http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/04/AR2008020403604.html

McGeary Is an Uncommon Talent With an Uncommon Arrangement

By Barry Svrluga
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, February 5, 2008; Page E01


PALO ALTO, Calif. -- The unrelenting ping-ping-ping of aluminum bats wafted
in from the bottom of a nearby pit, a facility aptly dubbed Sunken Diamond.
There, the Stanford University baseball team worked out on a perfect Friday
afternoon last month, the temperature at 70, the clouds nonexistent.

At the top of a nearby slope, past a thicket of trees, one of the best
baseball players on Stanford's campus hopped over a chain-link fence. Jack
McGeary, lacking teammates for the first time in his life, plopped a plastic
Foot Locker bag down on some artificial turf, pulled from it two baseballs
and a glove, ran the length of the field and back again, and began to throw
one of the balls into an empty field hockey net, mimicking his pitching
motion.

It is in such solitude that one of the Washington Nationals' most promising
prospects hopes to develop into an elite pitcher. He is 18. He is equipped
with a biting curveball, a 3.5 grade-point average, an overt focus and a $1.8
million bonus granted him last summer, when the Nationals decided he was
worthy of such an uncommon arrangement. Over the next seven months, he will
be on a trek almost no one has undertaken -- and perhaps fewer could handle
-- toggling between school in California and minor league baseball and then
back to school again.

"It's manageable," McGeary said, quite confidently.

Yet few people around him know exactly what McGeary is managing. His
third-floor room in Branner Hall is labeled just as any other freshman's
would be, a handmade sign reading "Jack McGeary, Newton, MA," hanging outside
the door. When he stopped in to load up that plastic bag and head out to
throw, a hallmate asked, "Where you going?", and McGeary countered, "Just
workin' out," as he bounced down the stairs.

"I don't think they understand the whole thing," he said. "They know I'm
gone. But it's like, 'Where do you go, man?' "

Depending on the hour or the day of the week, he could be going to run on the
track, sometimes at 6 a.m. He could be going to yoga. He could be going to
the weight room. He could be going to throw on campus. He could be driving
some 15 miles to Santa Clara University where, unlike at Stanford, he is
welcome to use the baseball team's facilities, to throw with their players.
Toss in what could be a crippling courseload -- Greek mythology; Hannibal;
children, youth and the law; and a literature course to which he might
relate, "Epic Journeys and Modern Quests" -- and it's safe to say that he'll
be unique among pitchers in the New York-Penn or South Atlantic league this
summer.

"I don't think this would work for a lot of kids," said his mother, Rita.
"But as much as he wants to go play baseball, he has that maturity to sit
back and say, 'I have to do this schoolwork. I'll get it done.' I think it
works for him. It's not going to be easy. Time will tell, I guess."

As last June's draft approached, McGeary -- who pitched for Boston's Roxbury
Latin School and was named the Massachusetts Gatorade player of the year --
had established himself as one of the best high school pitchers available.
But a strong commitment to Stanford sent him tumbling in the draft. The
Nationals considered him a first-round talent. He fell all the way to the
sixth round. "It was the worst," McGeary said.

"We were all set for him to go to Stanford," Rita McGeary said by phone. "We
weren't even thinking about the Nationals. We just thought, 'They're not
going to pay him.' It wasn't so much what Jack was worth. It's really what
Stanford was worth."

So the Nationals got creative. In the 48 hours before the Aug. 15 deadline to
sign draftees, General Manager Jim Bowden concocted a plan in which the
Nationals would pay McGeary first-round money, allow him to go to Stanford,
pay for four years of school -- but have him pitch for them in the summer.
Because he would be a professional, he wouldn't be allowed to pitch for
Stanford. McGeary flew to Washington. Team president Stan Kasten flew to
Toronto to confer with members of the Lerner family, who own the Nationals,
at a meeting of Major League Baseball owners.

Ten minutes before the deadline, Bowden, McGeary and McGeary's agent got
word. The Lerners approved the deal.

As exhilarating as that was for everyone involved -- and the McGeary signing
finished off a Washington draft that has since been rated, by the trade
magazine Baseball America, as the best in the game -- it was, in fact, the
easy part.

"We had to say, 'Is this a good idea?' " said McGeary's father, Pat. "I
remember making statements like, 'Well, if anybody can do this, Jack can do
it.' It's just his ability to focus on what he wants to do and an unrelenting
ability to execute on that."

Pat and Rita McGeary know they sound like fawning parents. But they have been
receiving this kind of feedback since Jack, the younger of their two sons,
was in kindergarten. "Teachers would tell us that he wasn't swayed by his
peers," Pat said. More over, Pat said they "literally, never once" had to
tell Jack to do his homework.

"He reminds me of stuff," Rita McGeary said. "It's almost like a role
reversal, where he's the parent, the more mature one."

The McGearys got a glimpse of his focus when he started to develop into a
prospect for the draft, but his 6-foot-3 frame had ballooned to perhaps 225
pounds. Told he needed to lose weight so he could gain flexibility, he
radically altered his diet to the point where Rita -- a noted cook and baker
-- believes Jack hasn't had as many as three or four cookies in the last two
years.

"He's a perfectionist," said Rob Steinert, a former minor league pitcher from
Long Island with whom McGeary has worked intensively the past two years. "He
has a true passion for the psychological demands of pitching. He understands
it physically. His aptitude is just tremendous, and he has the discipline to
follow a plan through."

Thus, that Friday morning in Palo Alto began with an egg-white omelet and
some fruit in the dining hall across from his dorm. Lunch at a local Thai
restaurant brought chicken and vegetables, along with some disappointment
when there was no brown rice. In between came a sweltering, 90-minute Bikram
yoga session in downtown Palo Alto, where he fit in seamlessly with some 30
others, most of them women, all of them older. "I'm cursed with an Irish
body," he said. So yoga has become part of his routine, though when he first
carted some high school teammates to a class, none of them returned, and he
was left to pursue it alone.

That, though, does not make McGeary uncomfortable. Driving through the
Stanford campus in his mother's hand-me-down Lexus sedan -- that $1.8 million
safely in the bank -- McGeary considered his challenge.

"The thing is, I kind of figured out it's not that hard," he said. "I knew if
I put any effort into it at all I would do fine. It would kind of defeat the
purpose if I was out partying all the time. Why would I be here?"

Thus, there will be no Cancun for McGeary's spring break. Rather, he will fly
to Viera, Fla., and join the Nationals' other minor leaguers, albeit for only
two or three weeks. He hopes to set up a class schedule for spring quarter
that would allow him three or four more trips to Viera for long weekends. In
the meantime, the Nationals plan on sending a scout to check in on McGeary
during the spring.

"I know it can work out," said Spin Williams, who coordinates the Nationals'
minor league pitching program. "It's not an ideal situation for us, but it
was a deal-maker for us, so it's worth it. . . . I think it takes a special
kid. One of the reasons we really wanted Jack in the organization is we feel
he is that kind of kid."

Back in the student gym on the Stanford campus, McGeary is hardly special. He
waited for another student to finish using a pull-up machine. The varsity
weight room, just like Sunken Diamond, is off limits. Come June, though, he
will begin a summer job unlike that of anyone else in the room.

"I feel like I'm responsible enough to do this," McGeary said. "I guess we'll
see."