Standing in the spotlight

Gary Dudgeon

May 16, 2008 11:14 pm

— The notoriety that goes with having a budding star under your roof hasn’t made much of a difference in the Dave Meyer residence. Part of that is the star remains focused on today and not the future.
In fact, parents often have a hard time seeing the bright future a star may have.
“Alex is still a little boy to me,” Sandy Meyer, the young picther’s mother, said.
That closeness keeps Alex Meyer, a prospective early-round choice as a right-handed pitcher in the pro draft, level-headed. That and his teammates.
“Right now, all I want to do is play (baseball) with my friends,” Alex said.
His mother concurred.
“He just wants to be a Pirate. He’s just Alex. It’s good to be parents of good kids,” Sandy said. “And he’s a good player with lots of good baseball players.”
The Meyers acknowledged that they are aware of the scouts at the games but it doesn’t appear to add much pressure.
“Yeah, he knows the scouts are there. But it doesn’t bother him,” father Dave said. “He may ask who was there. But he’s more interested in who was there, not in what they might think.”
The limelight from the scouts has actually dwindled since he inked a deal to play in college
“He actually saw more scouts before he committed to UK (University of Kentucky) than he does now. There were between 100 and 150 scouts at each game,” his dad recalled.
The decision on where to go after his Pirate days were over, his mother said, wasn’t easy.
“That bothered him,” acknowledged Sandy. “There were three or four schools that he really liked and he worried about making the right choice. He was torn between Kentucky, (the University of) Louisville and Michigan. He was really impressed by Michigan and the coaching staff there, but deep down I think he knew he was going to Kentucky.”
If he goes on to become a Wildcat, it won’t be the first time he’s donned Kentucky apparel.
“Even as a kid he liked Kentucky. Every year at Christmas we had to buy some athletic gear from UK,” Dave Meyer said. “It could be a pennant, a sweat shirt or even a Tubby Smith basketball, but he wanted something from Kentucky,”
Even after signing his national letter of intent last fall, it didn’t stop him from wondering if he made the right choice according to his parents.
‘Right now Alex is having a good time playing with his friends,” Dave said. “I like that. The coaching staff has him on a pitch count and I like that. His desire is to win. They (Greensburg) haven’t won conference or sectional and they want to win it.”
But the number one goal currently is to play with the guys he has known for years in school and on the ball diamond.
“Even as a little leaguer, he played with and against the same kids . As an All-Star, he played against the East Central All-Stars and the Franklin County All-Stars,” Dave said. “The problem will be letting go. Kiernan (McCamment), Grunk (Ryan Grunkemeyer) and Mitch (Adams) have played together since they were little kids. The boys were always playing and competing. Rick (Adams) had a team, (Larry) McCamment and I all had teams and we played against each other. But I’ll tell you one thing. If it all works out, the first person that (Alex) has to shake hands with is that guy over there,” referring to Doug Burcham, an assistant coach with the Pirates.
Dave Meyer feels Burcham had the most to do with where his son is now.
“He got him on a travel team out of Versailles and every thing started there. Doug taught him to play baseball the right way,” Dave said.
The right way as explained by Dave is to force the action.
“We have a couple of holes (in the lineup), but we’re aggressive.,” Dave said. “We force other teams to make plays. Sometimes teams don’t always do it.”
In the background of each game are the scouts looking to be impressed and waiting for a mistake.
“The scouts don’t bother him. They stay away. They’re there with their charts and their guns, but they don’t bother him,” Dave said.
The Meyers attribute Alex’s indifference to the advisory relationship they have developed with Scott Boras, a sometimes controversial agent that has represented such baseball royalty as Alex Rodriquez, Charley Jones, Barry Zito, Manny Ramirez, Magglio Ordonez and Carlos Beltran among others.
“He instructed (Alex) on what to say and what not to say,” Dave said. “Boras takes a limited number of kids that will be in the draft. I think it was a good decision to go with Boras. Scouts know if that’s one of Boras’s kids, they have to leave him alone.”
After the game, Alex hopped on the little tracotr and raked the field. Once he was done with Pirates’ varsity field, Alex himself made the point most dramatically.
“I’m here for the high school season,” he said. “I’m not here for the scouts.”

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