If Kendall Graveman’s baseball career continues its present trajectory, he’s going to turn at least one cliche on its ear. Nice guys can do just fine in the Majors, thank you.
Graveman and Dispatch sales rep Hamp Holley are longtime friends, and Hamp invited Kendall to ride on our float in the Starkville Christmas parade Monday evening.
As we chatted aboard our pontoon boat float (courtesy of Glenn Miller) someone brought to my attention the exceptionally pleasant and unassuming young man I was talking with also happened to be a major league pitcher.
Three days later we met at 929, the coffee house in downtown Starkville.
The 23-year-old right-hander learned baseball in the backyard with his brother and father, a P.E. teacher and baseball coach in his hometown of Alexander City, Ala. When it came time for college, despite being raised an Alabama fan, he chose Auburn, in large part because of Butch Thompson, the team’s pitching coach.
Before he signed, the Auburn baseball coaching staff underwent a purge and Thompson landed at MSU. Graveman visited the campus during an MSU-Kentucky football game and fell hard for the Maroon and White. By fall of 2009 he was a Diamond Dawg. He was a member of the Bulldogs pitching staff that took the team to the 2013 College World Series in Omaha.
MSU baseball coach John Cohen resorts to superlatives when asked about Graveman.
“I remember sitting in his living room in Alabama and being struck by the honesty and integrity of his entire family,” said Cohen. “He works harder than any pitcher I ever had in 24 years. He’s a pretty amazing kid.”
The Blue Jays took Graveman in the 2013 draft, and for the rest of the season and all of the next he worked the minor league circuit playing for teams like the Lansing (Michigan) Lugnuts, the New Hampshire Fisher Cats and the Buffalo Bisons (Bisons in Buffalo?). He finished the 2014 minor league season 14-6 with an ERA of 1.83, good enough to earn a first team spot on Baseball America’s All-Stars and good enough to get him to the Show.
When asked about his time in the minors Graveman smiles. Long bus rides in the summer heat without air conditioning, living out of a suitcase and sharing a two-bedroom apartment with three roommates are fond memories, he says. By contrast ML teams fly on chartered planes and have full-time chefs on duty in the clubhouse, ready to serve the culinary whims of the players.
The food is great, says Graveman. “Especially in New York. If they don’t have it, they’ll get it for you, lobster, filet mignon.”
Graveman says his bread-and-butter pitch is a sinking fastball; his has been clocked in the low 90-mph range. He says the pitch forces a lot of ground balls his infield converts to outs.
His rise from a Lower-A farm team to the majors in one season is exceedingly rare. Graveman began the ’14 season in Lansing with the Lugnuts; by September he was in the Blue Jays’ bullpen.
His major league debut came in the eighth inning during the first game of a three-game series in Boston. As you might expect, the memory is indelible.
Major league ballparks have their own traditions and at Boston’s Fenway in the middle of the eighth fans stand and sing “Sweet Caroline.” They were singing as Graveman jogged to the mound from the bullpen in right field. As he passed first baseman Edwin Encarnacion, the rookie shouted thanks for his home run that put the Blue Jays ahead by three and got Graveman in the game.
“I remember standing there listening to the fans sing “Sweet Caroline,” Graveman said. “I remember what the mound looked and felt like.”
He threw his first warm-up pitch over the catcher’s head. His first pitch to a batter was a ball; the second a strike. He says he felt confident after that.
Graveman says being in the Majors is a thrill.
“You walk into a big league locker room and there are guys you’ve watched growing up.”
And then in November he came face-to-face with the business side of baseball.
He was home one evening watching TV with his parents when the phone rang. It was 9:30. An assistant GM from the Blue Jays told him he’d been traded to Oakland. Twenty minutes later an assistant GM from Oakland called to welcome him to the team. Graveman said he didn’t sleep so well that night.
“We’d just ordered Christmas gifts with Blue Jays logos,” he said. “We won’t be wearing that.”
He’ll be reporting for spring training Feb. 20 in Mesa, Arizona. For now he’s living in Starkville — he loves the town — and working out with nine other major leaguers who were on that 2013 Omaha team.
“It’s great,” he says. “We hold each other accountable.”
After spring training Graveman reckons he’ll be in either Oakland or Nashville, where Oakland has a Triple-A team.
When asked about career goals, the young pitcher answers without pause.
“I only have game goals.” He says he writes them in a notebook, a habit his father taught him.
“If you meet your game goals, the career goals will take care of themselves.”
Birney Imes III is the immediate past publisher of The Dispatch.
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