Gould-en Arm

Garrett Gould, his 95 mile-per-hour fastball and his looping, nasty curveball are coming out of hiding this spring. Last summer, he wasn't hard to find on the national scene. He made headlines in July and August 2008 for his myriad travels as one of the country's top baseball prospects. He played in the Area Code games in Long Beach, Calif. He took the mound in Major League ballparks, appearing at the Metrodome for the Perfect Game nationals held in Minneapolis, Minn. He toured the field, vine and locker room guts of Wrigley Field as an invitee to the Under Armour All-Star game during the first week of this school year. He performed so well at the Team USA showcase tournament in Cary, N.C., last June that he was invited to the team trials in Phoenix. All this because of just two pitches. At the behest of advisors who say he's got to have it to be more effective in the pros, Gould says he's working hard on adding a changeup to his repertoire. Over the past year, pro scouts from 15 different Major League clubs have set foot in Gould's home. Clearly, cases like that of Braden Looper, plucked out of Weatherford, Okla., late in the recruiting game by Wichita State in the early 1990s, don't happen much anymore. Before Gould, a six-foot-four, 190-pound righthander, had even entered the Maize High School pitching rotation, his 12-6 curveball was common knowledge among pro scouts. Gould, now a senior, began his sophomore season at Maize High on the junior varsity and ended up pitching only 20 innings for the varsity that year. The following summer, though, Gould played his first season with the Midwest Wolverines, a Wichita-based year-round baseball team. At a wood-bat classic in Jupiter, Fla., Gould first popped up on the pro radar, benefiting from the desirability of the other players the Wolverines put on the field. "We travelled to a ton of showcase tourneys that summer in Texas, Colorado, Missouri and Kansas," says Gould. "That's just kind of how it happens. Scouts and recruiters are out watching other guys like Jakubov, Marasco, Ridenhour and Murray, and then you get seen." The Wolverines pull kids in from throughout the state and outside of it. Four former Wolverines are currently on baseball scholarship at KU - Jordan Jakubov and Jake Marasco, Maize graduates, and Colton Murray and Lee Ridenhour from the Kansas City area. Two others are currently with Wichita State - Goddard High graduate Mitch Caster and Michael Hall, who Darrell Young, the founder of the Wolverines in 1993 and coach of the club ever since, brought in from two states over, Illinois. Gould says there's going to be a kid from California on the 16-year-old squad this summer. Gould piled up 95 strikeouts in 57 innings for Maize High last spring as a junior. He won nine games and maintained a 0.614 ERA, muting his relatively unknown sophomore season - itself forgotten. He then set out on his whirlwind summer, squeezing in innings all across the country at the game's top amateur showcases between starts for the Wolverines. "I didn't really have time to sit and relax," says Gould, a low-key 17-year-old, seemingly cut out for the slow pace of baseball. "I love the game, and baseball is what I want to do, but it starts to wear on you." After the summer grind, Gould played a bit of fall ball and then decided to sit out and take a break for a couple months. He picked the ball back up in December and has been playing catch two days a week since with the Wolverines. Gould says he spent this past fall making visits to OU, Nebraska and KU, trying to decide where to play college baseball. It came as no surprise, though, when he signed with Wichita State in November's early signing period, choosing Brent Kemnitz over anybody else. It also helped that Gould is the same as any other kid from this area - he grew up getting grass down his shirt from rolling down the hill out in the cheap seats of the Eck Stadium outfield. The day before Maize High's spring baseball try-outs began on March 2, Gould wore a "W" hat and Wichita State t-shirt as he and his teammates took batting practice in the cages at school. On his way out the door afterward, his keys jingled on a Wichita State Shocker key chain. "I speak with Kemnitz once a week," he says. "He calls and asks how my workouts are going and gives me thoughts on where the team is at. "I was going to go to the game today," he says - the Shockers swept a doubleheader from North Dakota State that day - "but we had batting practice." In 23 at-bats last season, Gould had 10 hits and 9 RBI. Though Gould is signed with the Shockers, he still hasn't decided whether to skip past the college experience and go straight to the pros. His process the antithesis to Looper's, Gould's current situation is more akin to that of another former Shocker All-American, Mike Pelfrey, who in 2002 faced the same options: Wichita State or the pros? Last summer, however, Gould had a different of set of options to consider. An all-class quarterback in 6A for Maize High as a junior, Gould spurned the football program this past fall. Gould says it wouldn't have been fair to his football teammates last fall when he would have missed practices or games to make college visits. He had many people pulling him both ways - to play or not to play. "The college coaches said that I should do what I want to do," he says. "I had a lot of people saying, no, don't play, and others saying, hey, it's your senior year - play football. "I knew I wasn't going anywhere for football [in college]," Gould says of his decision to sit out his senior football season. "I just couldn't risk getting hurt." Maize football missed Gould and his 1,772 passing yards as a junior. Even Max Preps, a national high school sports website, took notice of his opt-out, including him last September in their top 10 baseball stars nationally who were MIA on the gridiron. After a summer of headlines detailing his tour around the country for baseball, Gould's final headline of the summer of 2008 was one which proclaimed his decision to not play football. Asked about the story in the Wichita Eagle which ran right around the start of last school year, Gould smirked slightly and fidgeted in his seat. "Weren't Bubba Soft and I supposed to have been the best tandem in the state that year?" Gould asks about the 2007 season he and star Maize wideout, Brett Soft, had together. Soft, also a senior returning to the Maize baseball team this spring, set a new single-season state record for receiving yards in 2007. Gould was made a bit uncomfortable by the story, but he's taken everything in stride this year. There's been plenty for Gould to ponder during his break from high school sports this past fall and winter. Since he's signed with Wichita State, college coaches other than Kemnitz can't call him anymore. But the pro scouts are in constant contact - though, according to Gould, it's not always a negative experience. "Sometimes it's not about baseball at all. It's, 'how does the arm feel,' or 'what are you doing in school right now' - not 'will you sign right now?' "But with others, they send out questionnaires and it's just, 'what will it take to sign right now.' I can't answer that right now." Gould says his mom manages his decision-making process, aided by information from a California-based baseball agency, Landis, Seal & Ware. "I'll set a number and hopefully they'll match that," Gould says of his status going into the June MLB Draft. He'll have till August to make his decision whether or not to go pro. "I've got the best of both worlds right now - I can play for the best pitching coach in the nation or fulfill my dream to play pro baseball." Gould could become the first Maize Eagle since Matt Jakubov to become or Shocker or become the most promising pro prospect out of Maize since Nate Robertson. But Heights High's Pelfrey, who sprinted out of Wichita State, through the minors and to the majors with the New York Mets, presents a parallel case to Gould's. "I met him a month ago and talked with him for 30 minutes. He said he wouldn't have made it without WSU. He gained maturity there and learned a lot from Kemnitz. "He talked to me about the life of a pro baseball player. You're on your own a lot, with no family around. And a lot of the players in the minors don't speak English, and you're constantly on the road living in hotels. "But I'm perfectly fine with that. Playing pro baseball is my dream. Asked about the August pro signing deadline, Gould says if waiting till that point is what it takes for the club to meet his number, that's what he'll do. "But if I don't get it, so be it."