Indiana ascends baseball ladder
Sport’s backers find path to relevancy
Abutting the nation’s largest youth sports complex are several undeveloped lots, a few houses and a nursing home but mostly wide expanses of cornstalks and soybean plants.
This Midwestern farmland encloses 31 all-purpose fields for soccer and lacrosse and a 26-ballfield sprawl of Little League and high school diamonds. The latter seems suited for major league spring training, but the primary tenant is the Indiana Bulls, an elite travel team that attracted 100 pro scouts and college coaches for a showcase last summer. “The whole thing feels pretty
Field of Dreams- ish,” Butler University baseball coach Steve Farley said.
Indeed, Indiana has a new bumper crop: big-league ballplayers. While field houses around the state are warmed by crowds gearing up for the 106th state basketball tournament — pairings will be released Sunday — more than two dozen of the state’s favorite sons are finding their way to Arizona and Florida for spring training as camps open this week.
In 2015, 24 Indiana natives appeared in a big-league game, including St. Louis Cardinals starter Lance Lynn, new Toronto
Blue Jays reliever Drew Storen, Minnesota Twins pitching prospect Alex Meyer and new Seattle Mariners first baseman Adam Lind.
Indiana is the 16th-most-populous state but is punching above its weight with more major leaguers than the states ranked sixth, ninth and 11th through 15th in size.
That Indiana has become an unexpected hotbed of prospects owes to a sporting culture, provincial youth sports, travel teams developing and exposing latent talent and the example set by a few Hoosier pioneers.
The Bulls, in particular, are leading the way. On their three 18-year-old teams, 33 of their 45 players have committed to college baseball programs.
The provenance of much of the Bulls’ funding and stature can be traced to Jasper, Ind., native and charter Bulls player Scott Rolen, who since has been an ambassador, benefactor, recruiter and instructor for Indiana baseball.
“Without him,” Bulls co-founder Dave Taylor said, “we would have really struggled.”
IN THE BEGINNING
The Indiana entrant in the 1991 AAU under-16 Junior Olympics took a detour from its bus trip south to the tournament in Tallahassee to play an exhibition against an 18-year-old American Legion team in Jasper.
“This kid comes up and hits a ball over the fence, over two school buses and into a parking lot,” recalled Taylor, who coached that Junior Olympic team, “and I’m like, ‘Where’s that guy going to college?’ (The other coach) said, ‘He’s only a sophomore.’ “It was Scott Rolen.” Taylor said he had seen a swing like that only once before: Evansville native Don Mattingly, against whom Taylor competed in high school. Taylor — a litigator by trade — convinced Rolen’s parents that he should join the team on the Florida-bound bus the next morning.
With Rolen, Indiana finished eighth out of 48, even beating teams from Georgia and Texas. California won the tournament, and its coach told Taylor his team had been playing together for six years with more than 150 games a year. On the drive back, Taylor and the other coaches began concocting what would become the Indiana Bulls. The inaugural club had two future big-leaguers — Rolen, a seven-time All-Star and eight-time Gold Glover, and sixyear center fielder Todd Dunwoody — and has had 121 drafted players in 25 years.
Statewide, since 2007, 31 Indiana natives have made their bigleague debuts compared with 29 debuts in the previous 12 years, 1995-2006. Also since 2007, the Bulls have developed seven firstor second-round draft choices; the rest of the state has produced seven in that time.
Current pros such as Cincinnati Reds catcher Tucker Barnhart, free agent pitcher Tommy Hunter (with the Chicago Cubs in 2015) and Storen speak glowingly of Rolen’s example and support.
According to Taylor, Rolen began financially supporting the Bulls even as a minor leaguer. As important, Rolen would return as a guest instructor — which he still does — and advise the non-profit’s board of directors. He has been known to show up unannounced wearing flip-flops in the Bulls dugout.
“It definitely gives me inspiration that guys from Indiana can go that far and make a difference in young kids’ dreams and lives,” said Batesville High junior catcher Zach Britton, a Louisville commit.
AN UPTICK IN QUALITY
Indiana is home to the Indianapolis 500, the Indianapolis Colts and Notre Dame football, but its culture-defining sport has always been basketball.
Clint Barmes, a 13-year bigleague shortstop who played for the San Diego Padres in 2015, grew up in Vincennes, where everyone idolized high school basketball players — including Rolen, four years older and a star at rival Jasper High. Those games were in packed gyms, as opposed to the scenes at high school ballfields.
“There were probably 20 to 25 fans in the stands, and the majority of them, if not all of them, were parents,” Barmes said.
Around the same time that the Rolen-led Indiana team notched its top-10 finish in the AAU junior nationals, however, a 12-year-old team from Vincennes featuring a young Barmes reached the national Bambino World Series. In 1999, Brownsburg won the first of three consecutive Little League state titles and made two trips to the Little League World Series.
Many of those three Brownsburg Little League team members — including Lynn and Storen — formed the nucleus of a 2005 Brownsburg High team that became Indiana’s second undefeated state champion.
During one five-year span, overlapping at Brownsburg with Lynn and Storen were Barnhart; Gordon Hayward, a forward on the Utah Jazz; Chris Jones, a defensive tackle for the NFL’s New England Patriots; and Chris Estridge, an All-America soccer player at Indiana who briefly played in the North American Soccer League.
Brian O’Connor, coach of defending College World Series champion Virginia, previously was a Notre Dame assistant. Last year, he recruited the first player from Indiana in Cavaliers history: pitcher Grant Sloan.
Sloan is the grandson of Jerry Sloan, longtime coach of the Jazz, and the son of Brian Sloan, who won a national title playing for Bob Knight at Indiana. O’Connor notes that, at 6-5, Grant Sloan would have to be an expert shooter to have a future in pro hoops, whereas “in baseball he looks like a pretty physical, impressive looking pitcher.”
“Now that kid is getting opportunities in baseball, whereas 20 years ago, that player in the state of Indiana in the summer wasn’t playing travel baseball, he was working out with all his buddies playing hoops the whole time,” O’Connor said.
THEY BUILT IT; OTHERS COME
Indiana travel teams routinely participate in national tournaments.
An August 2004 showcase in Arlington, Texas, was loaded with national top-100 prospects, yet the Indiana Bulls more than held their own against powerhouse travel clubs from Florida and Texas.
“Everyone on those teams was wondering, ‘How is this team from Indiana winning these games?’ ” recalled Mark Storen, Drew’s father. “And we as parents were trying to figure out, ‘ How are we winning these games?’ ”
Little did anyone know then that the pitchers in the Bulls starting rotation — Storen, Lynn, Hunter and Josh Lindblom — were all future big-leaguers.
Now, many elite teams come to Indiana.
North of Indianapolis, suburban communities are seeing significant growth. About seven years ago, Westfield Mayor Andy Cook wanted his town to join the boom, pushing for the $45 million development of Grand Park.
Cook said the park, in its second year, had 1.6 million visits, pouring about $50 million into the local economy. Three hotels are ready to break ground, as are restaurants, shops and a medicalcare facility. A 370,000-squarefoot indoor sports complex and event center is scheduled to open in July, while a privately built eight-court basketball complex opened nearby in January.
The Bulls became stakeholders and operators of the baseball and softball fields, which they use and also rent out.
Bulls executive director Dan Held played nine years of minor league and independent ball, including three as Rolen’s teammate in the Philadelphia Phillies system. The friends reunited with the Cardinals in 2003 — Rolen as third baseman, Held as bullpen coach — and won the 2006 World Series.
But after the 2007 season, Held was looking to settle down with his family; Rolen referred him to the Bulls, who were looking to hire an executive director. (Rolen did not respond to interview requests made through intermediaries.)
Held brought professional coaching experience to supplement what the players receive in the short high school season, and in his tenure the program more than tripled to 23 teams.
Chicago White Sox Midwest crosschecker Mike Shirley, who is based in Indiana and runs a private baseball training facility there, has seen baseball become more of a priority.
“The skill set has drastically changed over the last few years,” Shirley said. “These kids get out, and they play against the best competition now.
“It has become more of a global game, including the Midwest kids and Indiana.”