GOODYEAR, Ariz. – At 9:30 Saturday morning, the six teams playing in the 10:30 a.m. slot at the Perfect Game/EvoShield National Championship (Upperclass) tournament began filing into the Indians’ side of the Goodyear BallPark Complex.
Among them was Las Vegas-based Team Adidas 2, accompanied by one of its directors and coaches, Mike Bryant. A true-blue baseball man and a fan of the game at every level, Bryant was more than willing to sit back and speak with Perfect Game for a few minutes, but he could be excused if he seemed a little anxious.
Goodyear is in Phoenix’s southwest Valley which stays on Mountain Standard Time the year-around. That meant that 9:30 a.m. here was 11:30 a.m. in Chicago, and in a half-hour Bryant’s beloved Chicago Cubs would go head-to-head with the St. Louis Cardinals at Wrigley Field on the city's North Side.
Bryant wanted to be sure to keep track of a game between two of the three National League Central Division leaders that had very real playoff repercussions. “I’ve got my phone here with me,” Bryant said with a laugh. “I’m all over it.”
Mike Bryant is the father of the Cubs’ sensational rookie third baseman Kris Bryant, who first made a name for himself while attending high-profile PG events in 2008 and ’09. Bryant can afford to take the time to check-in on how his son’s sky-rocketing career is progressing, but on Saturday he was also keeping an eye on the two teams – Team Adidas 1 and Team Adidas 2 – that he had entered in the PG/EvoShield Upper National 98-team field.
Bryant and one his top associates, Brian Kaplan, have been putting together teams consisting primarily of Las Vegas-area youngsters for the past four years. The teams have played under a variety of names – such as last year’s Las Vegas Sandlot – and this year the shoe and apparel manufacturer Adidas jumped on board. That sponsorship was triggered by the lucrative endorsement deal Kris Bryant has with Adidas, and the two teams here this weekend are not lacking for first-class uniforms, gear and equipment.
The Team Adidas organizers – Bryant, Kaplan, former big-leaguer Brian Giles and Tony Gallo (the father of 2011 PG National Showcase and 2011 PG All-American Classic alumnus and current Texas Ranger Joey Gallo) – are all coaches and instructors who identify themselves as “baseball rats” and they hope to keep bringing these kids to the Arizona desert for years to come.
The players on Team Adidas 1 and Team Adidas 2 are all seniors, juniors and sophomores from Las Vegas high schools, most prominently Sierra Vista, a school that has an indoor facility the group uses. Bryant calls most of the kids on his rosters “overlooked” high school players who haven’t been able to crack the varsity lineups at their respective high school teams.
“We’re giving them the opportunity to play varsity baseball out here when they weren’t getting any at-bats in their spring and summer programs,” he said Saturday. “We’re hoping that by the time they get back into their high school programs in the spring that they’re more competitive and more ready to compete for a position.”
None of the 40 players from the classes of 2016, 2017 and 2018 have made college commitments but that is not the goal of Team Adidas. It is really much simpler – much more basic – than that.
“The number-one thing is to get them to believe in themselves,” Bryant said during Saturday morning’s conversation. “When you’re 15, 16, 17 (years old) there is a lot that can happen for you in a very short time in this game if you’ve got some baseball skills; they don’t know truly how good they can be until they see 90 mph fastballs.
“But mainly the goal of the program is to get them to compete for a spot on their varsity team because that’s where it’s going to happen for them.”
The Team Adidas squads struggled to compete on equal footing with many of the very best travel ball teams from around the country – most certainly from California and Arizona – during pool-play; they combined to win one of their first four pool-play games with two left to play late Saturday. The 25-team playoff field was to be set by late Saturday night and it was likely Team Adidas would not be included.
Kris Bryant participated at the National Showcase (p) and the PG All-American Classic in 2009.
It’s a different situation from what Mike Bryant observed during Kris’ two-year Perfect Game career. Kris was at six PG events in 2008-09, including two appearances at the PG WWBA World Championship in Jupiter, Fla., with the Ohio Warhawks, and headline performances at the 2009 PG National Showcase in Minneapolis and the 2009 PG All-American Classic in San Diego.
Kris Bryant hit cleanup in the West Team’s batting order at the ’09 Classic, one spot behind another Las Vegas All-American, Bryce Harper. Kris is now the favorite to win this year’s National League Rookie of the Year Award with the Cubs – an award Harper won in 2012 playing with the Washington Nationals – and Harper is the favorite to win this year’s NL Most Valuable Player Award with the Nationals.
During an interview with PG conducted in April 2013 when Kris was in the middle of his Golden Spikes Award-winning junior season at the University of San Diego, he had this to say about his PG experiences:
“It was obviously something different but it was something that I needed to do in order to be where I’m at today. I really feel like (Perfect Game) gets the best competition that (it) can get and it’s great for the sport of baseball. I’m happy I was able to attend those events because it really got me on the map and it really got me looked at.”
Mike Bryant agrees with that assessment:
“My feelings were that I wanted to get Kris to play above his own ability level and dominate there so he could continue to move up” his dad said. “Coming into high school, he was basically in the same boat as a lot of these guys are right now. He had to separate himself from the other talent … and Perfect Game was a part of that.”
Bryant, in his own words, “spent a ton of money” on Kris’ travel ball and showcase experiences and both back then and today he looked at it as an investment – one that paid off handsomely – and never as an expense. “I wouldn’t have done it any differently; I can tell you that right now,” he said.
The outfielder Mike Bryant spent two seasons (1980, ’81) in playing in the Boston Red Sox farm systems before retiring with a career batting average of .204. He famously tells a story about how he once attended a hitting session with the great Ted Williams – Williams told him he was late because he was only 10 minutes early – and how Williams stressed that most important thing a hitter could learn was to hit the ball hard and hit it in the air.
Bryant could never make those two basic hitting tenants work for himself but he was able to pass them on to his son Kris. He began working with his youngest son – older son Nick played collegiately and is an alumnus of the 2007 PG California Underclass Showcase – when Kris was 5 years old.
The Cubs made Kris Bryant the second overall pick in the 2013 MLB Amateur Draft out of the U. of San Diego. After he agreed to a $6.7 million signing bonus with the Cubs, Kris built his father an expansive batting cage at Mike’s Las Vegas home, where Bryant conducts hitting lessons for more than 100 individual clients; he has been a hitting instructor for more than 13 years.
From the perspective of just being a dad, Mike Bryant said this whole wild ride that has led up to Kris making a very real run at NL ROY honors actually began feeling like the real deal in the fall of 2012. That was when Kris began his junior year at San Diego and the media attention really began to take hold because of the standout sophomore season Kris had with the Toreros the previous spring.
At the conclusion of the 2013 season, Kris earned the Golden Spikes Award as the USA Baseball National Player of the Year and the Dick Howser Trophy, the National Collegiate Baseball Writers’ award for national player of the year.
He became the No. 2 overall pick in the 2013 MLB Draft, was named the Arizona Fall League MVP and the 2014 Minor League Player of the Year before finally making his big-league debut with the Cubs on April 17; he became an NL All-Star for the first time in July.
“As a dad to watch all that unfold … it brought me to tears,” Bryant said. “He got into the Home Run Derby at the All-Star Game and I got to pitch to him … so as a dad, to sit back and watch that, you just beam with pride.”
Kris Bryant graduated from Bonanza High School in Las Vegas in 2010 with a 4.6 GPA and the Toronto Blue Jays drafted him in the 18th round of the 2010 MLB Draft. His Perfect Game experiences had him prepared for life as a professional but he wisely chose to spend the next three years in San Diego where he developed into one of the best college players of his generation.
Mike Bryant took a look around the Cleveland Indians’ spring training complex Saturday morning and smiled when he took in the scene. The 40 players on two teams he had brought down from Las Vegas were only going to get better from what they experienced at the PG/EvoShield National Championship (Upperclass), just like Kris Bryant did six and seven years earlier.
“When you look at it in its context, no matter how good or bad the teams are in this event, the level of competition is elevated all the way up,” Bryant said. “… (Coaches are) teaching the kids how to get the most out of the tools that they have, they’re getting the kids stronger at a younger age; they’re protecting their arms.
“And then for the pro teams to realize that it benefits them to open up their facilities for an event like this instead of guarding it closely and not letting anybody play on their fields …” Well, that’s just a win-win for everyone.