MARIETTA, Ga. - Scanning through the roster you might notice two Jordan boys, both listed at the same height, weight, high school, hometown, everything, just name it. Dig a little deeper and you might find they are both LSU commits. Even further, if you visit their Perfect Game player pages you would second-guess whether or not they were actually two different people. Bryce and Beau Jordan are indeed twins and together they dominate opponents; field-to-field, school-to-school, and state-to-state.
They aren’t just your typical run-of-the-mill ballplayers that happen to be on the same team, though. Both brothers are going to be taking on SEC teams together when they join Paul Mainieri’s club in Baton Rouge, La. This week, though, they take the field at the 2013 17u WWBA National Championship with the Texas Sun Devils.
Sharing the diamond for as long as they can remember, Bryce and Beau even play like one another and learn from each other.
“I just learn from his mistakes when he hits and then I always get a hit right after,” Bryce joked while smirking at his brother.
Beau immediately retaliated, “He didn’t play all summer last season after he hurt his back, but he took some lessons I guess.”
Although they enjoy hounding each other when sharing the diamond, they do find it can be annoying to play on the same team.
“We get the same questions like, ‘Who are you? Who are you?’, instead of one of us being on one team and people not knowing we have a twin,” said Bryce.
“Our coach, we’ve played with him for three years, he still doesn’t know us apart,” Beau said about their high school coach. But he’s not the only one who gets the two mixed up. Shortstop Ti’quan Forbes jokes that he still gets the two confused, as does Texas Sun Devils coach Matt Thompson.
“I still confuse them all the time,” said Thompson. “They just ignore me now when I call them by the wrong name.”
Thompson sure does appreciate having the twins on his team, no matter how many times he may get the two mixed up.
“They are the toughest two baseball players I’ve ever coached in my entire 17-year career,” Thompson said. “They will run through a wall for a win. They’ll do anything to win a baseball game and without the Jordan boys this team can’t do as good as it’s doing now.”
The twins are a combined 11-for-29 (.379 average) with 11 runs and nine RBI through five tournament games.
Both brothers are ranked in the top 500 for the 2014 class, Beau being No. 323 and Bryce at No. 333. Together they take the field at the 2013 17u WWBA National Championship for the Texas Sun Devils, along with Forbes, the 28th ranked prospect in the 2014 class. They bat 2-3-4 in the lineup.
Under the guidance of Thompson, the Sun Devils are 5-0 in the tournament, although it’s been anything but smooth sailing for the Texas team.
In the first of two playoff games on Wednesday for the Sun Devils, they needed an extra frame to beat the Diamond Simcox 17u Blue, 9-7. In the second game, the Sun Devils needed the bottom of the seventh to beat the Longshots Baseball Teal, 5-4 in a back-and-forth contest.
“It’s been a long day,” said Thompson. “The first game went into extra innings, and then the lightning and rain delay here, and both games were won in the last inning.”
“We’ve been playing some tough teams, tough games, faced some real good pitchers and we just keep fighting,” Bryce added. “We’re not the biggest team, but we’re getting the job done.”
After the Longshots Baseball Teal scored four runs in the top of the fifth inning to tie the game, Forbes led off of the bottom of the inning with a double, later coming around to score on another double off the bat of Kennon Fontenot. Forbes continued to show his sparkplug abilities near the the top of the order by leading off the bottom of the seventh with a hard ground ball through the 5-6 hole, scoring the winning run on Shane Selman's sacrifice fly.
“The team trusted in me so I just had to get the job done,” Forbes said. “I was just thinking to myself, ‘Hit, hit, hit. Put the ball in play. Don’t try to do too much, just put it in play.’”
“He’s the lightning bolt for us,” said Thompson of Forbes. “He gets things started and stays loose and everything he does is at another level right now than most players.”
The team knows they are a bunch of scrappers who don’t quit. It’s that determination and fire that has kept them alive through some tough games to this point.
“We know how to overcome adversity and fight,” said Forbes.
“We got a lot of people here who are winners,” Beau said about his team. “We’re here to win.”
That’s the kind of attitude that the SEC will be getting in the near future when the Jordan’s head to Louisiana State University and Forbes heads to Ole Miss. Bryce and Beau are eager to play for the LSU Tigers.
“I’ve grown up an LSU fan and I’ve always wanted to play for them,” Bryce said.
“You can’t beat 12,000 people every night game,” Beau added. That’s 12,000 more confused faces when they can’t tell Bryce and Beau apart.
Thompson couldn’t be happier to see his twin stars are going to play for the school they’ve grown up rooting for, although he will surely miss having the pleasure of being their coach.
“They are a college coach’s dream,” said Thompson. “When they get to LSU, coach Mainieri’s gonna fall in love with those two guys for sure.”