DEFIANCE, Ohio — The Defiance High School baseball players sat in a local barber shop Monday night, goofing around and arguing as teenagers do. They were each waiting for their turn in the chair and the standard team mohawk they chose as part of the uniform for their trip this week to the Ohio High School Athletic Association state tournament.
Amid the buzz of the clippers, the team's star player, Robert Zeigler, felt his cell phone buzz, too. He stepped outside to take the call.
It was the New York Yankees.
Here in Defiance — 55 miles southwest of Toledo, a little less than 40 miles from the Indiana border and essentially 30 miles from anywhere — this happens all the time.
Seven Ohio-born players have pitched in a Major League Baseball game in 2013. Two are from Defiance, population a little less than 17,000.
The Major League Baseball Draft started Thursday night. Just six Ohio natives are on Baseball America's list of the top 250 draft-eligible prospects.Two are graduates of Defiance High, which generally graduates 110-120 boys per class, according to recent OHSAA enrollment numbers.
Both are pitchers. Zeigler (No. 203) is one. The other, Dace Kime (91), is at the University of Louisville, which plays Vanderbilt in an NCAA Super Regional this weekend with a trip to the College World Series on the line.
"People ask all the time if it's in the water," Defiance baseball coach Tom Held said. "We've been very fortunate with arms. And we have had gifted guys, but every one of them has worked for it. The offseason work is really challenging. We throw all the time and our athletes play baseball, which is as important as anything."
Baseball is a Southern-dominated sport, and probably more now than ever in this era of youth sports specialization and year-round training. But scouts from across Major League Baseball and the nation's top college programs have the path to Northwest Ohio, and specifically Defiance, mapped out and by now, saved as a frequent stop.
It's been that way for a decade now, since the top college programs nationally and almost every MLB team sent scouts to see a powerful right-hander Chad Billingsley, who was Defiance High's second consecutive first-round pitcher. Left Luke Haggerty was a first-round pick of the Chicago Cubs in 2002 after playing three seasons at Ball State.
Six Defiance players have been drafted — in the top 10 rounds — since Billingsley.
Billingsley had committed to play at South Carolina before he went 24th overall in 2003 to the Los Angeles Dodgers, who gave him a signing bonus of $1.375 million. He went pro young, was married young and isn't back in Defiance very often, Held said.
A seventh-round pick of the New York Mets in 2005 who made the majors in late 2008, Jonathon Niese does come back from time to time in the offseason, though his parents no longer live in town.
Billingsley has 81 career MLB wins and 1,037 strikeouts through June 5, 2013. Niese won 13 games last season for the New York Mets.
"Niese was a roly-poly, pudgy left-hander who didn't even throw 70 (mph) when he was a freshman in high school," Held said. "Chad was a natural stud and was one early on, and he taught Niese how to work. And then Tyler Burgoon (Univ. of Michigan/now in Double A with the Seattle Mariners) was the hardest worker we've ever had. He's 5-foot-10 and refuses to listen to everybody who says he's too small to be a big-time pitcher."
Kime is 5-1 with 79 strikeouts in 66 innings pitched at Louisville this season. Louisville freshman Anthony Kidston, also from Defiance, is 5-0 in six starts and 13 appearances. Another former Defiance pitcher, Justin Hancock, is playing in the San Diego Padres organization.
Burgoon played as an infielder as a high school underclassman when Niese pitched. Same for Zeigler with Kime, whom Held expects to be selected by the end of the fourth round when the MLB Draft resumes Friday.
Burgoon was back in town for a week two summers ago and remembers being "wowed" by Zeigler, who is committed to the University of Kentucky. He said he's spoken to more than 20 major league teams in recent weeks about what kind of signing bonus he'd demand.
"It's still early for (Zeigler)," Held said. "But he might have more talent than any of them. He oozes ability."
Held was a basketball player at Defiance College when he attended an open tryout for the Cincinnati Reds and ended up playing three years of minor league ball. He was an athlete who was taught to pitch at the pro level, and he's been teaching pitching since. He took over as head coach for the 1999 season from Greg Inselmann, who took over in 1980.
Defiance High hasn't had a losing season since.
"Success breeds success," Held said. "The younger guys not only see guys they've watched playing at the highest level in college or in the major leagues, but it gives them hope and something to work towards."
That work goes on through the fall and winter, much of it in the program's lone batting cage that sits inside the football stadium. The baseball games are played on Booster Field, and with its lights, banners and landscaping, it looks more like a minor league park than an average Ohio high school baseball field.
"I remember exactly where I sat with my dad," Zeigler said, pointing to a third-base side bleacher after a practice this week, "to watch Chad Billingsley pitch. You want to work. You want to be next."
They do it in a unique way, too, in Defiance.
"Defiance kids play in Defiance," Held said. "From Little League on up, we keep them all together. There's some fight from some parents about travel ball, but we just point to the way it's worked before. We focus on the fundamentals, and if the kids have big-time talent we get them to showcases.
"The only thing I ask of our parents and youth coaches is to keep them playing, keep them interested. Because we don't have travel teams, we don't have them labeled at the age of 9 as the 'Next Best Thing.'
"Kids don't play three different sports anymore. We want to keep our best ones interested in getting better and enjoying baseball."
Thursday night, Zeigler will be on the hill as Defiance plays Akron Hoban in a Division II state semifinal at Huntington Park, the home of the Triple-A Columbus Clippers. On Friday, nearby Defiance Tinora High School plays in a Division IV (small-school) state semifinal for the fourth consecutive year.
Somebody in the neighborhood — Held, certainly, though he's not the only one — is on to something with this baseball thing.
"When I was coming through Defiance, guys would come from an hour or even more away for pitching lessons and camps," Burgoon said. "I'm proud to have been a part of Defiance baseball, but I'm proud of Northwest Ohio baseball in general."
Held said 10 players who played high school ball in Defiance County or an adjacent county are now playing professionally on some level.
"I see another five or six from this immediate area who are going to get drafted over the next few years," Held said. "Billingsley and Niese have really set the tone, but kids are seeing the light. At 6-foot-1, they're not going to the NBA. Unless they're 6-6, 280, they're not going to the NFL.
"They love baseball here, and they're seeing some payoff from sticking with it."
Eighteen mohawk-wearing players boarded a bus Thursday morning for the 140-mile trip to Columbus, and plenty of folks in Defiance know the way. It just so happens that Defiance is chasing its second OHSAA state championship on the same weekend two more players could be drafted, further cementing Defiance as Ohio's Baseball Capital.
