By Riley Zayas, Managing Editor
ROUND ROCK, Texas- “Rock’em, Shock’em. That was our go-to right there.”
That is Evan Ruiz’s response when asked to describe the Austin Shockers in a sentence. As I talk with head coach Travis Larson, pitcher Ian Craigie, and Ruiz, a former infielder for the team, I notice one common theme: these players on the Shockers and on the CenTex Collegiate League as a whole aren’t playing for the fame and glory of other premier wood bat leagues. The CenTex Collegiate League is not a league of players trying to flash their talent before the scouts. It is not a league of teams with a one-man show where everybody is out to improve their stat lines. It is a league built around the essence of the pure amateur sport: competition and a love for the game.
Founded in 2010, thanks in large part to the efforts of Larson, the CCBL morphed out of the now-defunct Zaragoza League, which stopped play after the summer of 2009. Switching leagues was Larson’s squad, the Austin Shockers, whom he founded in 2002, on a loan from his parents while in college at the University of Mary Hardin-Baylor.
"One day I was sitting around, looking at the league and I went up to the coach," Larson remembers. "I was 21 at the time. I said, ‘what all does it take to have a team in the league?’ He was like, ‘Oh, you got to talk to the commissioner and come up with the league fees’. So after the season I talked to the commissioner Wayne Elliot, and said ‘I’d like to have a team next year in the Zaragoza League,’ and he told me ‘If you can come up with the fees, you have it’. I was a poor college kid so I asked my mom and dad ‘Can you spot me the league fees and I’ll pay you back with the players’ register?’ They said ‘Sure’, so I’ve been heading up the Shockers since 2002."
Soon enough, his team was up and running, but needed a catchy name to go along with it. Because the CCBL feeds into the National Baseball Congress World Series each year, a tournament of the top summer league teams from various leagues across the country, played in Wichita, Kansas, Larson thought the name Shockers”would be a good reminder to his players of what to work for in the season. Being that the Shockers is the team name for Wichita State athletics, it was a constant landmark of the ultimate goal each year.
"I actually came up with the team name because the Wichita Shockers play where the NBC World Series is, and I thought, ‘how cool would it be if the Austin Shockers were playing where the Wichita Shockers play?’ We have the name Shockers on our jerseys and I tell the players, 'Before a game, when you look in the mirror, and see the name Shockers, that will remind you what the goal is.'"
It is a sunny Sunday afternoon in Jarrell, Texas. The Shockers are preparing for yet another doubleheader, the seventh of the season. It is a miracle the 2020 campaign was even able to be played.
After all, Larson, who serves as the league’s commissioner, had to scramble-not once, but twice-to find fields for the league’s nine teams to play its games on. Typically, he is able to make use of area ballfields, such as Stony Point, where Larson is an assistant baseball and football coach. With all Round Rock ISD facilities closed until further notice, he scheduled the majority of the Shockers games at St. Michael’s private school in South Austin. But when the private school closed its field just prior to the season’s opening day, Larson scrambled, finally finding Jarrell High School as a place to play out the season.
With the Round Rock Hairy Men playing as a temporary expansion team in the premier Texas Collegiate League, they have taken much of the press when it comes to college baseball in Central Texas. However, Ian Craigie, and Evan Ruiz both attested to the fact that while the Hairy Men may be headlined by D1 players and play six days a week versus the two like the CCBL, the competitiveness and talent are virtually no different.
“We’re the guys who could definitely be overlooked by some of the other summer leagues out there, but if you put us up against some of the best teams, you either sleep on us or you can bet that we’re going to take it to you,” said Ruiz.
According to the demographic of the league from five years ago. 25% of the league was D1, 25% was JUCO, 40% was D2 and D3, and 10% is guys no longer in college. Larson is included in that 10%. Even at the age of 40, he doesn’t remain confined to the bench during games, serving as the role of player/coach, and often appearing in games as a DH or pitcher.
It is no surprise Larson is still out on the field, playing the game he loves. By all accounts, he is a player’s coach, a guy who is still “one of them” but has quite a bit more maturity and experience under his belt.
"I'm still a player-coach," Larson chuckles. "I'm 40 years old and can still swing it."
Every season, Larson estimates he brings in 80% new kids, meaning some seasons the Shockers are contending for the title in Wichita, and other the focus is more on skill building. One such player in that 20% group of returnees is Craigie, a Pflugerville native and current pitcher for the D3 Sul Ross State University Lobos.
After he pitched a game against Stony Point during his senior year, Larson approached him about suiting up for the Shockers, a team his older brother Karl had also played on. Since that time, Craigie has seen Karl make it to the professional level, getting drafted by the Miami Marlins in 2017, and currently playing independent league ball.
“It has been a big part of my baseball career watching him play competitive baseball at the JUCO level and later the D1 level,” Ian said of Karl’s influence on his career. “Just his mindset watching him go out there and compete and is ready to get after it. I’ve been able to learn a lot from him, especially on the baseball IQ side.”
At the same time, Ian has represented the Shockers for the past three seasons. He was supposed to play this summer in Canada, in the Great Lakes League. However, that was shut down due to travel restrictions and Covid-19, so Craigie decided to suit up for the Shockers for another season.
Karl left to start his independent league season this past week, as he will be pitching for the Florence Y’alls of the Frontier League. With the late start, he pitched this past summer for the Shockers to throw some innings and face live batters.
One memory that immediately comes to mind for Karl is a game in Seguin in the summer of 2016. He was only supposed to throw a few innings, warm up his arm and then head back home. Ian, who was only a freshman at the time, rode with him. After a few innings, Karl had still not surrendered a single hit, much less a run.
“It was crazy,” said Karl. “I think I threw like 18 strikeouts. I had started off well and after about three innings, I still hadn’t allowed a hit, so I told Coach Larson, just come get me when I give up a hit. I gave up my first hit in the ninth with one out. It is still one of my favorite baseball memories.”
Ruiz told me of his experience playing on the biggest stage of baseball for the Shockers, the NBC World Series. In the year, , the shockers punched their ticket to Wichita, and proceeded to go on a winning streak that surprised many in the NBC, including the Shockers themselves.
Cameron Cox, who also played a big role as a pitcher on that squad, remembers the same thing about that special season.
“Going to Wichita and facing that competition at the NBCs was a lot of fun,” said Cox. “This one game Larson played and coached at the same time, it was a blast. This one game I pitched and we ended up run-ruling them and Larson had six RBI or something like that. It was unbelievable. We played multiple games throughout the day, we played the night game once against a team from California that was really good. They were made up of a bunch of D1 guys and we had a lot of D3 guys, one Texas State guy and a bunch of JUCO and NAIA guys.”
Cox began his college career at the JUCO level, on the mound for Weatherford College. Soon enough, after turning heads with 61 strikeouts in 11 appearances as a freshman at Weatherford, Cox began talking with both D1 schools and MLB teams about his future in the game. Sure enough, the Indians called his name with the 25th pick of the 2012 MLB Draft. However, as an Austin-area kid growing up, playing for the Longhorns was always a distant dream, but became a reality following the spring of 2012. He elected to join the Horns after a single season of JUCO baseball, with the promise of pitching in the Big 12 conference for a known baseball powerhouse. Only, things did not unfold that way during the 2013 season.
“Growing up in Austin, I’d always wanted to be in the burnt orange, but coming out of Weatherford, getting drafted and going to Texas and not getting the playing time I wanted was tough,” said Cox. “That season we were off, I don’t think we won a single conference series.”
So instead of pursuing fame at the D1 level, Cox opted for something much more important, the chance to actually play the game he loved, starring on the mound for the next two seasons at Concordia.
“So I moved to Concordia. I knew Coach Boggs really well, and I knew I was going to get to play for Coach Boggs. It ended up being a good fit for me, I got the playing time I wanted, and Coach Boggs is an incredible baseball guy, and I had a blast going to Concordia. I ended up being an all-american, it was a great way to end my college career.”
For both Cox and Ruiz, it was always Coach Larson that made the Shockers such a great team to play on. Both not only played for him on the Shockers, but he was also their first high school coach back in 2007 at Stony Point High.
“Coach Larson was one of my most favorite coaches for one reason: he got us to play together as a team,” said Cox. “As freshmen you don’t know what to expect, some of us thought we should have been put on higher teams, but going in with Coach Larson, he got us to buy into the team aspect.”
Now, as a coach himself for the Southwest Canes select baseball program, Cox applies the same things he learned from Larson into his coaching style.
“I try to be a player’s coach, just like Larson does. He talks to us, he gets to know us. At Texas, Augie Garrido was not around during the fall, and he showed up to like 2 or 3 practices a week during the spring. There was no getting to know your players, what they want to do after baseball, none of that, like the way Larson would. So I try to do that with my kids, just like Larson would.”
For Travis Larson, Ian and Karl Craige, Cameron Cox, Evan Ruiz, and every other player and coach in the CCBL, this is what pure amateur baseball is all about. Adrian Cantu, who coaches the Texas USA team based out of San Antonio, installs air conditions during the day, and coaches by night, also has served as a scout for the San Diego Padres, Boston Red Sox and Atlanta Braves. On many nights, such as one particular Thursday at the end of the regular season, Cantu makes the two hour drive far north to Jarrell, Texas, where his squad plays a doubleheader. When it is all said and done, he hops in the car and drives back, usually getting home in the wee hours of the morning, before waking up just hours later to go to work. Most of the players also have jobs to get to in the mornings, so some will only play a few innings before heading back home.
“Having to get back at two in the morning and getting up for work the next day is tough,” says Cantu. “They moved us, from Mission Baseball Academy right here in San Antonio, where our home field is, to Kerrville because the fields closed on us. For road games, we started off at St. Michaels in Austin, then moved to Georgetown and now we’re playing as far north as Jarrell.”
The CCBL is built on people like Ruiz, Cantu, Cox, the Craigie brothers and Larson, who have given the CCBL the competitive, yet fun atmosphere that is always sure to provide, with college players playing for the love of the game, and the chance to improve their skill set heading into the fall.
When I ask Ruiz if he’d like to add anything else towards the end of our interview, he stops, thinks and simply says, “Just to say that Coach Larson is one of my favorite coaches of all-time and I’ve had a lot of them. He always had your back. He is a great leader.”
For each player I talked with, they all came from a different college, different backgrounds and are at different stages in their baseball journeys, but all share three things in common; a passion for baseball, appreciation for the Shockers, and a high respect for Coach Larson.
Commentaires