Strong on the mound

When Lewis and Clark baseball coach Dexter Davis first coached Eric Barge after his freshman year, he saw a tall, slender athlete who could hit and throw.

“I didn’t need any more information,” he said. “I liked the makeup.”

Then Davis tells a story on himself about Barge, the junior ace of LC’s fourth-place Greater Spokane League pitching staff.

Following an American Legion baseball loss, he made his players run and Barge lagged behind.

“I was trying to figure out why this kid couldn’t get it done,” Davis said. “I thought he was dogging it. But obviously, being in education, you have to think further than that.”

He learned that Barge was born with Congenital Talipes Equinovarus, or clubfoot, a malady that causes the foot to curl inward and down at birth.

Treatment has left both of Barge’s feet extremely flat, and the left one particularly misshapen. The feet extend from underdeveloped calves, looking almost like an offset shafted golf putter.

Barge wasn’t dogging it. The painful condition forces him to walk on his heels because his ankles have limited flexibility and makes running difficult.

“I was quite embarrassed, to be honest,” said Davis. “I said, ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ “

Usually, said Barge, it is the first thing he tells a coach, preferring to be up front about his disability.

Neither he nor his family let it interfere with indulging his love of athletics, and they do not seek special consideration.

Beginning at age 5 he has played soccer, basketball and baseball. The 6-foot-4 athlete is 3-0 for the Tigers, plays first base when he isn’t pitching and bats, only occasionally utilizing a courtesy runner.

“Running bases is not so much speed as understanding,” said Davis, adding with a laugh, “He’s always in the dugout saying, ‘Coach, put the steal on.’ “

In testimony, Davis likened him to 2003 LC graduate Travis Webb, who went on to play at Arizona State University before transferring to WSU.

“Obviously he’s not the same athlete, but lose Travis and where do you find another like him?” said Davis. “Eric’s every bit as (valuable), despite his limitations.”

Barge is the youngest of three children of Steve and Chris Barge. He’s 13 years younger than his 6-7 brother, who was a three-sport all-league athlete, and 10 years younger than his sister, who was a standout diver and a softball player in the Midwest.

Steve Barge met his wife, a Spokane native, while working here before moving back to his native Minnesota. They raised the children there and in Iowa before returning to Spokane when Eric was a fourth-grader.

Their youngest child spent the better part of his first year undergoing surgeries and wearing casts and braces, said Chris.

Steve said that Eric learned to walk three different times.

“I made a comment to a doctor once that he had funny-looking feet,” Chris recalled. “She answered, ‘He has functional feet.’ They are very flat and the ankle doesn’t line up with the heel. He has skinny calves and that’s where he gets tired. There’s not much muscle. But we worked through it.”

Growing up around his older siblings’ athletics, it seemed logical that Eric follow suit. Baseball became his sport of choice because it was less painful to play and, said Steve, because his grandfather, the late Tom Butler of Spokane, had played in college and professionally.

“He’s kind of got the bloodlines,” Steve said. “Lord knows it’s not from my side.”

Eric doesn’t remember much about the early years other than his mother telling him a story about how he’d kick his casts off.

“I just remember starting sports,” he said. “That’s when I noticed it holding me back a bit. I learned to deal with it, that’s all I could do.”

Steve, who’s taller than his son, helped Larry Hopkins coach Eric’s youth teams. He began as a first baseman.

“If you notice I’m slower than everybody else. That’s a given,” said Eric. “I guess I didn’t have as much movement.”

He began pitching, “probably in sixth grade,” Eric said. He gave up basketball after seventh grade.

“I played baseball the longest and was probably best at that,” he said.

He runs wind sprints and the warm-ups with his teammates. The only concession is when they go on longer runs. Then, Eric spends that time on a bike or does sit-ups and crunches.

He can lift upper body weights, but is limited when squatting and can’t do calf raises.

“If you look at his feet, you’d be amazed he can do what he does,” said his dad. “One foot looks like it’s been put through a meat grinder.”

But it hasn’t kept him off the baseball field. Barge said that it is difficult for him to pivot when swinging a bat and that he has balance problems when on the mound, necessitating him to lean forward when he throws.

“They always say pitchers should stand with a leg in the air. I can’t,” he said. “Just when I get to the balance point, I never know what’s going to happen.”

However, new LC pitching coach, former Mead standout and minor leaguer Geoff Kellogg, doesn’t see any reason he can’t pitch in college.

“It depends upon him and how hard he works,” Kellogg said. “He’s just a joy to coach.”

Kellogg has not done much to change him mechanically, saying Barge has a loose and live arm which makes up for his lack of lower leg strength. He throws a fastball, curve and changeup, and they’ve been working on a split-finger pitch.

“He’s the type of kid who wants the ball, has a lot of heart and will throw every day if you let him,” Kellogg said.

He’s someone willing to deal with pain. It will bother him after a game, particularly after last week’s doubleheader. But he really notices it the morning after games when he gets out of bed.

“That’s when it’s the hardest,” he said.

Taping ankles, using braces or wearing orthotics hasn’t helped. He goes to the Shriner’s hospital for X-rays every other year to keep tabs on the condition and has been told there is one more surgery that can be done to alleviate the pain.

But it would probably also further limit his mobility, he said.

“Until the pain is such that you can’t walk, can’t do normal daily activities and can’t walk up the stairs there’s no need for it,” he said.