The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
Bagwell proud of his Connecticut roots
Of the 220 former major league players inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame, only three were born in Connecticut.
When Jeff Bagwell takes his place among the game’s greats on July 30, he will become the fourth. Bagwell was, after all, born in Boston. His family moved to Connecticut when Jeff was about 1 1/2, after his father took a job with IBM.
But Bagwell, who grew up in Killingworth, went to Xavier High in Middletown and played baseball at the University of Hartford, is a true Connecticut product. And he’ll be the first of baseball’s modern era to be enshrined in Cooperstown.
“To make it from Connecticut, I take a lot of pride in that,” Bagwell said via conference call on Friday. “That’s where I grew up. It’s a special place in my heart.”
The only three Hall of Fame inductees born in Connecticut are Roger Connor (Waterbury), Ned Hanlon (Montville) and Jim O’Rourke (Bridgeport). All three played in the 19th century.
“A lot of athletes in baseball (from Connecticut) don’t get as much attention,” Bagwell noted. “For one, the weather’s terrible. Not many scouts like to sit in the freezing cold snow. And you don’t play much. My junior year of college, I think I played 31 games.”
Bagwell certainly made the most of those relatively few games. When he left Hartford after manning third base for three seasons, he was the pro-
gram’s all-time leader in batting average (.413), home runs (31) and RBIs (126). He has fond memories of playing for coach Dan Gooley and hitting coach Moe Morhardt.
“My college career was great,” Bagwell said. “You go away from home and get to know other people that come from a different part of the state, or other states. We lived and died baseball every night. Moe Morhardt was a wonderful as a hitting coach. He kept it very simple. He’s just a great baseball mind, in so many different ways. Every time I hear ‘Moe Morhardt,’ I smile.”
“And Skip (Gooley) was great,” Bagwell continued. “I’m still in contact with him. He was a driving force behind us. Skip’s a good friend. I had a lot of fun when I played for him. He’s a great baseball guy, he loved to teach and was very supportive.”
Bagwell parlayed his strong career at Hartford into a fourth-round selection in the 1989 MLB Draft by the Red Sox, the team he grew up watching with his father and rooting for (Carl Yastrzemski was his boyhood idol). He played nearly two seasons in the Red Sox minor leagues, including the bulk of the 1990 season with the Double-A New Britain Red Sox at Beehive Field.
“It was a big field, cold all the time,” Bagwell recalled. “I have great memories. Butch Hobson was the manager. He’s a tremendous person.”
Bagwell remembered struggling defensively at third when shortstop John Valentin gave him some advice: instead of taking 200 groundballs every day, only take 25, but make it like they’re all in game situations.
“That helped me out with my career,” Bagwell noted.
He was hitting .333, among the Eastern League’s leaders, when, on Aug. 30, 1990, he was traded to the Houston Astros in exchange for veteran pitcher Larry Andersen. It was a good trade for both teams, as Andersen helped the Red Sox capture the AL East title. At the time, however, it came as a shock to Bagwell’s system.
“The whole process was not something I was used to,” he recalled. “At an early age, I figured out that this is baseball, that can happen. I totally understand the trade. If I was the Red Sox, I would have made the trade, too ... But I was confused. Being traded to the Astros was totally foreign to me. I had heard of Nolan Ryan, but in my house, all we talked about was the Red Sox. (I thought Houston) was horses, tumbleweeds and all that. If you’ve been there, you know it’s not.”
What followed, of course, was a tremendous 15-year career. Bagwell was NL Rookie of the Year in 1991 and MVP in 1994. He hit a career-best 47 homers in 2000 and helped the Astros to their only World Series appearance in 2005.
In a little over a week, Bagwell will become the second career Astro to be inducted into the Hall of Fame, joining Craig Biggio, who was enshrined two years ago.
“Obviously, I’m very, very proud of Craig,” said Bagwell, who attended Biggio’s 2015 induction ceremony. “It took him three years to get in when it should have been one. I know how much it means to Craig to be in. I can’t think of a better guy to be associated with than Craig Biggio.”
A group of people from Xavier High will make the trip to Cooperstown next weekend, including Bagwell’s former coach, Marty Ryczek, baseball teammate and fellow co-captain Brendan Beckstein and ex-soccer teammate David Sizemore. U-Hart will be wellrepresented, too; a bus trip will leave the school’s sports center on Saturday morning.
All for a guy born in Boston, but a true Connecticut product in every way.
“To be a Hall of Famer from Connecticut,” Bagwell said, “it’s special.”