I’m Coming Home

By Matthew Magron

Baseball is a game of failure. 

As a baseball player, you have to learn to be okay with failing, and be able to bounce back within seconds, especially as a pitcher. 

This was something incredibly difficult for me to figure out in my senior year of high school. 

Up until that point, I was a third baseman. That was all I knew, and I was good at it. I played there throughout little league and started taking third base seriously when I got to high school.

I remember growing up at baseball fields. My brother Shane and I would both take ground balls while my dad would drill fungos (ground balls) at us for hours. 

We would do this, take batting practice, then get in the car and talk about baseball even more. We were the definition of a baseball family. 

My dad was a major leaguer for a bit, and he passed down his passion for the game to Shane and me. We both worked hard, and the game started rewarding us for it.

When I got to high school, Shane was a senior, making his name as a catcher. I got some playing time at third base, and before long, I was starting. 

I continued to work harder after Shane went on to play college baseball because that was something I wanted to do as well. I worked harder and harder, even getting ranked as high as the number 25 third baseman in the state of Florida. 

I started getting offers as a third baseman, but during my senior year, my coach suggested something that changed my life.

As much as I loved playing third base, it was hard for many coaches to overlook my build. I was a 6’5” slender guy with good arm strength. Anytime a coach looked at me, the first image they had in their head was a pitcher. I had never pitched before, that was, however, until my senior year. 

My coach started putting me on the mound, and suddenly everything felt like it opened up for me. As much as I loved playing the field, pitching just felt natural for me. I knew that was what I wanted to do.

Soon, all my offers coming in were either as a pitcher or a two-way player. I ended up committing to Florida International University. Not long after, however, I took a step back. 

I thought about my family and where I was with everything, and I realized that FIU was not the best situation for me. This resulted in me de-committing from FIU and signing with Austin Peay State University in Tennessee as a pitcher.

My freshman year of college was the first year in my career that I had ever been a “pitcher only.” It was an incredibly different feeling for me. 

I went from just trying to throw hard and continue to focus on hitting to learning how to pitch. I learned how to use off-speed pitches and hit my spots. I worked incredibly hard that year, only for the year to get washed up by Covid. 

When I came back for my sophomore year, I came in ready to take the mound.

I started the season as one of the go-to arms out of the bullpen. After a few rough outings, however, I saw my appearances become more scarce. I just wanted to pitch. I ended the season with 12 innings pitched. This was not bad for a freshman, but something did not sit well with me about the school’s area. What once felt like a home to me now felt strange and uncomfortable. 

After a lot of thought and prayer, I entered the transfer portal after the season.

Having just entered the portal, I knew I needed to pitch well over the summer for a chance to transfer. There were thousands of division 1 players in the portal, making every outing I had over the summer that much more important. I decided to return to the South Florida Collegiate Baseball League, the summer league I pitched in the previous summer. It is a very competitive league, and I knew it would give me the best chance to work on my stuff and get my name out there for scouts.

The best part of pitching in the SFCBL was that my catcher was none other than my brother, Shane. He never had the chance to catch me in a game before. He always caught bullpens and threw with me when we were home, but when we played together, I was not a pitcher yet. 

He knew what worked for me, he knew what to say to me to calm me down, and he knew how to elevate my game. This became very clear during each outing. Every time I took the mound, I felt my stuff get better and better. I was throwing harder, my off-speed pitches were moving more, and I was hitting my spots better than ever.

All of this work paid off, as I received an offer from the College of Central Florida, an extremely competitive junior college. That is the school I will be attending in the fall, and I cannot wait to see how the rest of my career plays out. I am going to pitch until I am dragged off the mound. That has always been my mindset, and it always will be.

When it comes to making decisions in our careers we can easily be swayed by the thoughts and illusions of “what we think it will be like or what we want to happen.” Especially in my case having to change positions so late in my career, find the right home to play at was a jaded search, to say the least.

But don’t be afraid to do what’s best for you. It’s easy to sit back in bad situations and do nothing about them. 

The effort put into finding the right situation, unique to you and every player, is an effort that I promise will be worthwhile.