Lehigh University Athletics
Big numbers, attitude fuel player's dream
1/17/2005 12:00:00 AM | Baseball
Washington Nationals catcher Brian "Hoops" Schneider made an early impression on Matt McBride. Not that Schneider was some sort of idol. He wasn't. Hoops was a senior at Their meeting came at Dave Schneck's Hitter's Edge in
Lehigh coach Sean Leary sees similarities. So does Andy Pitsilos, McBride's former coach at Liberty High School. "Matty and Brian are very close coming out of high school," says Pitsilos, who tells of adding a young Schneider to the Blue Mountain League Banko Orioles roster for a weekend tournament in York. All Schneider did, Pitsilos says, was spray line drives all over the park. "He wasn't hitting it long, just line-drive hits. Brian was a 16- or 17-year-old and he went seven for his first seven (at-bats) in his first tournament.
"He was a teenager playing with men."
Well, guess what?
McBride has been knocking the cover off the ball since his years at Liberty, where as a senior he batted a hefty .450 with five home runs, 31 RBIs and a .609 on-base percentage. He was a three-time All-Lehigh Valley Conference player and twice a first team choice to The Express-Times All-Area squad. Schneider was our player of the year in 1994 and '95 with the Konkrete Kids.
Brad Kohler of Hanover Township, senior man in the Major League Scouting Bureau and heading into his 43rd season, says McBride probably was a better hitter than Schneider coming out of high school.
"He's a good-looking boy," says Kohler, an Easton native and longtime College Hill resident. He's strong. He's got power and he's improved since the first time I saw him play at Liberty. He can catch and throw. He can handle anybody."
"We knew he was going to be a special player," Leary says. "We told him we have an opening. He knew coming in he was going to compete for a top-two." All McBride sought was a chance to win his position.
Leary remembers Schneider having one of the quickest releases he'd ever seen. He also knew McBride was solid defensively, but cognizant that moving from high school to NCAA Division I normally requires a period of adjustment.
Leary decided to throw caution to the wind. "We batted him fourth from the first game, right behind Jesse Novalis, the reigning Patriot League MVP. We wanted to give him protection, so we put Matt in there."
McBride, Leary says, dispelled any apprehensions he might've had about the freshman's bat last February in the season opener in Louisiana against McNeese State. In his first college at-bat, with the bases loaded and no out, he lined a two-run single on the first pitch and the Mountain Hawks went on to sweep the three-game series.
McBride batted .366 last spring with three home runs, 35 RBIs, 36 runs and a league-leading 20 doubles -- and was named to the freshman All-America team. Defensively, he threw out eight of the first 10 runners trying to steal, finishing 26-of-64 for the season -- 38 percent. He committed two errors.
Lehigh won the Liberty Bell Classic, and McBride was named MVP after going 6-for-13 with two home runs and six RBIs in three games. He went 3-for-5 with a three-run homer in an 11-3 victory over Villanova in the championship game at Citizens Bank Park.
"Forty rows deep," Leary says of McBride's clout with an aluminum bat.
"That was an awesome experience," says McBride, a right-handed batter who also got to play at Veterans Stadium with the Lehigh Valley's Carpenter Cup teams. He wasn't trying to hit the ball out. "I just got a hold of it. I tried to keep a straight face, but as I rounded second base I had a big smile on my face. I couldn't hold it back.
"It's really a great experience to get to feel the professional atmosphere -- and the conditions are perfect."
McBride, the son of George and Linda McBride, lived the first five years of his life on Ferguson Street in Phillipsburg, "two or three blocks from the high school," he says.
George McBride, who still lives in P'burg, on Hagerty Avenue, continues to play a prominent role in his son's development. A non-athlete, McBride has always pitched endless buckets of baseballs to his son.
It was not uncommon for them to take over the field after Liberty's home games and work on Matt's hitting for two more hours.
"At Liberty, Lehigh Little League wherever they could find a patch of land," Pitsilos says. "It shows great dedication on the part of both of them."
Leary remembers Lehigh getting back on town around 10:30 p.m. after a late-April loss at Wagner. When he arrived at Varsity Field on the Goodman Campus at 9:30 the next morning for a makeup doubleheader with Lafayette, a surprised Leary found the field all set up for batting practice.
The McBrides got there first -- an hour before the coach, and Matt already had a few hundred swings under his belt. McBride was back in the locker room stretching and getting ready for the team's batting practice.
"It's one of the most unique things I've seen as a coach," Leary says. "Matt's dad just throws and throws and throws."
McBride's dedication does not go unnoticed. The people who matter, the scouts, see it clearly.
"I like his entire makeup," Kohler says. "He wants to play. He's the first guy on the field at ballgames and the last guy to leave the ballpark. That tells you a lot."
McBride practices every day out of season at Rauch Field House's indoor facility -- "around the dog shows and car shows," Leary says. McBride usually works out with two other Liberty alums, freshman Carlos Medina and Matt Geiger, a transfer from Ohio U., and pitcher Kyle Collina of Notre Dame High School.
For McBride, the season can never come soon enough. It happens to begin tomorrow with organized lifting and conditioning. Indoor skills workouts begin the following week, leading to the Feb. 23 opener with Coppin State in Baltimore. Weather permitting, of course.
In the meantime, McBride has some unfinished business. He will pick up the Liberty Bell Classic's MVP Award on Jan. 24 at the Philadelphia Sportswriters Association's banquet in Cherry Hill, N.J., which will force him to do the unthinkable -- miss a practice.
And when emcee Harry Kalas and his resonant voice calls out the name, "Matt McBride," there's a good chance it won't be the last time.
McBride hasn't decided on a major yet at Lehigh. Truth be told, he's hoping to be drafted when he becomes eligible his junior year. Playing baseball, he says, "is all I can think of doing. I hope it works out."
Meaning, any converted cornfield in Iowa, ramshackle ballpark in Idaho or pasture in Peoria can become Matt McBride's field of dreams.
Story by Ed Laubach, originally appeared in the January 16, 2005 edition of the Express-Times. Used with permission.
