San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
Lacy’s maroon path to pro baseball
Standout Aggies lefty was mentored by father-and-son duo of former Texas A&M players
COLLEGE STATION — Three days after Chris Russ pitched Texas A&M to one of its biggest victories in program history in 1999, Asa Lacy was born a few miles from Blue Bell Park in Bryan.
Russ was a fearless righthanded reliever for the Aggies who’d just turned 20. He had two solid College World Series appearances right around the bend that June following his triumph in an NCAA Tournament regional title game against Long Beach State.
While Russ and his A&M teammates were getting a feel for the ultimate destination in college baseball — the CWS in Omaha — baby Lacy was getting a feel for his bassinet. On Wednesday night the two men, one 41 and the other 21, will gather with their families to celebrate more Aggies baseball history.
Lacy, like Russ a Kerrville Tivy graduate, is expected to be the highest drafted baseball player in A&M history. The hard-throwing lefthander (6-4, 215) is considered the top pitcher in this year’s draft and should go no lower than No. 3 overall to Miami.
The draft is five rounds this year because of the novel coronavirus pandemic. Fellow lefty Jeff Granger is A&M’s top overall pick at No. 5 to Kansas City in 1993.
“I’m really proud of Asa,” Russ said. “He transformed himself along the way, and he’s almost become his own coach now, the way he studies video of his release and studies the game.”
The relationship began in College Station when Lacy was 8 years old, and Russ had returned to A&M to earn his master’s degree after playing minorleague baseball. Gregg Bennett, an A&M professor, had just founded Twelve Baseball Academy, which Russ was helping coach.
“Gregg told me, ‘Hey, you’ve got to see this little lefty, he’s got a pretty good arm,’ ” Russ said. “When I first saw Asa, I thought, ‘He does have a nice, loose arm for a lefthander.’ ”
Russ laughed when recalling the rest of the conversation, based on Williams’ soaring forecast for an 8-year-old.
“Gregg said, ‘He could be a first-rounder someday,’ ” Russ said. “I said, ‘Yeah, Gregg, OK.’ But you know what? Gregg was right.”
Russ began tutoring 8-year-old Lacy about twice a week during the fall for the next three years while serving as a graduate student assistant coach with the A&M baseball team. After earning his master’s degree, Russ was hired as an assistant at Tivy, his alma mater.
Along the way, the Russ suggested to the budding protégé and his parents that Lacy should consider working with his mentor: Freddie Russ, Chris Russ’ father and former coach at
Schreiner College who offered baseball lessons and led a couple of well-known youth select baseball teams in Kerrville.
When Lacy was 11, he played with Freddie Russ’ Kerrville Indians for a tournament in Colorado, and another beautiful baseball relationship was born — so much so that Lacy’s parents, Phillip and Cynthia, decided to uproot from College Station and move to Kerrville when Asa Lacy was in junior high.
“I was up for it,” Lacy said of the baseball-induced move. “I was already playing a lot of baseball in Kerrville with the Russes, and my dad was working a lot in
South Texas in the oil business. He would put two weeks on and two weeks off, and one year, he put 60,000 miles on his truck. “It just made sense to move.” Cynthia, an interior designer, said it was not a big deal to head south from Brazos County because Asa was an only child and her husband was spending so much time working in the Eagle Ford Shale in South Texas.
“We just never looked back,” Cynthia said. “We’re a small family, as we say, small but mighty.”
While in junior high in the Lacy family’s new home of Kerrville, Lacy competed for the select squad of Freddie Russ — who played for A&M in the mid-1970s — and then for Chris Russ’ Tivy junior varsity squad as a freshman in high school.
Longtime Antlers coach Steve Rippee retired in 2014, and Chris Russ took over the Tivy program as Lacy was entering his sophomore season. Chris Russ, the first coach to give Lacy pitching lessons, then mentored Lacy for three seasons on Tivy’s varsity.
“When Asa was a sophomore at Tivy, that’s when I could tell he had something different about his stuff,” Chris Russ said. “At the time he was 83-86 miles per hour with his fastball, but he’s always had what I call the ‘Invisiball’ — the tilt and exceptionally high spin rate on his fastball is just natural for him, and even throwing that velocity as a sophomore he got a ton of swings and misses.”
Not content with his high school status as a rangy lefty with good movement, Lacy worked hard to become more of a power pitcher. His fastball reached 98 mph during his junior season at A&M, which was cut short because of the global pandemic.
“Every year his velocity would go up a couple of miles per hour,” Chris Russ said. “When he was a junior at Tivy, he was 85-87 miles per hour, and as a senior he was pretty consistently 87-90. Then suddenly there would be outings where he’d go out there and throw 93.
“So you knew it was there, he just had to be more consistent with his delivery and have a little more control of his body. By his senior year, he really fell in love with the weight room. He had always worked hard, but then he really started to figure out the process that it took.
“You look at him now, and he’s gotten so strong. He’s put on weight, and he’s got good body control.”
Lacy weighed 185 pounds his last year of high school but is now 30 pounds heavier after three years in A&M coach Rob Childress’ program. Childress dubbed Lacy’s approach to physical fitness a “24-hour deal” based on his diet and daily exercise regimen.
Born just north of Blue Bell Park, raised for more than half his life in College Station, and learning so much baseball from two former A&M players — Freddie and Chris Russ — meant one thing out of Tivy for Lacy: Going back home for college, and learning more baseball where it all started.
“Asa’s heart was set on Texas A&M, and I was fine with that,” Chris said with a chuckle. “He didn’t really give anybody else a chance.”