ASU Baseball: Bringing the hustle back to the diamond

(Photo: Dominic Cotroneo/WCSN)

David Eckstein, Pete Rose, Dustin Pedroia are a few of the true 100 percent effort players on every given night. They ran/run a full 90 feet at their highest effort possible on seemingly every routine ground ball and fly ball. They would finish games with jerseys so dirty the equipment manager would need to make sure to wash their uniforms twice. They collected scars like baseball cards on their elbows and hips that began as a gash, scabbed, then would re-open on the very next night doing it all over again.

Every baseball club has at least one of this type of player.

One could say it’s David Greer for the Sun Devils. The sophomore, however, is always quick to point out he’s not alone.

“I wouldn’t say it’s just me, I think our whole team hustles hard,” Greer said. “I think we all pride ourselves in giving hard 90s down to first base, making a hard turn, and if the outfielder stumbles or bobbles the ball we’re taking two.”

Greer has started 33 consecutive games with the majority of his time at the hot corner. Who knows what kind of path his season takes without an injury to regular starter Dalton DiNatale at the beginning of March, but two months have passed and Greer still holds down the fort at third, is “sharpied” in the fifth spot of the lineup card, and is fifth in the Pac-12 batting average standings with a .351 clip.

From the right-handed batter’s box, Greer keeps his hands bare and a tight grip on the bat. If he laces a base hit, he knows his plan rounding first with instructions from an old coach.

“I played on a summer league team and we were taught, ‘Don’t look at the ball.’ The first base coach is going to let you know what you’re doing,” Greer recalled when he played on the Diamondbacks Elite Scout team. “Whether you’re going to run through the bag or he would actually yell at us ‘You’re thinking three! You’re thinking three!’ I think it came from there. I still try and keep that in my repertoire to not look at the ball.”

Watching the game, for every ASU player but in Greer’s case especially, any ball to any gap has the threat of a triple. Any seeing-eye single through the infield can just as easily become a double. Everyone wants to say they play the game hard, but sometimes the head coach has to set the culture to see that mindset actually come to life.

“I think it’s a mix of both — some kids have not been held accountable on that stuff. Some guys though that’s how they play the game and they’re attracted to [playing hard],” head coach Tracy Smith said.

Greer knows it too.

“I was trying hard but I was trying hard to better the team, extending a double so we are in scoring position, something like that,” he said.

While maybe Dustin Pedroia is the only current player you can say without a shadow of a doubt plays the game hard, Greer remembers a player—a hometown favorite—that played with the same moxie.

“When Eric Byrnes played with the Diamondbacks I always kind of liked the way he played. Even though it wasn’t the best looking, he was always hustling trying to make the—not the outstanding play—but the play that most people wouldn’t expect him to make.”

An 11-season veteran who played for six different clubs, Byrnes had the best season of his career with the Diamonbacks in 2007, leading them to the NLCS for the first time since their World Series year in 2001. In that 90-win 2007 season, Byrnes played 160 games, stole 50 bases, and drove in a team-leading 83 runs.

“He never made anything look great,” Greer said. “I’m fine with that—I’m fine with not making things look great but playing hard. When he would almost jump throw from the outfield and sort of tumble or somersault but still get the guy out at home, I loved that. It was awesome.”

But why don’t we see players like that anymore? “Their argument would be ‘Well it’s a long season…whatever, whatever,’” Smith countered. “I would say I get that but I think to ask an elite athlete to run four times hard [for] 90 feet is probably not asking too much.”

“I played hard I did. It’s because I was a marginal player and that was kind of my enjoyment of the game. I think there’s a right way and a wrong way to play the game. I just think that you play hard and leave it on the field…It seems like more and more you got to talk about that kind of stuff rather than people just doing it,” Smith said.

While Greer will tone it down (slightly) for his home run trot, which he has performed twice this season, he still motors up the first base line until an umpire twirls his finger in the air.

He jokingly explained why: “From the same [summer ball] coach, Micah Franklin, once told me ‘You haven’t hit enough to know it’s out, you better run.’ So that’s how I play.”

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