Mann Signs With Yankees

For Schuyler Mann, the road to pro baseball included a senior season in Crimson.

The 2005 Harvard captain and power-hitting catcher plied his trade for four years of highs and lows, rounding out his talents with polish and savvy.

His persistence was rewarded with a stellar season and an Ivy League Championship in June.

What Mann gained in craft, he lost in age. Many big league organizations appreciate the refined skills of top college seniors, but they frequently opt for younger, rawer alternatives.

It wasn’t until late July that Mann signed a free agent contract. The team: the New York Yankees.

“I hadn’t talked to any scouts in a while,” Mann says. “By that time, I’d basically given up any thought of baseball. As far as I knew, they weren’t signing people that late.”

When the Yankees came calling, Mann was at home in Corvallis, Mont., engaging in his favorite hobby, fresh-water fishing, and entertaining designs on joining the family jewelry business.

Mann’s good friend and agent, Takin Khorram, negotiated a deal.

“Two days later I was on the plane [to Tampa, Fla.],” Mann says.

In joining the Gulf Coast League Yankees, the team’s principal rookie league affiliate based in Tampa, Mann encountered a whole new ballgame. Strict measures, including 11 o’clock mandatory week-day curfews at the team hotel, made life outside of baseball nearly impossible. Only weekend afternoons by the hotel pool and bay fishing served to interrupt the daily grind of workouts and games.

Mann was one of the oldest members of the team.

“That was one of my apprehensions coming in,” Mann says. “That the other guys were guys out of high school, maybe a little less mature. Guys who don’t speak English. Coming from an Ivy League setting, it was a different kind of world.”

The Crimson captain wasted no time getting settled, knocking three hits in his nine at-bats before the season concluded in August. In the process, he made new baseball contacts and even used his Harvard-honed Spanish to “goof around” with the team’s Dominican and Venezuelan players.

“Baseball guys are pretty much the same everywhere,” he says.

For now, it’s back to fishing for the 22-year-old.

Next on the schedule: reporting to Yankees spring training in March.

“The option is there for me,” he says.

HARVARD IN THE MINORS

Trey Hendricks ’04, Harvard’s 2004 co-captain at pitcher and first base, had a banner year at Class A Yakima of the short-season Northwest League.

The former unanimous All-Ivy selection and 24th-round draft choice of the Arizona Diamondbacks batted .296/.347/.442 (AVG/OBP/SLG) in 300 at-bats, leading the team in RBI with 42. His eight home runs were good for second on the team.

Ben Crockett ’02, the former Ivy League pitcher of the year for Harvard, is now approximately 70 miles from the big leagues. The former third-rounder had a rough first start for the Colorado Springs Sky Sox, yielding three runs in three and two-thirds innings for the Colorado Rockies’ Class AAA affiliate. He earned a promotion with a solid 4.00 ERA at Class AA Tulsa, mostly in relief.

John Birtwell ’01 has seen his path to the big leagues hit a snag after being named Minor League Pitcher of the Year in 2002 by the Detroit Tigers organization. This year he yielded a 4.46 ERA in 40.1 innings of relief at Class AA Erie.

Former Harvard standouts Andrew Huling ’99, Dan Saken ’01, Brian Lentz ’03 and Kenon Ronz ’03, all of whom have spent time in the minors in recent years, yielded no results when searched in Minor League Baseball’s statistical records.

It is not known if they are still active within professional baseball.

—Staff writer Alex McPhillips can be reached at rmcphill@fas.harvard.edu.