May 11, 200620 yr Author Stop with the Willy hogging of the thread. This is about Joe 21 Borchard!! :hero : hero
May 16, 200620 yr Don't know if anybody posted this on the forum, but I just now saw it and thought I'd share it in this thread - It wasn't Deion Sanders going from a Falcons game in Miami to a Braves National League Championship Series game in Pittsburgh. More like the college equivalent. No limo, just Joe Borchard's girlfriend in an idling car outside the locker room. No private jet or helicopter was required to shuttle him from spring football practice at Stanford to San Jose State. In preparation for the 7 p.m. baseball game, Borchard took batting practice on his home field six hours earlier. By 2, he was in football meetings and later went through a two-hour spring workout. A quick change into his baseball uniform and Borchard dashed into then-girlfriend, and now wife, Erin's passenger seat. The two arrived at San Jose State about 20 minutes before the first pitch. A few hours later, Borchard drove in the game-winning run in the eighth inning. "You look back on it and you don't think it was that big a deal at the time," said Borchard, now a Marlins outfielder. "Five years later, you think that was pretty special getting to do all that." A two-sport star at Stanford, all Borchard wants to do now is achieve the baseball breakthrough many expected several years earlier. He abandoned the chance to start at quarterback for the Cardinal his senior season when in 2000 the White Sox drafted and signed him to a $5.3 million bonus, then the largest ever awarded. He's spent the better part of six years trying to justify the White Sox's evaluation. "You look at trying to carry around that kind of burden, it can be very difficult," said Borchard, who the Marlins claimed off waivers from the Seattle Mariners last week. "Sometimes you just have to accept the fact that no matter what you do it's never going to live up to those expectations. The best you can do is just work on becoming the best ballplayer you can be. Certainly at that time I was intent on doing much more than that and it didn't work out so well." The time Borchard referred to was 2004. The White Sox had a new manager in Ozzie Guillen intent on seeing what he had in Borchard. In what proved his lone extended look with the big-league club, Borchard hit .174 with nine homers, 20 RBI and 57 strikeouts in 63 games. Borchard pulled a quadriceps that spring and the effects of coming back too quickly reverberated throughout the season. "I wanted to make the team and felt like I really was coming into my own as a player," Borchard said. "It was one of those things where you almost wanted it too badly and you rush things along and you make a tough situation even worse. Ozzie was coming in his first year and saw how I was swinging the bat immediately and a lot of people were very excited about it." The White Sox's excitement eventually waned and they traded him to the Mariners this spring. Out of minor-league options, Borchard had heard trade rumors. His disillusion grew to where he called an offensive coordinator friend who's now coaching in the Canadian Football League. Borchard owns the Pac-10 and school record for longest touchdown pass (98 yards) and can boast a couple of 300-yard games, plus a Rose Bowl appearance. Yet even at a chiseled 6 feet 4, 230 pounds, the thought of playing anything other than baseball at 27 didn't feel realistic. "It was definitely blown out of proportion, but at the same time it was kind of a fall-back thing," Borchard said. "I was getting awfully frustrated with the way things were working out in certain situations. It's tough when you feel like you're doing the things that are necessary to become a good baseball player but you're not getting as much in return. "I was thinking about it, and could I really go play football right now? You talk about taking those hits and getting back to a different throwing motion. I sit there and wonder how I did it before when I did both at the same time." His future wife's shuttle service helped. http://www.sun-sentinel.com/sports/basebal...-sports-marlins
May 16, 200620 yr Joe B may not turn out to be the best baseball player the Marlins ever have, but I have an aquaintance of mine who went to school with him, and had several classes with him, and evertually became friendly with he and his wife, and says they are some of the nicest people you could know. You root for guys like this to make it my friend told me.
June 23, 200620 yr He struggles when starts, but he is showing some real aptitude for pinch hitting. The ability to hit from either side of the plate with power as a pinch hitter is a real plus.
June 23, 200620 yr He struggles when starts, but he is showing some real aptitude for pinch hitting. The ability to hit from either side of the plate with power as a pinch hitter is a real plus. deffinately.
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