LouLife

Ballard alum Jeremy Sowers (left) and St. X’s Paul Byrd make up Cleveland’s crafty Kentucky connection.

“I’m looking for Jeremy Sowers.”

It was a crisp April afternoon at Jacobs Field, home of Major League Baseball’s Cleveland Indians. At 4:30, there was no sun; heavy clouds dropped a light mist onto the team as they took batting practice, shagged fly balls and fielded grounders behind protective screens.

Standing just outside the home team’s dugout, a team employee scanned the field, looking for the left-handed starting pitcher — and BallardHigh Schoolgraduate — that I had come to interview. “I don’t see him,” the man finally declared. “But I’ll tell you what: You look out there for the youngest, skinniest kid you can find. That’s Jeremy.”

And sure enough, there he was. Positioned in center field, wearing an Indians windbreaker to keep away the rain and cold, Sowers was shagging fly balls next to fellow Louisville native (and fellow starting pitcher) Paul Byrd, a graduate of St. Xavier High School. When Sowers ascended to the big leagues in 2006, the two become close — indeed, as a Columbus Dispatch reporter noted to me, Sowers “was like Paul’s shadow” for most of last season.

This year, the pair can be spotted warming up together before most Indians games. They stretch together; on days neither is scheduled to pitch, they throw together. And, while Sowers hesitated to use phrases like “mentor” or “taken me under his wing,” Byrd, 36, has clearly become the 24-year-old Sowers’ guide in the major leagues.

“Paul’s an awesome guy, aside from the fact he went to St. X.,” Sowers said. “He’s done a very good job of, I don’t want to say taking me under his wing — he’s not exactly doing that — but it’s nice to have a common bond, an ‘in,’ if you will.

“If I ever have a question, I know Paul will answer it.”

You’re talking about two guys who are at very different points in their careers,” said Indians manager Eric Wedge during a game-day interview. “But it’s funny: When you look at them, you see a lot of similarities.”

Upon sitting down to interview the two men, “similarity” is the last thing that comes to my mind — except perhaps for the odd coincidence that two players from the same home town could be starters on the same big league club. At first glance, Byrd is every inch the professional athlete. He has the athlete’s build, a veteran’s confidence, and is a friendly, outgoing interview subject. While answering questions, he frequently stops to give more information, whether it’s about where something happened (“The McDonald’s across from where St. Matthew’s played . . . You know where I’m talking about?”) or the ages and proper spellings of his children’s names (Grayson, 10, and Cody, 9).

Sowers, meanwhile, is a less charismatic interview. He’s a soft-spoken young man, prone to quietly talking around subjects in stream-of-consciousness answers that frequently /files/storyimages/with disclaimers like, “I don’t think I said anything at all there.” But those answers also display a penetrating intelligence and quick, dry wit — attributes you don’t always assign to a pro athlete. Of course Sowers doesn’t look like a pro athlete; he’s a 6’1, lanky kid who appears more likely to sp/files/storyimages/Saturday at the college library than taking the mound against the Baltimore Orioles.

The longer they talk, though, the more the personal accounts coming from Byrd and Sowers start to sound the same — like two men living the same story, 12 years apart. That story starts with an incredible work ethic.

“A lot of times, people think you’re born with this talent, and it’s easy,” said Lillie Byrd, Paul’s mother. “But it isn’t. Paul worked very, very hard to get where he is, and (his father and she) worked very hard with him.”

Both Byrd and Sowers knew, from a very young age, that they had the tools to be exceptional baseball players. When he was five years old, Byrd told a newspaper reporter chronicling his little league that he was going to play major league ball. Soon after, he started going to the Universityof Kentucky’s baseball camp, where coach Keith Madison told Byrd that he had the potential to make the big leagues. In fact, Byrd was so determined to follow his dream into baseball that his father — who arranged his work schedule with the police department so he could practice with Paul nearly every day — had to force his son to stay focused in school.

“I remember getting in a fight with my dad at the Shelbyville Road Ponderosa Steakhouse, right in front of St. Matthews Little League where I played,” Byrd said. “He was telling me that, ‘I know you want to play in the big leagues, but you also have to get your education — that’s very important.’

“I was about 11 or 12, and I was telling him, ‘Why do I need an education when I’m going to be a professional baseball player?’ He was like, ‘You don’t understand: You don’t just walk out and be a professional baseball player.’

“And I told him, ‘Yes I can.’”

So Byrd went to baseball camps. He played St. Matthews Little League and Babe Ruth during the season. When it wasn’t baseball season, he’d go most days to the McDonald’s across from the St. Matthews field, eat breakfast with his dad, then go across the street and pitch, hit and field ground balls. Long before he entered high school, it was his work ethic that put Paul Byrd on the road to the major leagues, said Joe White, Byrd’s baseball coach at St. Xavier. While other kids did other things, played other sports, went on vacation, Paul played ball.

“A lot of kids are talented, but don’t want to work — they want to take a break for spring break and not do anything,” White said. “But Paul was well-known, even at a young age, with some of the college summer camps — he was even on a first-name basis with one of the camps — because he would go every summer to that camp to try to improve his baseball. You don’t see that a lot today — that commitment, dedication and drive to improve.”

Unlike Byrd, Sowers didn’t visualize at a young age that he’d sp/files/storyimages/adult years in a baseball uniform. But he knew he loved the game, and he constantly wanted to get better. Two words come up often about the young Jeremy Sowers from those who knew him: “intelligent” and “quiet.” One of his high school teachers described Sowers as a straight-A student who “never said a word.”

“He was a quiet kid; he had a dry sense of humor that you had to know Jeremy to appreciate,” said Doug Hash, his high school baseball coach. “But he was a very intelligent kid, and he had a fantastic work ethic. He wanted to be the best, and it showed.”

He received help from his family, as well. Sowers and his twin brother Josh (a right-handed pitcher in the Toronto Blue Jays minor league system) “were out there every day during the off-season,” said Chris Kinney, athletic director at BallardHigh School. “His stepdad was always out there with him. They were out there pitching, hitting — every day, they were there.”

Neither Louisville-bred athlete is what Byrd calls a “genetic freak.” While most major league pitchers now measure in well above 6 feet tall, both Byrd and Sowers barely make that mark. According to their official player biographies, both stand at 6-foot-1; in person, it seems a stretch to describe either as topping six feet.

Nor do they speed the ball like most pro pitchers. When Byrd speaks at camps for young players, the first question he hears is always the same: How hard do you throw? “I tell them that I throw 82 to 86, maybe 87 miles per hour,” Byrd said. “And the kids look at me, puzzled. For them, 90 is the magic number; anything above 90 and you get a burst of applause.”

But Byrd, who will make $7 million to pitch this year, wears his slow-by-big-league-standards fastball proudly on his sleeve. Because getting hitters out without a 90-mph “heater” often is harder than blowing the ball past them, he has to be smart, crafty and precise. To keep the hitters off balance, he mixes the fastball with a curveball, a change-up, a dominating screwball and a brand-new split-fingered fastball introduced this season. That he’s been able to stay in the league that way, compiling an 84-74 record and 4.31 ERA over 11 years, is a source of pride.

And Sowers, who will make about $385,000 this year, pitches much the same way, mixing a fastball with a curve and change-up to keep hitters off-guard. And while his fastball comes in a bit harder than Byrd’s, coaches in Clevelanddon’t rave about the strength of Sowers’ arm. Instead, they talk about his maturity, his poise and the strength of his mind.

“Jeremy is a bit ahead of himself; he’s very mature and intelligent,” said Carl Willis, the Indians’ pitching coach. “He commands the baseball very well. He throws the fastball where he wants to, he has a couple of different breaking pitches he throws. He’s beyond his years of experience.”

And, says Willis, “He also can recognize something in a hitter’s swing, and he’s intelligent enough to look at his strengths and figure out how to attack what he sees in the hitter.”

That the two can get by on their smarts is something Byrd loves. “In, say, the NBA, you almost have to be very tall and be gifted and able to jump — you have to be an athletic superhero,” Byrd said. “In baseball, you don’t have to; that’s what I love so much about it. You can work your tail off and just follow your heart.”

Of course, there was a time in Louisvillewhen both Byrd and Sowers were dominating on the mound.

Hash remembers the first time he knew how good Sowers could be. It was Sowers’ freshman year, and, as his former high school coach tells it, he had already compiled a 5-0 record pitching for the varsity squad. So the coach decided it was time for some humility. “We were getting ready to play Jeffersonville, which had one of the best teams in Indiana,” Hash said. “So I told my assistant coach I was going to pitch Jeremy. He said, ‘Are you crazy?’ And I told him I was going to get Jeremy a loss.

“Well, Jeremy went out and threw a three-hit shutout.”

In Cleveland, Sowers chuckled about that story and mumbled that it was at least “partly true.” He remembers the start, but doesn’t recall the details.

Byrd’s high school career at St. Xavier didn’t start quite as auspiciously. As a freshman, he didn’t play varsity baseball. White said he and the other coaches wanted to let the ninth-grader get adjusted that first year. But when he came up to varsity as a sophomore, it didn’t take Byrd much time to make a splash.

“My first at-bat, I hit a home run,” Byrd said. “Two games later, they put me in to pitch and I dominated; I was striking guys out. In high school, you don’t have big crowds, so you can hear the other dugout talking, and I could hear them saying, ‘This dude’s unbelievable.’

“So as a sophomore, when I was tearing it up on varsity, and I was actually the same age as a freshman — I’d just turned 15, and I was playing against 17- and 18-year-olds — I knew then that I had a pretty good shot.”

By their senior years, both players were in the pre-draft zoo with top pro prospects. “The phone was ringing off the hook,” Kinney said of Sowers’ senior year. “You name them, they were calling  — the Phillies, the Cubs, the Reds. Games were great to see because you had all the scouts sitting in the stands. It was a great atmosphere.”

Byrd was drafted late in the 1988 draft by the Cincinnati Reds; Sowers was selected in the top five in 1999, also by the Reds. Both passed in favor of college. Byrd went to LouisianaStateUniversity, where he played on a national championship team during his junior, and final, season. Sowers enrolled at Vanderbilt because he felt he needed the maturity of college at Vanderbilt.

“I knew college was what I needed to mature both athletically and mentally to everyday-life stuff,” Sowers said. “Kids who are handed a lump sum of money and a plane ticket to some small town to play baseball every day — that would have been a shell shock to me. I think college baseball was a very, very good stepping stone to learning who I was as a person.”

My first game, I faced Ken Griffey Jr. in the first inning,” Sowers recalled as we talked at Jacobs Field. “My first two batters were Ryan Freel and Brandon Phillips, and they’re both fairly new (to the league). But when Griffey steps in and starts doing all the trademark things (in the batter’s box) that you see on TV and in video games, it’s like, ‘Wow.’

“The difference in the way I look at myself and the way I look at him — there’s such a huge gap in that. It’s surreal.”

Of course, Sowers, now in his second major league season, has started to get used to things. After losing that first start against Cincinnati, he rebounded to go 7-4 with a 3.57 ERA in 2006. His coaches in Cleveland, including manager Wedge and pitching coach Carl Willis, praise the 24-year-old’s poise on the mound. They talk about his ability to read hitters and his stoicism — whether he’s just given up a home run or recorded a big strikeout.

And, while those are characteristics Sowers has maintained throughout his baseball life, they credit the influence of Byrd for helping make a seamless transition to the big leagues. “I think Byrd, having been around awhile, through ups and downs in the game, really is a tremendous help, both fundamentally and mentally, for these young guys,” Willis said. “And with he and (Sowers) being from the same town, that allows for that type of tutelage, if you will, to come a little easier — it’s a little more comfortable.”

Byrd enjoys discussing his fellow Louisvillian. “I like Jeremy; I’m a big fan of his,” Byrd said. “When I talk to him, I feel like I’m talking to another 36-year-old guy who’s been up here for 11 years. But I’m not. I’m talking to, basically, a rookie. So he’s years ahead of where he should be. He’s going to pitch up here for a long time, and he’s going to do very, very well.”

Byrd, on the other hand, knows he’s nearing the /files/storyimages/of his ride. Last year he posted a 10-9 record and a 4.88 ERA, and he started 2007 with a near no-hitter against Seattlethat was snowed out just before becoming an official game. But the /files/storyimages/could come soon. “I’m toward the twilight of my career; my kids are getting older,” Byrd said. “They’re at a point where they probably need to have their dad around a little more.”

He’ll leave with no regrets. In his 11 years with seven different teams, he, among other highlights, pitched in the playoffs at Yankee Stadium and was named to the 1999 National League All-Star Team for the game at Boston’s historic FenwayPark. Now he’s excited about watching another passionate young baseball player grow and improve. “My oldest, Grayson, loves baseball; it’s in his heart,” Byrd said. “He told me the other day, ‘Baseball is my passion.’ That’s a big word to use at 10.”

It reminds Byrd’s mother of someone else.

“Grayson loves baseball, just like his dad,” she said. “Actually, I think Paul might have been a little bit offended the other day. His father told him that Grayson is a better baseball player than Paul was at the same age!” 

Photo Credits:
Photo by Jesse Kramer
Photo courtesy of Lillie Byrd
Photo by Tony Guffy