A star coming into focus

When Spokane Indians outfielder Steve Murphy was in grade school in Overland Park, Kan., he loved the game of baseball. There isn’t a moment, in fact, said Murphy, that he doesn’t remember practicing or playing baseball.

“As far back as I can remember, I’ve always been going to practice, always looking forward to it,” he said.

Murphy, however, doesn’t remember that he was once passed over by his grade school’s baseball team.

The Johnson County youth baseball team created a team and picked the “so-called” good players from the school district, said Steve’s father, Matt.

Steve was not one of the so-called good players.

Johnson County was allowed two teams, so another parent and Matt got all the other kids and created a team.

Matt sponsored the team and named it Gerry Optical, after the family business started by Steve’s great-grandfather.

“Steve really took to it (baseball),” said Matt. “He played football, but didn’t like the practices. He was good at basketball, but he didn’t like to practice it either. Baseball was the only sport he liked. Give him a bat and he could go on for hours.”

So when the Gerry Opticals played – and defeated – the so-called better team that summer, Steve’s baseball career began.

Selected in the 40th round of this year’s amateur draft by the Texas Rangers, Steve has become a triple crown threat. Entering Wednesday’s play, he led the Northwest League in home runs and RBIs and was only four points off the league’s best batting average.

“I credit my ol’ man and my grandpa,” said Steve. “He never tried to push me. He never tried to live through me, he wasn’t one of those dads. He was a dad that taught hard work. Going on Saturdays or Sundays to hit at the batting cages, when everyone else was off swimming or something, really instilled in me the values of hard work,” said Steve, who played for Kansas State University this past season.

“It can’t be what Daddy wants,” said Matt. “Other parents would get so angry when their kids didn’t do so well, but when you’d asked them if their kids had put in the work they would answer that they didn’t have time.”

Steve made the time; Matt supported him.

“Sometimes the camps and the things I wanted to go do, obviously, weren’t free,” said Steve. “But now, that I’m older, I just look and couldn’t thank him enough for forking up money, and time and effort to do something I wanted to pursue. So to not come and do my best and work hard, it would be an insult to him and everything he did for me.”

When Steve finished the sixth grade, he attended an instructional camp run by three former Kansas City Royals.

There Steve met Pete LaCock, former Royals first baseman and outfielder.

“He (Pete) kind of was my first real mentor, beside my parents,” said Steve. “He built the basics of my swing.”

That swing has terrorized Northwest League pitchers all season.

“I feel he is playing at another level,” said former college and current Indians teammate Terry Blunt, who said Steve looks like a different player than from his Kansas State days. “He looks more comfortable at the plate.”

If it looks like Steve is more comfortable, it’s because he is.

What ever cliché is more appropriate – “he is in the zone” or “on the up side of the roller coaster ride” – Steve is locked in in one of those.

“It’s the best part of the ride, when everything is clicking. A guy might be throwing 90 mph, but it still looks like he is throwing beach balls up there,” said Steve, who safely hit in 16 of his last 18 games through Tuesday. “And you have to do the most you can when you are in the that zone because the next day, 75 might look like 100.”

During those 18 games, he put together a 12-game hitting streak, hit a game-winning home run, raised his batting average from .229 to .342, hit four home runs and 11 doubles and drove in 18 runs.

The hitting streak (during which he batted .511) ended July 14 against Yakima, but the former Johnson County team reject still ranked first in six of the league’s offensive categories: hits (38), home runs (6), doubles (14), RBIs (23), slugging (.649) and total bases (72).

“He has a tremendous amount of potential with the bat, and he is a true professional for someone that hasn’t been a professional that long,” Rangers Director of Minor League Operations John Lombardo said last week when he was in Spokane.

“I’ll be really, really curious to see where he winds up over the next couple of years. If he continues on the path he is on right now, very early in his career, good things are gonna happen to him.”