The baseball snapped against the leather strike zone harder than it ever had from Gerrit Cole’s hand.
The sound — think small firecracker — will soon be heard over and over at Yankee Stadium, as the best pitcher in baseball tries to live up to the record-breaking $324-million, nine-year contract the Yankees gave him to win one of the most high-profile free agencies of the last decade.
But on this day, in the summer of 2007, the sound was confined to the walls of Proball Baseball training facility, and witnessed by Zak Doan, Cole’s pitching instructor since age 10. Thwack!
“This is coming out, man. This is coming out!”
Cole could barely contain himself. Nor could Doan, a former minor league pitcher. Doan knows what gas looks like. He didn’t have a radar gun trained on his pupil, but he knew that after years of steadily building velocity, Cole’s fastball had hit the upper-90s. Six years later, the plan was falling into place.
Cole was just 16 years old, and a few days later, he would thrust himself to the top of the national scouting scene, hitting 97 mph at the 2007 Perfect Game National Showcase at St. Xavier High School in Cincinnati.After that, interest from major-league teams jumped, and the Yankees eventually picked him at No. 28 overall in 2008, but Cole snubbed his favorite boyhood team to follow through with his commitment to UCLA.
On that day, Cole, typically energetic but particularly charged up over his accelerating velocity, threw and threw some more.
Thwack! Thwack!Thwack!
Doan watched quietly. Cole had first come here as a Little Leaguer, with his father, Mark. Back then, Doan thought Cole might make an OK pitcher someday, thanks to an uncommon combination of athleticism, intelligence and curiosity. But Cole wasn’t the best 10-year-old pitcher Doan was instructing at the time. Cole wasn’t close, actually. Still, Doan realized Cole, with the proper development, could be on the cusp of becoming something special.
His father had a planFrom the outside, Proball Baseball looks like one of the last places the best — and now the richest — pitcher in America would have learned his craft.
Located in a drab business park off the Costa Mesa Freeway, the 3,200-square-foot facility sits sandwiched between a pair of engineering offices. Across the parking lot, women file in and out of a pole fitness studio. There’s a Del Taco around the corner. Coincidentally, it’s also where 2015 Yankees first-rounder, righty James Kaprielian, honed his skills.
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But it was here that Doan, freshly retired after two seasons pitching in the Marlins’ lower levels, began giving lessons as a way to pay the bills after moving from his hometown Chicago. Not long after, he met Dr. Ben Strack, a hitting instructor at a nearby facility, and they became close.
So, the pair decided to buy Proball together. They used their connections to build clientele. Both had plenty. Doan, also a real estate agent these days, had given lessons a while. And Strack had become a sports psychologist who had a good friend in former All-Star outfielder Shawn Greene. Strack was also famous in the home run derby world, with the New York Times calling him the “best (or worst) pitcher in baseball” because he had become a batting practice pitcher to the stars, including Jose Canseco and Rafael Palmeiro, in the late ’90s.In 2001, Mark Cole brought his son, Gerrit, to Proball off a recommendation from another client. Mark Cole had a plan: To develop his son not to be the best pitcher in Little League, but to be the best when he was a high school senior.
“So, Mark and I would have these long talks, and we kind of plotted out his throwing program on an annual basis,” Doan said, sitting behind the desk in his office at Proball. “Gerrit was really, really young, and Mark would chart all of his pitches during the games, so we would have pitch counts on everything and we put in breakdown time, which was when he would just get away from baseball and go be a kid and surf or do whatever he wanted.”
The results were gradual until Cole’s sophomore year of high school. That was when Cole hit 92 mph at age 15.
“We were like, ‘Holy cow, we got something here,’” Doan said.
To get that “something” took a lot of hours from Cole, Doan and Strack. Mark Cole would bring his son at least once a week to the facility when he was in grade school. When Gerrit Cole reached high school, and as the progress skyrocketed, Gerrit would show up several times a week. It got to a point where Cole became so obsessed with getting better that he would call Strack late at night.
“He loved the game,” Strack said, “and though he knew he was set to be a pitcher, he would come in really late, late after games and we’d have hitting lessons that went until midnight.”
Said Cole, “The best thing about (Doan and Strack) is that they’re just so good with kids. I feel like they helped the community out a lot.”
There’s talent, but what about the brains?
For UCLA coach John Savage, the question wasn’t whether Gerrit Cole could get Pac-12 hitters out. The question was: What was between Cole’s ears?
“You obviously were able to see the talent,” said Savage, who coached Cole until the Pirates drafted him No. 1 overall and gave him a record $8-million signing bonus in 2011. “The talent just oozed with — it was high-end, major-league talent. So, it became really, what’s the type of makeup? What’s the type of aptitude? What type of learner? Are we really going to get that type of athlete?”
Those questions led to a meeting for Savage with Doan and Sheck, who had been also preparing Cole psychologically for the rigors of high-level pitching since he was a sophomore. It was quickly clear to Savage that Cole had been “in good hands,” he said.
“Very stable thinking, not getting ahead of themselves really on development,” Savage added.
Cole took off at UCLA. Savage made him the team’s Friday night starter his freshman year, the equivalent of a major-league staff ace, despite the presence of Trevor Bauer, now with the Reds. In three seasons with the Bruins, Cole would go 21-20 with a 3.38 ERA in 50 games (49 starts), striking out 376 hitters in 322 innings.
Looking back, it wasn’t a surprise to Savage that Cole succeeded.
“I would say he knew himself better than most freshmen,” the coach said. “His training was pretty advanced. His mental game with Ben, we thought, was pretty advanced. He definitely was ahead of the curve.”
Millions … and memoriesOn Thursday, a day after Cole slipped on a Yankees jersey for the first time at an introductory press conference in the Bronx, the Newport Beach Annual Boat Parade kicked off. Dozens of boats, yachts, kayaks and canoes — adorned with bright lights and all kinds of Christmas decorations — made a nighttime roundtrip from Lido Isle through Newport Harbor.
Cole, Doan and Strack watched the show and chatted over glasses of wine. They talked about Cole’s whirlwind trip to New York City to complete his physical, house search and field question after question as the newest bastion of hope for the game’s marquee franchise. Cole called the pair “instrumental” and “super influential” to his growth.
“Just a great resource, like an outside perspective from all the busyness of baseball to just kind to get a pure look at how I’m performing,” Cole said.He called Doan, who was a co-best man at his wedding, the brother he never had. “I love his kids,” Cole said. “One is a Cubs fan and one’s an Angels fan and they don’t root for me.”Soon, Doan and Cole will talk pitching again, too. The guy with an overflowing bank account still has things to work on. Cole wants to further develop an unorthodox follow-through technique that essentially finishes with Cole nearly slapping himself on the left buttocks with his throwing hand.
Watch some old Pedro Martinez clips and you’ll get it. Cole started it last year with the Astros and wants to improve on it going into his first season in the Bronx, Doan said. Doan said Cole believes it helps with his velocity and spin rate. Maybe they’ll go back to Proball to work on it.Then the conversation shifted back to that day in 2007, when a young Cole, standing on the mound at Proball, threw harder than he’d ever before, and how they both knew things were about to change forever.
Houston Astros starter Gerrit Cole gestures during Game 5 of the ALDS against the Tampa Bay Rays on Oct. 10.(Getty Images)
Ultimately, though, the Coles reached the same conclusion: Gerrit would go to college first.
“We just felt confident sticking with the plan,” he said.
Mark remembers having a conversation with the Yankees about two to three weeks before the signing deadline, and having to break the news. The team wanted to fly to California, meet the Coles, give a sales pitch.
“And I said to them, ‘Since there’s no chance that this is going to happen, Gerrit wants to go to UCLA, there’s no reason to sit down,’ ” Mark said.
He felt as if they would be unfairly leading on the Yankees by even meeting.
“There were never any discussions,” he said. “There was never a meeting. There was never a negotiation.” Boras said the Yankees made “a very qualified offer.” But Mark maintains that the family never discussed specific dollar figures with the team. In fact, he says, the family never spoke with the Yankees after turning down that meeting.
“There was some disappointment [on the Yankees’ side],” Mark said, “because they wanted to have a chance. But the decision had already been made.”
Boras, Cole’s agent, echoed that sentiment. “This was not about the Yankees,” he said. “It was really about what’s the best time for Gerrit to enter pro baseball.”
After the 2017 season, the Yankees had a chance to nab Cole when the Pittsburgh Pirates, the team that drafted him No. 1 overall and for whom he pitched for five seasons, dangled him in trade talks. But Yankees general manager Brian Cashman reportedly balked at the asking price and Pittsburgh shipped him to Houston, where he has flourished. He was 15-5 with a 2.88 ERA and 276 strikeouts in 2018, and 20-5 this season, when he led the AL with a 2.50 ERA and 326 strikeouts.
After this postseason, Cole will become a free agent and the Yankees may get a third crack at him. They need help in their starting rotation and traditionally have been willing to pay for top-tier free agents. Could he end up in pinstripes? Boras chuckles.
“Well, Gerrit Cole is a Houston Astro. That’s all I know for now,” Boras said.
