Anthony McCarron, SNY.tv | Twitter |
Clint Baty is a basketball coach by trade, so he admits to perhaps not knowing exactly how good his son, Brett, was at baseball until after Brett's freshman year of high school. That's when colleges such as Texas, Texas A&M and TCU started poking around.
"Then I realized, 'What do we have on our hands here?'" Clint Baty said Monday night, after Brett Baty was taken 12th overall by the Mets in the MLB Draft.
"He just kept working at it and kept getting better and better," Clint said. "It's a dad's dream to see that, when a person puts in that much work, for it to pay off."
Clint is the hoops coach at Lake Travis High School in Texas, the same school where his son is a baseball star. But Brett, who is 6-foot-3, is not bad at basketball, either, and he even played his senior season for his dad.
"We had a great team and went several rounds in the playoffs and while we're doing that, he's trying to get ready for baseball season because he doesn't want to miss a beat," Clint said.
"He was our 4-man. But he actually had to play the 5 this year because our big man went down and he had to play out of position. He's got a very good basketball IQ and he can actually dunk the basketball, which a lot of people don't know. He's a good basketball player."
This good? As a senior in baseball, Baty was batting .615 over his first 37 games -- his team is still alive in the Texas state baseball tournament and he's flying home Tuesday to play -- with 19 home runs.
But it's clear that's where his son's passion lies, Clint said.
Even as good as Brett is and as committed as he is to baseball, it was unclear how the draft would go for him. He's 19 years old, and some teams that rely on draft projection algorithms might have wanted a younger player. Clint has heard all those concerns.
"Tell that algorithm about CC Sabathia" and other players who are producing at an older age, Clint quipped.
Here's why Brett is a 19-year-old high school senior:
"His mom (Leslie) became a principal at an elementary school," Clint said. "Brett was one of the younger ones in his class. All my better athletes had been older ones. She became the principal and we kept him there one more year, in fifth grade.
"Turns out, we didn't know that would be one of the things everyone was kind of talking about, his age. But then again, he'd be a draft eligible sophomore (in college) and be in line with everybody else. When we made that decision back when he was 11, we had no idea."
No matter. Brett is in a good spot right now -- picked 12th overall with a scholarship to Texas waiting for him if he prefers the college route.
When Brett was picked, he was sitting in front of a mock dugout in an MLB Network studio alongside the three other prospects who attended the draft. No one had been picked yet; Baty was the first of the four attendees chosen.
His family was sitting in the "dugout" behind him.
"We had gotten a text about 45 seconds before that they were going to pick him," Clint said. "So he was kind of looking back at us. We were in the double-digit range, as far as (possible) selection. We had an idea of what teams were interested, but you just never know the unpredictability of the draft.
"We're just super excited."