By Todd Jacobson
8/10/2006

http://fredericksburg.com/News/FLS/2006/082006/08102006/212690


Left-hander Matt Chico was a second-round draft pick by the Boston Red Sox
out of high school and turned down hundreds of thousands of dollars to play
professional baseball, but two years removed from that near-miss, he found
himself pitching off a wooden mound in an alley behind a warehouse in San
Diego.

"It was tough," Chico said. "It kind of felt like I was at the end of my
ropes a little bit. I was really regretting not signing out of high school at
that point. One day I just looked at it and said, 'You just got to work
through it.'"

Thankfully, Mike Rizzo--then the scouting director for the Arizona
Diamondbacks--was watching, and a few months later, Chico was drafted in the
third round of the 2003 First-Year Player Draft by the Arizona Diamondbacks.

He was blossoming at Double-A Tennessee before he was traded to the Nationals
Monday with right-hander Garrett Mock for veteran Livan Hernandez.

With a 7-2 record and a 2.22 ERA with Tennessee, Chico had finally arrived,
but it's impossible to appreciate how far the 23-year-old has come without
knowing how far he'd fallen.

After he was drafted by the Red Sox, Chico's odd journey to professional
baseball took him to the University of Southern California (he left after
less than a year because of academic problems) and Palomar Junior College (he
talked to the coach but never enrolled).

He finally ended up pitching for an over-30 men's league team in San
Diego--"a beer league team," Chico said--where the hitters he faced were "not
good." To catch the eye of scouts, he worked out at an indoor batting
facility in San Diego, where Rizzo saw him pitch.

"That whole situation, I think it made me grow up really fast considering I
have been through more than a lot of other kids at that point had been
through," Chico said. "I think it helped me out tremendously because I
could've taken everything for granted if I would've gone out of high school."

He's not taking anything for granted now, and he's embracing a new chance in
a new organization. After struggling in two stints at Double-A in 2004 and
2005, he mastered a cut fastball to complement his low-90s four-seamer last
winter and dominated, but he said he still felt lost in the Diamondbacks'
talent-rich farm system.

"Both Garrett [Mock] and I felt kind of stuck because the Diamondbacks have
so many prospects," said Chico, who gave up three runs on nine hits in five
innings with Double-A Harrisburg yesterday. "Getting that call just kind of
opened up our eyes we felt like we were wanted a little bit and that helped
us out a lot."