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The Tuscaloosa News
Inside Alabama football coach Kalen DeBoer's one-summer shot at playing pro baseball
- Story byThe Tuscaloosa News
- Inside Alabama football coach Kalen DeBoer's one-summer shot at playing pro baseball
Not even 24 hours after Kalen DeBoer walked across the graduation stage to pick up his degree from the University of Sioux Falls in 1998, he packed his car and headed east on a 1,000-mile drive. He didn't stop until he arrived at Thurman Munson Stadium, named for the late New York Yankees catcher, in Canton, Ohio. He was officially an outfielder for the Canton Crocodiles of the independent Frontier League − about as far away from being the future head coach for Alabama football as 1,000 miles could've taken him.
He didn't know what to expect.
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He couldn't be sure he belonged.
But this was a shot at a pro baseball career. DeBoer either had to swing the bat, or regret never trying.
"I was just living in the moment when I went to the Crocodiles," DeBoer said last week. "That's how I've always lived."
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It definitely wasn't about the money. According to one of DeBoer's teammates, players were paid just $600 per month, with paychecks coming once every two weeks and totaling a paltry $259 after withholdings.
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And that was for the best returning team in the league.
The '98 Crocs played a shade above .500, finishing 41-38, and DeBoer wasn't even a Croc long enough for his parents to ever come watch him play. If they had, DeBoer wouldn't have had any trouble spotting them in the bleachers; according to statscrew.com, home attendance averaged just 1,744 fans. Road trips took DeBoer to battle equally anonymous clubs − the Evansville Otters, the Johnstown Steal, the Chillicothe Paints − and it took a toll.
"That was a fun year to experience what it's like to be on the road, but I have a lot of respect for the travel that minor league and major league baseball players do," DeBoer said. "It was a grind."
Along with being an outstanding wide receiver for the University of Sioux Falls football team, DeBoer had also been a standout baseball player; he was undrafted, but good enough to earn an invitation to play for Canton, which had no MLB affiliation as an independent club. The manager was Theron Todd, who had played eight years in the minor leagues, and was a member of the Durham Bulls the year the Golden Globe-nominated film Bull Durham was released in 1988. Todd remembered DeBoer as raw but athletic, and eventually became aware that football was his primary sport in college.
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"He stood out because of his physical body type. As an outfielder, you've got to have some fast-twitch muscle, especially to play centerfield like him, and he had that. In batting practice, you could see glimpses that made you go "Whoa, OK." It was BP (pitch) speed, but when he hit it, he hit it hard," Todd said. "The only issue I could see at the time was, he was a little stiff, and that was probably from football. So as athletic as he was, he might not have been as fluid, but he definitely had strength and speed. I wish he'd given it more time to put it together."
What he did put together, however, wasn't bad at all.
A right-handed hitter, DeBoer batted .272 with one home run, but had an on-base percentage of .396, drawing 14 walks in just 81 at bats. In today's game, a .396 OBP would've undoubtedly earned him a closer look from scouts. But at the time, an undrafted kid playing indy ball couldn't walk his way into a contract.
"Back then, in 1998, evaluators weren't valuing walks," said Bobby Brown, a teammate of DeBoer's in Canton. "On-base percentage wasn't really appreciated until Billy Beane and Moneyball came out. And that was like 2001, so Kalen just missed it."
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The curveball, he could handle. But the difference between small-college fastballs and pro heaters was DeBoer's toughest adjustment. The diving action on a split-fingered fastball, in particular, was something he hadn't seen before.
"I saw a lot of off-speed stuff in college, so that I was used to," DeBoer said. "But now all the sudden you've got a harder fastball coming in high on your hands, then you've got these splitters to deal with, it was tough."
Not long after DeBoer took the Alabama job, he got a letter of congratulations from Brown, now the manager of the Frontier League's Ottawa Titans. DeBoer invited him to an Alabama game this fall, an offer Brown intends to take him up on. Much like Todd, Brown also thinks DeBoer might've made more of his baseball career.
And he's hopeful he didn't have something to do with its demise.
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Brown was the team's best hitter with a .362 batting average, but was a defensive liability at third base, resulting in a move to DeBoer's position of left field.
"I didn't mention this to Kalen in the letter," Brown said with a laugh. "But I hope they didn't release him because I couldn't play defense in the infield."
By the end of summer '98, DeBoer was ready to live in the moment somewhere else.
He went back home, attracted by both a fledgling Indoor Football League team, the Sioux Falls Cobras, as well as a teaching and coaching position at Washington High School. But he wouldn't trade his summer riding buses around the upper Midwest with the Crocodiles for $259 every two weeks, 1,000 miles from home.
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And even farther than that from making millions to coach a different sport.
Tuscaloosa News columnist Chase Goodbread is also the weekly co-host of Crimson Cover TV on WVUA-23. Reach him at cgoodbread@gannett.com. Follow on Twitter @chasegoodbread.
This article originally appeared on The Tuscaloosa News: Inside Alabama football coach Kalen DeBoer's 1998 shot at pro baseball
