By JED LOCKETT
Bluefield Daily Telegraph
August 16, 2008 09:35 pm
—
BLUEFIELD — After a close win, Nick Ray sat on the deck outside the Coppinger Room at Bowen Field munching on some pizza with the older couple that was providing him housing during his stay in Bluefield.
It was a simple scene at a simple time in a simple place with simple people. And that is simply the way the young man here to play a simple game likes it.
“That’s what I’m here to do, is play baseball,” Ray said. “Other things like how big the town is, everything like that doesn’t really matter. It’s great weather and a good field to play on. It’s all you need.”
Ray hails from Pocatello, Idaho, a town of about 60,000 people with three high schools. It’s the fourth-largest city in the Gem State and has many comparable features to Nature’s Air-Conditioned City.
“It’s surrounded by mountains,” Ray said. “It’s kind-of divided. One half’s like a desert. The other half’s mountains and trees.
“It’s somewhat similar (to Bluefield) I guess.”
Ray was nine or 10 when he started playing baseball. Many enter the game at the behest of an older family member. But in Ray’s case, it was peer pressure that caused him to take up America’s national pastime.
“Since I was a little kid I guess, I always played every year,” Ray said. “Everybody did it. The kids I went to school with, they just played at recess or whatever. And I signed up to play Little League.”
“I just loved to do it. I played a bunch and some of us are a little bit better I guess.”
Ray attended Highland High School where he became a multi-sport athlete. He wanted to pursue a career in another game, but did not have the prerequisites to do so.
“Football is the main sport there,” Ray said. “I struggled until my senior year and had a good year and was really going to play football in college. But I wasn’t really big enough to play football.
“A bunch of my friends had always wanted to play college baseball. They went to a recruiting trip to some schools and stuff and I just came along with them. I ended up getting a scholarship to a junior college.”
That college was Treasure Valley Community College in Ontario, Ore. After two years there, he transferred to Northwest Nazarene University.
“I had a good year there and one of the coaches knew a scout for the (Baltimore) Orioles,” Ray said. “I did a workout for them. I guess he liked what he saw and he gave me a chance.”
Ray was drafted by Baltimore in the 48th round of the 2007 draft and spent his first minor-league season in the Gulf Coast League.
“In college, the No. 1 guy was the best guy,” Ray said. “But there, everybody was a little bit better. So it was like facing the No. 1 guy every day.”
Ray also found himself face-to-face with other men from other countries speaking other tongues.
“A lot of Latin players and stuff, a lot of guys that don’t speak very good English, a lot of Spanish,” Ray said. “And it was a little weird, though it wasn’t too crazy.”
But that was not the thing that took the most getting used to.
“The weirdest thing was probably the weather,” he said. “It just makes it a lot harder when it’s that much different than you’re used to your whole life.”
The time served him well. He found out what he was good at and what he needed to work on.
“Defensively I played well,” Ray said. “And offensively I struck out a lot more times than I should have. But I’m learning.”
Now in Bluefield, Ray is still excelling at the things he is good at and working on the things he is not.
“Once again, a lot of strikeouts,” Ray said. “I’ve got to put the ball in play at least and have a chance to beat out a ground ball or something like that ’cause I’m not really a home run hitter or a power hitter. I put the ball in play a lot more. But I feel like I’m doing O.K.
“That’s what I need to be trying to do. It’s not really working out all the time. But that’s got to be part of my game, is to put the ball in play and cut my strikeouts way down.”
But Ray has learned that professional baseball is about the details. The more time a player spends perfecting those details, the better that player becomes.
“The little things in professional baseball matter quite a bit, like getting a sacrifice bunt down, stuff like that,” Ray said. “And just going 2-for-4 every night or whatever and moving guys over, it’s 0-for-1 but you moved them over and you helped the team out.”
Ray is content to work on the simple things. This simple man from a simple place has found a kindred spirit in the simple town of Bluefield.
“The junior college I went to was in a pretty small town and I really enjoyed it there,” Ray said. “And the field’s way nice here and the weather’s awesome.
“Places to eat and it’s all you need, really. You can focus on baseball and there’s not a whole lot of distractions as far as nightlife, stuff like that.”
Whether he makes it to the majors or not, he will remember his time in Bluefield and the simple things he learned while playing at Bowen Field.
“Hopefully they’ll let me come back next year and play somewhere with the Orioles,” Ray said. “I need to get a better understanding of what kind of player they want me to be, what kind of player I can be, follow through I guess, learn how to play the game the way it’s supposed to be played.”
— Contact Jed Lockett
at jlockett@bdtonline.com
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