Follow up on Tyler:
Tyler Olander, 2-Time National Hoops Champ At UConn, Playing Minor League Baseball
Olander had focused on basketball at E.O. Smith High, at UConn, and played professionally with his brother, Ryan, in Lithuania. He got hurt before playing for his new team in Spain, which wanted him to try to recover and return. Instead, Olander sent an email to Andy Baylock, a longtime neighbor and family friend who had retired after 24 years as UConn baseball coach in 2003. Olander told no one, not his friends at home, not the former UConn teammates he speaks to regularly, not even his family. He started meeting Baylock at the baseball practice facility in Storrs last December and, walking boot and all, began to learn how to pitch from the stitches out.
Pete Walker, who pitched for Baylock at UConn and went on to a long career in the major leagues and is now the Blue Jays' pitching coach, "What I saw was a very determined young man," Walker said. "He threw about 65 pitches and he was very aggressive. On the foundation Andy had built — he's 6-10, but he's not an awkward 6-10, he didn't pitch like he was 6-10, and I liked that."
And here begins what could be, at worst, the coolest of spring adventures or, at best, one of those only-happens-in-baseball tales that's just crazy enough to be true. In four months, Olander has gotten from there, sitting in a chair and tossing 10 feet into a net, to Dunedin, Fla., where he is now working every day for the
Toronto Blue Jays, aiming to debut as a professional reliever before the summer is out. "When you look at his size," said Andrew Tinnish, the Blue Jays' assistant GM, "his athleticism, his competitiveness, the work ethic, he has a fresh arm … it's a baseball project we were interested in. It was a low-risk, no-brainer."
