Freshman spurns Twins for Jayhawks

By Tim Dwyer

Thursday, April 30, 2009

It was Sunday morning, and freshman Lee Ridenhour was sick. He’d spent the last two days trying to rest and get over a case of food poisoning that had been haunting him, but he was still sick.

That didn’t stop him.

Ridenhour went out that afternoon and silenced the second-highest scoring offense in the Big 12 for five innings before the sickness finally got the better of him.

“That just shows how tough a kid he is,” pitching coach Ryan Graves said. “He’s a real competitor. He wanted to go out there and do it, got us through the fifth and gave us a chance to win. It worked out great.”

That was two weeks ago, against Oklahoma State, but Ridenhour’s path to KU started a long time before then. The freshman, before he was a freshman, faced a difficult decision: To become a Jayhawk or a farmhand of the Minnesota Twins.

“I was actually pitching when I got drafted,” Ridenhour said. “So I was like, ‘Dad, here’s my phone in case, you know, if they call.’ It was unreal. All my life, growing up, playing baseball, that’s what I wanted to do was go play baseball.”

It wasn’t the last time the Twins dialed that number. From June through August, Minnesota was making a push for Ridenhour to sign with its organization, offering the 18-year-old from Shawnee Mission West a $150,000 signing bonus and a full scholarship.

“Man, it was really tempting,” Ridenhour said. “Just the idea of just playing baseball and not school — but then I’d never really been away from home. What would I do? I’d get up and go from 8 to 2, but then what would I do?”

So he asked around. He talked to his personal pitching coach, who had been drafted several times and told Ridenhour to make the leap, take a shot at the pros. He asked Kevin Seitzer, who spent 12 years in the majors after starring at Eastern Illinois University and now runs a training facility in the Kansas City area. Seitzer advised caution, telling him to take the safe road and head to school.

“I talked to as many people as I could,” Ridenhour said. “People that had gone to college; my pitching coach; Kevin Seitzer, who I played with from, like, third grade to eighth grade. It just came down to, we charted out for me, what’s going to have more positives. What’s going to be better for me in the long run?”

He talked to his parents, too, of course, and they were split on the idea, just like his coaches.

“My mom really wanted me to go to school,” Ridenhour said. “Then my dad was more, like, he wanted me to do what I wanted to do. I think right now, talking to them, everyone is really glad that I went to school.”

Ridenhour understood that he had a little maturing to do. That’s why he kept talking to Kansas, where he committed to play long before the draft, and to Graves.

“That’s always the risk you take to get the quality arms,” Graves said about Ridenhour going pro. “But especially with him being a Kansas kid, it’s a risk you’re willing to take. You know, the draft is just really difficult to predict.”

Graves stuck to it, not knowing if things would work out the way he hoped, and went to games Ridenhour was pitching, kept working the phones, talking to him and his family. Ridenhour noticed.

“Honestly, I never really thought I was going to come to KU,” he said. “Then Coach Graves was out to see almost all my starts in high school and throughout the summer. Even when the draft came around and I had already committed, he was still out there watching me pitch. The commitment he showed to go and say, you know, ‘We still want you.’ It just seemed like he really, really wanted me to come here.”

Recruiting Ridenhour gave new meaning to the words “last call” for the Jayhawks, though. Ridenhour was standing in Graves’ office when he noticed a missed call — from a Minnesota area code.

“Even when I was moving in on August 15, because that was the last day, I had a missed call from the Twins because I just didn’t feel it ring. So I checked my phone and was like ‘Hey, kind of funny, Coach. I’ve got a missed call from the Twins.’ So he told me to call them back.”

Graves remembers the incident well, and said it was nerve-wracking.

“Oh man, absolutely, that was,” Graves said. “Like we talked about it’s hard to predict and even though he’s a 31st rounder, I mean, you’re thinking the money won’t be great. But it just really depends on what happens in front of him and they may end up having money for a guy like him.”

Fortunately for the Jayhawks, Ridenhour wasn’t buying what the Twins had to sell. They told him that they were waiting to see if their deal with another prospect fell through, but Ridenhour wasn’t ready to wait any longer. He told the Twins thanks, but no thanks, and finally was sold on being a Jayhawk.

“When they said that, I was just kind of the fall back, and that’s fine, I have nothing against them,” Ridenhour said. “But I didn’t want to be the second choice.”

It’s worked out well for both the Jayhawks and Ridenhour so far. Ridenhour won his first three starts of the season to work his way into a coveted weekend rotation spot and started in the third and final game of the Jayhawks’ historical sweep of No. 1 Texas.

“I thought his upside was absolutely outstanding,” coach Ritch Price said. “We thought that, if he continued to grow and improve, then he could develop into an impact player. Obviously, that’s what he’s already become. He has the ability to be a legitimate Friday night starter in this conference — and those guys are special.”

Ridenhour knows he has room to improve as a pitcher, certainly, but he had to learn the hard way that he has room to improve with the press. He told reporters after going eight scoreless innings against Wichita State that he had, after being recruited by both schools, chosen Kansas because Wichita State was “a program on the decline.”

Not surprisingly, it found its way into the Wichita Eagle — and the Shockers have no doubt circled their next game against Kansas on the schedule.

“Obviously that’s a very emotional game, a very emotional win for him, but there’s some things that shouldn’t be said,” Price said. “He gave them some things to put up on the bulletin board. At the same time, you make mistakes and you grow from those. I’m sure next time he’s interviewed, and he’ll be interviewed throughout his career, he’ll understand that.”

Graves said not to judge him based on one quote after an emotional game.

“He’s a more humble, well-rounded kid than, you know, some things he said would lead you to believe,” Graves said.

Ridenhour was much more toned down talking about the differences between Kansas and Wichita State the second time around — “I just felt more wanted here,” he said — and it seems like he’s starting to show the maturation the coaches are asking for.

“I think that it was a better choice for me to go to college,” Ridenhour said. “It’s giving me a chance to really grow and mature. I don’t know if I would have experienced the same thing in professional.”

Ridenhour said he does think about how it might have gone had he decided to go pro, especially considering how successful he has been early. It’s a question that fellow freshman Zac Elgie also has.

Elgie was also picked in the 2008 draft, in the twelfth round by the Oakland Athletics. He said he started to wonder about what could have been when the Jayhawks took a road trip to play Arizona State. The Royals were holding their spring training in the same city the team was in and the collegians spent a little time with the big leaguers.

“There was a couple of guys who said that they had never went to college,” Elgie said. “So, of course it made me think about, you know, what if I would not have gone to college?”

It’s a question that neither freshman has a definitive answer to. But Elgie and Ridenhour aren’t too worried about it right now.

“I’m having so much fun here and we’re playing amazing,” Ridenhour said. “I mean, we just swept Texas, you know. Unreal.

“No regrets.”

— — Edited by Melissa Johnson

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