a team and change the future for families dealing with the realities of a terrible disease.
“We’re all going to be sitting here watching him play and hitting balls into Mccovey Cove,” Walsh said. “That foundation has to be there and continue to be there and all that comes with it.”