It was an ordinary day. Reading my Sunday News with one of my cats lounging on my chair with me. Made my way through the multitude of Sunday News sections until I came to my favorite...the "Sports" section. The lead story immediately caught my eye! It read "Kurtz eyes top spot in '24 draft". Story was about a young man by the name of Nick Kurtz who has been picked by Baseball America to be picked as the No. 1 pick in this year's Major League Baseball draft. Wow! Someone from Lancaster is going to get a big payday in the near future. As I began to read the article, I realized that Nick is the son of my daughter Brynn's friend, Marie, whom she went to high school with a few years ago. Marie went on vacation with us a few times when she and Brynn were in their pre-teens and early teens. And now...her son...might be picked as the #1 Major League Baseball pick in the country!! How neat is that! As I continued on in the story I read that Nick's baseball coach in high school was a fellow named Matt Kirchoff. Matt Kirchoff!!! Hey, I coached Matt when he was a young boy playing Little League Baseball with my son Tad! As I continued on in the lead story, I began to feel that perhaps I had something to do with this young man being such a good baseball player. Maybe he held his bat the way that I had taught Matt and whom might have passed that on to Nick! Nick was an all-Lancaster-Lebanon League Section One selection for the Manheim Township Blue Streaks as a high school freshman. His brother, Brandon, was an assistant coach at Township and his dad Jeff, pitched at William Paterson University in New Jersey. Matt Kirchoff said in the newspaper article that "When he'd get in the batting cage, you could see the power. At the same time, he's always been a tireless worker." After Nick's freshman year at MT, he transferred to the Baylor School, a boarding high school in Chattanooga, Tennessee. This past year, as a college sophomore at Wake Forest College, he hit .353 with a .527 on-base percentage and a .784 slugging percentage. When he was a freshman in 2022 he led the Atlantic Coast Conference in batting average (.422) and on-base percentage and .784 slugging average. Nick is a 6 foot 5 inch, 235 pound left-handed hitter and thrower and considered a very good defensive first baseman. But his defense is second behind his great offense! The website Prospects Live calls him "A mountain of a human being, the offensive profile is scary good!" I never had the chance to meet or coach Nick, but, as the Lancaster Newspaper finished their story about Nick, they wrote...It's easy, and tantalizing, to imagine what's coming next. Move over Babe! It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.
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