Pirates Lithuanian prospect Neverauskas proud of h… – Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

SAN DIEGO — The small flag stitched to right-hander Dovydas Neverauskas’ jersey Sunday was layered yellow, green and red. He was at Petco Park as the Pirates’ only prospect in the All-Star Futures Game. On his chest, above his heart, were the colors of his home country, Lithuania.

Neverauskas, 23, ​tossed a scoreless eighth ​for the World team, which beat the United States, 11-3. He was born in Vilnius, Lithuania, three years after the country proclaimed its independence from the Soviet Union. His father, Virmidas, promoted baseball in the region in the 1980s by organizing teams and, in the absence of money and opportunity to order equipment, making his own gloves and baseballs.

“At that time, we had never seen white baseballs,” recalled Arnoldas Ramanauskas, an administrator in the Lithuanian Baseball Association. “They were brown baseballs.”

Neverauskas learned the game as a boy, and loved it. The problem was the lack of baseball fields. His youth teams, all coached by his father, practiced and played on pebble-strewn soccer pitches. In Lithuania, Neverauskas explained Sunday, the most popular sport is basketball, then soccer, then ice hockey. “Baseball is like —” he dropped his hand level with his knees “— down here.”

After signing with the Pirates at 16, Neverauskas toiled in low-level leaves for six seasons before finding his way this past year as a reliever armed with a high-90s fastball, a cutter and a slider. Part of the learning curve, Neverauskas explained, was “back home, nobody could hit. Here, they actually can hit your fastball.” He was promoted to Class AAA Indianapolis in June and has impressed manager Dean Treanor with an 1.86 ERA for the Indians.

“I didn’t know they had baseball in Lithuania,” Treanor remarked Friday. “Guess they do.”

There is little precedent for Neverauskas’ path. In 1933, a Lithuanian named Joe Zapustas played five games for the Philadelphia Athletics, then two games for the NFL’s New York Giants. But opinions differs on whether Zapustas was born in Lithuania, and they agree he grew up near Boston.

“I don’t think they had baseball in Lithuania in 1933,” Neverauskas reasoned.

Neverauskas could become the first player born and raised in Lithuania to play in the majors.

“It would be a really fun story if he continues to grow and develop the way he is,” general manager Neal Huntington said. “He’s putting himself in a position to be an option for us at some point, whether it’s this year or certainly moving forward.”

A $60,000 man

The marriage of Neverauskas and the Pirates began, in a way, with a love story.

With his playing days at Wesleyan University recently concluded, Will Gordon accepted an offer to fill in for Lithuanian club team Kaunas Lituanica at a tournament in 2005. He played, stayed, married a local girl and became entrenched in the baseball community.

Tom Randolph was the man who put Gordon in touch with the club team. When Randolph became an international scout for the Pirates in 2008, then, Gordon was his eyes and ears in Lithuania. Randolph, now a senior buyer at General Motors, saw Neverauskas at a showcase in Torino, Italy, in 2008. At that point, Neverauskas was more of a catcher. As winter turned to spring and Neverauskas turned 16, he and his fastball had grown.

Still, Randolph had his eye on a 17-year-old whose parents were former Olympians for the Soviet Union — a javelin thrower and a middle-distance runner. In the uncertain world of scouting, bloodlines are promising. “Maybe, if you squinted,” Randolph said, “you could imagine it happening.” Gordon convinced him to spend instead on Neverauskas, whose mother had played semi-professional basketball.

Once Neverauskas pitched at another MLB Europe showcase in Prague in May, several teams were scouting him. Randolph was in Rotterdam, Netherlands, the week before Neverauskas became signing-eligible July 2, and Minnesota Twins scouts, also in hot pursuit, told him, “Good luck in Lithuania. You won’t get him.” After offering a sum of $60,000, Randolph got him.

“I still to this day feel a little lucky to have gotten him at that number,” Randolph said.

‘One step away’

Neverauskas’ father is not in San Diego. He spent his Sunday in Gijon, Spain, coaching Lithuania in the Under-18 European Championship. He has seen his son play in the United States only once. Back in 2013, he left his youth team during a visit to Chicago and drove eight hours east to watch Neverauskas pitch for the New York-Penn League’s Jamestown Jammers.

It was on a trip to California with his youth team in 2006 when Neverauskas, then 13, saw his first major league game. The Oakland Athletics beat the New York Yankees, and the boy snapped a photo of Derek Jeter on his disposable camera. He printed it out later. The dream seemed tangible.

Neverauskas making the majors could aid a cause his father started so many years ago. Ramanauskas, the Lithuanian baseball official, believes a Lithuanian man reaching the majors would spike baseball’s popularity and perhaps convince the government to fund the construction of ball fields. He saw many ice rinks built after Dainius Zubrus and Darius Kasparaitis made the NHL.

At the national level, Ramanauskas said, “No one believes we need baseball at all.”

The notion of one day debuting with the Pirates brings a look of wonder to Neverauskas’ eyes. In Vilnius, strangers on the street don’t yet recognize him — “I’m not that guy yet,” he said. “I hopefully won’t be.” — but he understands how his future could impact the future of baseball back home.

“I’ve come a long way,” Neverauskas said. “Now I can feel that I’m almost there, one step away.”

Stephen J. Nesbitt: snesbitt@post-gazette.com and Twitter @stephenjnesbitt.