Jacoby Ellsbury's athleticism was evident very early in his life. As he once said himself, quite simply, "I always knew I was fast from a young age."
It needed a big stage, however — something beyond tiny Madras, Ore., where Ellsbury starred in just about any sport the high school would offer. One guy who saw Ellsbury back then would offer such a stage, despite an unheralded first impression.
Pat Casey, the longtime coach at Oregon State University in Corvallis, a three-hour ride from Ellsbury’s town of just over 5,000, was not deterred by a rare hitless performance by Ellsbury in a summer league game prior to his senior year in high school.
"I watched him all day and he didn’t get a hit that day, but the athleticism and explosiveness of his body … there was something in the way he moved," Casey said. "I just said, 'This guy is different.' He was special. When he would run it was like his feet never touched the ground, almost like a deer."
After Ellsbury signed on to play for OSU, Casey continued to get a look at his future standout, including parts of a 31-game stint in the West Coast League for the Bend Elks. There, playing against college sophomores and juniors, the boy who had yet to spend a night in a dorm was downright dominant.
Casey had caught a little of what had made Ellsbury the stuff of legend in Madras. He was about to see the ultra-athlete carve out his own legend in Corvallis.
There was the time he ripped a hit to right field, a single for every other guy on the planet, but eyed the trajectory and the distance and made split-second decision just steps out of the box to go for two. With a burst of speed that made Casey think Ellsbury "had a booster rocket in his shorts," he made it to second base standing up. The coach has the play on tape and still watches it from time to time.
Then there was the time he made a diving catch in the gap against Stanford, smashing headfirst into a pole along a wall and getting knocked out as the closest umpire signaled home run. It wasn't until Ellsbury's teammate in right field reached his fallen teammate to find the ball firmly nestled in the glove. A Cardinal player had to break off a home run trot and jog dejectedly into the dugout as the OSU contingent worked to wake their hero, who would end up missing eight games due to the head injury.
One play which helped Red Sox general manager Theo Epstein fall in love took place at the University of Washington. In Seattle to see his team play the Mariners, Epstein saw Ellsbury reach against Huskies star righty Tim Lincecum, who would make a name for himself as well. Given a sign to take off from first on a Lincecum delivery, Ellsbury ended up scoring from first base on a run-of-the-mill single.
Even torrential rain couldn’t prevent Ellsbury from showing off his legs to scouts. When a game at the University of San Diego was rained out, Sox scouts who were on hand asked Casey to see Ellsbury hit in the cages. Those too were flooded, so the OSU coach brought the contingent inside a gym, where he asked Ellsbury to show some of what make him special.
Ellsbury, who is maybe an inch over six feet, dunked from a flat-footed stance beneath the hoop, raising a few eyebrows. As Casey and the scouts turned to talk, they were distracted by the sound of dribbling. Ellsbury, who was asked by his coach not to do anything too outlandish so as not to get hurt, took it upon himself to get a running start and promptly dunked from not too far inside the foul line.
All of this made Ellsbury something at which to marvel. Yet, he still had to refine his raw skills on the diamond. Just like those effortless dunks, that came along just fine. Ellsbury had a knack, and the drive, to make himself better than his peers.
"Every adjustment you could make in college, he made," Casey said. "The lethal mix is the guy that has the talent and is willing to work hard. Usually the guy that works the hardest is the guy that doesn’t have the talent, and he finds a way to make your team because he made such an effort to work like that, and the superstar is usually the guy you have to motivate to work harder.
"Jacoby had that lethal mix. When you have a guy that has the God-given raw talent and then has the work ethic to go with it, then those guys are big leaguers."
Ellsbury, who was originally drafted by the Tampa Bay Devil Rays in the 2002 draft but decided on OSU instead, was a first-round selection by Boston in 2005, after his junior season with the Beavers. He had hit over .400, stole 26 bases and earned Co-Player of the Year honors in the Pac-10 Conference.
The boy from Madras with incredible talent and a work ethic to boot had taken advantage of his time on a big stage. Like on off-Broadway hit destined for the Great White Way, the stage was about to get a bit bigger.
Check back Wednesday for Ellsbury's beginnings as a professional baseball player.
