No. 5 pick bringing his special hands
From woodwork to hitting, Colton Cowser grinds it out
Dale Cowser heard the early morning whirr of power tools and knew it could only be one thing.
His teenage son Colton was in the garage in a cloud of sawdust and restless energy.
“Whatever you’re doing,” Dale Cowser told him, “keep your 10 fingers and clean up your mess when you finish.”
His admonitions went beyond basic parenting. His son’s extraordinary hands needed protecting.
Their ability to manipulate a bat and get the barrel on any pitch is the draw that makes Cowser the potentially elite hitter the Orioles hope their No. 5 overall draft pick will be, and the foundation for a trajectory Houston-area hitting coach Sid Holland predicted early.
“Sid, when he was about 9 years old, told me Colton has a chance to be special,” Dale Cowser said. “He does things other kids don’t do at that age. Sid has always said it’s because of his hands. His hands are always so good. He knows exactly where the barrel is and his hands are so strong, he can find the barrel and the barrel finds balls.”
Long before those hands found a saw and made Cowser the family’s “Bob the Builder,” Holland sought the chance to
but entered the All-Star break batting .256 with a .791 OPS and 16 home runs.
The last of those blasts came on his last swing of the first half as he came off the bench for a two-out, two-run home run to tie Sunday’s game in the ninth inning and send the game to extra innings.
Mancini said that game being behind him finally allowed him to start thinking about the Home Run Derby.
“No expectations or predictions,” he said Sunday. “I’m just going to try and enjoy it. It’s surreal. It’s something that I haven’t really thought about too much just because we play up until the day before, but now I can turn my attention to it a little bit and I’m really excited.”
Mancini was also excited for the opportunity to hit off Notre Dame pitching coach Chuck Ristano, who pitched to Mancini when he won the 2012 Big East Home Run Derby and promised then that he’d pitch to him again should he ever be in the major league Home Run Derby.
Ristano said before the event that his style of BP throwing seems to work for Mancini, and the two found a groove thanks to the quick pace Ristano threw at.
“A great BP pitcher obviously fills up the zone, works at a good tempo,” Ristano said.
Their link-up at the derby was an opportunity to honor a Notre Dame teammate, Ricky Palmer, who last year passed away from brain cancer.
At the time of his entry, Mancini said he wanted to use the national platform to show those battling cancer that there’s life after treatment.
He’s taking every opportunity to showcase the causes near to him as well. Pepsi is donating $250 for every home run he hits to the Trey Mancini Foundation to support Blessings in a Backpack, which fights childhood hunger. With 59 home runs, the most by an Oriole in the history of the derby, he raised $14,750.
He’s partnered with a blockchain platform for an NFT (non-fungible token) launch consisting of unique experiences and memorabilia related to his appearance with proceeds going to his foundation as well.
Mancini was the first Orioles player to participate in the Home Run Derby since Mark Trumbo did in 2016, and the first to make the finals since Miguel Tejada won the event in 2004.