Behind a pitching screen, 30 feet from the plate, Lobo head coach Ray Birmingham stands protected — a Kmart basket full of baseballs, all from different walks of thread.
There’s the “old and beat up” ones that “run in on your hands,” said outfielder Ryan Honeycutt, the ones that “tail away from you” and the ones that “go even faster.”
And now, Honeycutt is next to step into the cage, next to be victimized.
There he is — straddling the left side of the plate, knees slightly bent, hands faintly choked up on the handle of the bat, the alternating zip of the ball leaving the machine, the echoic “ping” of the baseball as Honeycutt makes contact and the ever-occasional thump of a ball hitting the backstop.
The latter sound, that solid wallop, signifies it’s time to take a seat on the pine. Honeycutt down — next batter up.
Honeycutt exits the danger zone, murmuring something to himself. He’s learned.
“You ain’t going to see anything dirtier than that,” Honeycutt said, pointing back toward the machine. “Ooh, man, it’s fast — faster than any pitch I’ve ever seen. Coach doesn’t ever want us to get beat by velocity.”
When it comes to batting, Birmingham doesn’t put up with mediocrity, Honeycutt said.
“He’s particular. You gotta put it on the barrel or you’re done. You miss it, you’re out,” he said.
This is the painstaking, and reigning, regimen Birmingham employs, how he turns regular baseball players into remarkable baseball players.
It’s the very process by which the UNM baseball team led the nation in hitting. And it’s this very process which turned Brian Cavazos-Galvez into a 12th round pick of the Los Angeles Dodgers. It’s what helped him win the Most Valuable Player for the Ogden Raptors of the Pioneer League, an advanced, MLB farm rookie league.
“I put them in a situation in there to show them, ‘You’re not that special,’” Birmingham said. “You’re only as good as you are today. Yesterday don’t mean nothing.”
And it seems like just yesterday Cavazos-Galvez was at Manzano High School, an uncooked talent, raw on emotion and impatient as hell.
“When I got him, he was 50 pounds overweight, he was a bad first baseman,” Birmingham said. “He struck out a lot and hit a lot of high flys to right field.”
It seems like just yesterday Honeycutt was at Las Cruces High School, then Central Arizona College, unrefined and on edge, chasing balls down in the dirt — something Cavazos-Galvez would do.
Birmingham said Honeycutt is reminiscent of Cavazos-Galvez.
“He wants to hit homers too much sometimes, and he’s not a home run hitter,” Birmingham said. “He can hit them, but he’s a great line-drive hitter. He can hit for a high average. That guy was leading the country in hitting for three quarters of the year last year — stupid numbers.”
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They’re on parallel tracks, which frequently crisscross, Honeycutt, a shade of Cavazos-Galvez.
Birmingham sees — as if preordained — what Honeycutt can be, because he’s seen what Cavazos-Galvez is.
So what does he do?
“You gotta ride them like a ridden mule,” Birmingham said. “I don’t know how many times I made (Cavazos-Galvez) run to the airport and back. During practice, ‘Drop your crap. Head to the airport.’”
Honeycutt, too? Honeycutt, too, Birmingham said.
Airport jaunts, blistering batting sessions later, Cavazos-Galvez is now —
“MVP and can be on the Dodgers in one or two years,” Birmingham said. “And Honeycutt’s the same type of kid. He’s going to get drafted, because he’s a great hitter. He’s built like a brick.”
But bricks can be brazen.
Like Cavazos-Galvez, Honeycutt acknowledges he routinely bristles with bouts of rage — though it never reared its head last year, at least at home.
“You weren’t at New Mexico State last year,” Honeycutt said, grinning. “Hometown people saying things from the other team. I’ve never been one to back down from anybody. Last year, it got out of hand and the beginning of this year. I just realize there’ll be another pitch, another day. It’s either one extreme or another for me. Either I get really mad, and I play really well after that, or get mad and I can’t do anything.”
Birmingham couldn’t care less. He broke Cavazos-Galvez; he can break Honeycutt.
“You gotta stay on him like a dad,” Birmingham said. “If he doesn’t take the trash out when I tell him, “Take the trash out,’ then he’s got hell to pay.”
Those hellish sessions, nothing but bludgeoned, balky balls humming toward batters, paid off for Cavazos-Galvez.
And, if he does them right, Honeycutt will benefit from them, too.
They’re good,” Honeycutt said. “Coach B always humbles you.”
