Organized sports have become more and more important in Middle America. If you grew up in the sixties or seventies, you played sports for the fun of it. The neighborhood would get together for a game of football, basketball, or baseball; whatever was in season. Things began to change in the eighties about the same time that huge amounts of money were being thrown at professional sports figures. The two may or may not be connected, but at about the same time, there was a true explosion of “travel” teams for those kids who took organized sports seriously. If your child was good in his or her sport, they ended up on a travel team.

The concept of travel teams is to get the best players playing against the best players. They not only play the best, but they play far more often. It is not unusual for a travel baseball team to play 50 to 70 games in a spring and summer season. Costs can run into the thousands if you play in many weekend tournaments outside of your own city. This type of involvement can begin at the ripe old age of nine. As a parent, you struggle with the concept. “Am I putting to much pressure on little Johnny? Is this worth the time, effort and money? Is Johnny still having fun?”

When Mike Kerins was growing up, he was quite a baseball player. You know the type; plays shortstop, pitches, and hits a ton. He was gifted enough that at the age of nine he began to play travel baseball. He was lucky enough to have a coach that not only taught him a good deal about baseball but also about life.

“My little league coach from the time I was nine until thirteen, Dr. Ray Pongonis (head trainer at Ohio State), has been my biggest sporting influence,” he says.

As he got older, his travels became more and more intensive. A number of travel teams rarely travel too far from home. They may occasionally drive 30 miles to a game, but they rarely put 100 miles on the odometer for a normal ball game. Mike Kerins, Sr., however, had a son that displayed more talent than the typical travel ball player. When Mike, Jr., turned 13, he became a member of a team that called its home in the Cleveland area. This represented a 2+ hour one-way drive for either Mike Sr. or his wife Elizabeth to every game or practice. It is during this time that a parent begins to ask himself or herself if they have lost their mind.

When he was young, baseball wasn’t the only sport that interested young Mike.

“I played all sports growing up like tennis hockey, but really concentrated on basketball, golf, and baseball,” Kerins says. “I made my decision to specialize in baseball when I entered high school. Growing up, from 9 to 16, my travel baseball teams went to the World Series every year. I started playing at six. Both of my parents and my sister, Stephanie, were huge influences in my playing baseball. She was a three-sport star in high school.”

After playing basketball as a freshman in high school, Mike realized that if he was going to be able to live his dream and play professional baseball, he was going to have to concentrate on it alone.

“I played junior varsity as a freshman and moved up to varsity as a pitcher during the tournament that year. I was throwing about 80-82 at that time. Sophomore year I played varsity all year. That year we lost to the number one team in the country in the regional finals when I dove for a ball in right field in the bottom of the last inning and missed it.”

Mike continued to improve and as both a junior and senior he was named Player of the Year in the Ohio Capital Conference (OCC) in the Columbus while making second team All-State as a senior. His ability to both pitch and hit brought interest from several schools and he took informal visits to both Indiana and Ohio State.

It was only through a fluke that UD was actually able to land Kerins.

“I heard later (after his visit to OSU) that the rumor was that I had signed with Ohio State and people stopped recruiting me,” he says. “At the district tournament, I met (former UD head coach) Coach Sorrell and when he found out that I hadn’t signed, offered to show me UD. It was really the only place that I looked at.” Thus began an interesting adventure. When Mike began his career at UD, he was looked upon solely as a pitcher and made 13 starts as a freshman.

“If I knew four years ago what I know now I would have done a much better job of strength and conditioning. When I got here I was really weak. My freshman year, I didn’t get a chance to hit because I was a lot smaller than everyone else and had a slow bat. With better weight training, you do not feel as tired after playing five days in a row.”

Although he felt he had accomplished some things during that freshman year, Mike believed that he wasn’t where he needed to be. Through some friends that he knew from playing baseball in the Columbus area, he became familiar with Jefferson Davis Junior College in Alabama. After a good deal of thought, he decided that attending a school in the South would enable him to better pursue his goal of professional baseball.

“I learned a lot while I was down there,” he readily admits. “The players and coaches taught me a lot of the little things that give you an advantage like watching the shadow of the catcher to see where they are setting up when you are hitting. I was 6-4 as a pitcher and hit .470 with nine home runs. We played close to 70 games that year. We qualified for the regional and were able to make it to the World Series in Tennessee. The level of competition was very good because they could take higher risk players than we do at UD. There were several that had poor grades and some that even had had some other non-baseball problems.”

After his year in the South, Tony Vittorio came calling. Knowing what Kerins would bring to the program, Vittorio had no problem bring back a player that had transferred away from UD less than a year before. “Mike is a very intelligent baseball player. He is a hard worker that is an extremely valuable asset to have on your team,” related Vittorio.

Kerins has been able to accomplish a great deal during his interrupted stay at UD. With the A-10 Championship playoffs still in front of him, he is currently tied for the UD record with 19 career wins. Kerins is the top starter sporting an 8-3 record and a 4.27 ERA. In the era of aluminum bats, keeping an Earned Run Average under 5.00 is quite an accomplishment. In addition to his accomplishments on the mound, Mike is currently hitting .326, which is fifth on the team. When you add up all of his endeavors this season, they brought him the Most Valuable Player award that is annually given to the top player in the program.

Kerins has come a long way since his days as a skinny freshman, but it didn’t just happen overnight. The baseball player of today is unlike the baseball player of your father’s era. The strength and conditioning that the baseball players must attain to excel can be seen in the upper body of Barry Bonds.

“We have one of the best weight training regiments that I have heard of for baseball players,” Kerins says. “Pitchers lift three times a week and then we swim the day after we pitch and then the fourth day as well. We also run on the open days. (Head Assistant Coach) Todd Linklater supervises our program. He has really done a good job of organizing our activities and improved them significantly from what we had in the past.” College baseball is no longer just a sport for the spring either as Kerins tells.

“After the college season, we begin our summer wood bat baseball season which will be approximately 40-50 games. We are also given packets, which outline our workout activities for the off-season. After we get back to school and get settled we start Fall baseball practice. The first week we run, and run some more just to get in shape. We then go through normal practice sessions followed up with scrimmages four times a week. After Fall baseball, we move into a weight-training phase and also work on our quickness. This takes us up to Christmas break. After we get back from the break, we continue to do weights and begin swimming at seven in the morning. After swimming, we go to class then return to lift and run. Then in February regular practice starts.”

Mike has loved baseball since he was six years old. He has played countless games and traveled tens of thousands of miles. He has always wanted to be something that his dad never got to experience because of an arm injury while in high school. He still wants to play professional baseball. But this isn’t the Rookie and the baseball gods haven’t yet decided to grant Mike his wish. When the scouts came to town, the weather did not co-operate and Kerins was not able to sway any of them when he only threw 86 miles per hour. That sounds pretty fast to a mortal human, but to big league scouts, it is nothing to dial up the boss about. Yet, he has not given up the dream.

“I really don’t know what will come after this season. When we had scout day, it was disappointing. The weather was bad and I really didn’t throw that well. If I don’t get drafted, I might play for Coach Sorrell in the Frontier League. I might try that for a summer and see what happens. After this summer, if things don’t work out, I’ll come back to school and finish up my last semester and try to get something in Public Relations.”

The love for baseball will not die if the dream of playing in the big leagues does.

“If I don’t continue to play baseball, I might consider coaching, but not for a while. I think that it might be tough at first to coach after having the dream to play professionally. After some time off, I think I would like to, but probably with younger kids. I would really like to help the kids like Coach Pongonis did for me.”

Mike and Elizabeth Kerins put untold miles on their cars over the years to get Mike, Jr. to the hundreds of baseball games that they got to experience while he was growing up. More than likely, they asked themselves one or two of the questions listed above. Yet, they should realize that it was all worth it because when I asked Mike who was the most influential person in his life he didn’t hesitate one second when he said, “both of my parents would be the biggest influences in my life, by far. They have always been there for me.”

We take our children from one event to another and we wonder if we are doing the right thing. We wonder when they are 10 if we made the right decision to put them on an elite team. We wonder if we should have spent more or less time pushing them with their schoolwork. Yet, in the end, we can only hope that they appreciate what we have done and turn into the type of adult that we are proud to call our own. I think the Kerins’ can sleep well tonight.