LSU Had To Install a Key Card System For Their Batting Cages Because World Series Hero Third Baseman Alex Bregman is Addicted to Baseball and Wanted to Hit Literally 24/7 While in College
Last night after Alex Bregman delivered the walk off hit in maybe the best baseball game ever played, I came across this story from a few years ago when he was still in college.
Alex Bregman is different. His parents knew it early on — well before anyone else. They were there to see 4-year-old Alex, in his first T-ball game, turn a triple play — unassisted. He caught a line drive, tagged a runner and then stepped on second base. “No other kids were paying attention,” said Jackie Bregman, Alex’s mother. “They were picking up worms. They were eating dirt. It was just hilarious.”
For example, he threw a baseball against a wall in the family’s backyard so much that it produced a hole. The wall was cinder block.
Alex once asked a hitting instructor to help him prepare for a sidearm pitcher he would face the next day. Alex already had scouted the pitcher. He knew his velocity, his arm slot and his tendencies. Alex was 14. “I never had a 14-year-old ask me how to hit a sidearm pitcher,” said Jason Columbus, that hitting instructor. “Most of the time you’re trying to get them to stand in there correctly.”
Alex spent so much time in his hometown’s baseball academy that Columbus and other facility workers would tell him to go home.
“He’d leave for 20 minutes,” Columbus said, “and come back and say, ‘I went home.’ ”
LSU’s batting cages are now accessible to each baseball player through a key card-swiping system installed before the 2014 season. Why? Because Alex routinely would call student equipment managers, requesting they drive to the baseball stadium to open the cages. The calls would come in, sometimes as late as 11 p.m. or midnight. An equipment manager would unlock the cages and wait while Alex and sometimes others hit. An hour later, the manager would poke his head into the cages: “Just turn off the lights when you leave,” they’d say.
Safe to say Bregman wasn’t at LSU to play school huh? All he wants to do is play baseball. Dude was turning unassisted triple plays when he was 4 years old in his first T ball game. Kids are eating dirt at first base, meanwhile Bregman was going over in his head every possible situation if the ball was hit to him. He was asking how to hit a sidearm pitcher and get a scouting report when he was 14 years old. The list goes on and on about how obsessed this guy is with the game of baseball and I love every second of it. I mean they literally had to install a key-card system at the LSU batting cages because he would constantly keep calling the student managers to open it up. That type of relentless work ethic led to him winning the 2013 National Freshman of the Year, Shortstop of the Year, and becoming a two-time All American.
And now? Now, he’s hitting walk off singles in the World Series in maybe the craziest game in baseball history.
Of course Bregman grew up idolizing Derek Jeter, that’s the reason he wears 2 obviously. He’s literally what me and you hoped to become when we were younger, but we sucked at sports. He wanted to be Derek Jeter in a clutch spot in the World Series. He would throw a ball against a wall as a kid just hoping to have that chance to nail a guy at home. He would dream of coming up in the big spot to win the game. Well, it’s all happening right in front of him now.