CORVALLIS — There are some days when Tanner Sanders pries himself out of bed before the sun creeps over the Cascades and is still struck by the understanding that he is a baseball player.
Each day brings him a step closer to realizing a storybook script. But the tale is so divergent from the one he once envisioned.
Less than two months ago, well before his sophomore school year began, Sanders had those same early mornings. He left his home, mere miles from where he starred as a all-state high school athlete, and prepared for a full day of work in a helmet and pads.
Formerly one of the state’s top football recruits, Sanders is now pouring all his athleticism into baseball for a roster spot that is not guaranteed.
A lifelong Oregon State fan, he once took the field at Goss Stadium as a batboy for the Beavers’ two national championship teams. The century-old ballpark is now where the 20-year-old vigorously works in order to have one more chance to make it as a college athlete in his hometown.
“If I’m not performing well, baseball could be over and then what’s my next step? I might leave Corvallis at that point,” Sanders said. “I don’t want to leave Corvallis, so that means I’m going to need to work a little harder.”
• • •
Sanders went out with a sore back not long after he began his foray into college baseball. Muscles spasmed inside his 6-foot-4, 215-pound frame due to the twists and turns that come with repeatedly swinging a bat for the first time in two years.
His last hitting experience came when he earned all-state honors in football, basketball and baseball at Crescent Valley High School. He was named Class 5A baseball player of the year as a senior but his natural athleticism and versatility made football his clearest path to a college scholarship.
Yet by the time he decided to end his football career this August, Sanders found himself rudderless on the gridiron. After a series of position switches, he started last fall camp battling for time at tight end before the new coaching staff broached him about a potential move to linebacker.
It was during a meeting with Gary Andersen to follow up on the position change discussion that Sanders said he realized he lost his passion for the game.
“I feel like I didn’t really have a spot that I was going to excel at,” Sanders said. “I felt that I was young enough still, and okay at other things in high school to still give them a shot.”
Given his previous multi-sport success, Sanders had options. In addition to his role as a scout team receiver last season, he walked on to the basketball team that was short on bodies after Craig Robinson’s firing. He played 21 games and provided much needed depth in practice.
However, this year’s basketball team already had a full array of scholarship players and a healthy assortment of walk-ons when Sanders left football. The numbers crunch left him without a spot.
So Sanders turned to Pat Casey, the head baseball coach and family friend who joked last year about finding him a spot on the baseball roster.
Now that the baseball tryout is actually here, it is a curiosity even to Casey as to whether Sanders can make the transition. The coach, who is entering his 22nd year leading the Beavers, has seen football players try out for his team in the past. But never, to his recollection, has an athlete dropped his scholarship sport entirely in favor of giving it a go on the diamond.
“It’s as big an unknown to me as it probably is to him,” Casey said.
• • •
After Tyler Graham caught the final out of the 2006 College World Series in center field, he said he gave the ball to a 10-year-old batboy as the celebration ensued.
That batboy was Tanner Sanders.
During the run-up to the Beavers’ first national title, a young Sanders scurried around the dugout to help the team in any way he could. Nine years later, after full days of workouts, it is Graham who peddles advice to Sanders.
The sophomore’s days start with a 7 a.m. team workout. After a meal, he’s back on the field for another three hours. That is followed by lunch and then another two to three hours of work at Goss Stadium.
In the evening, he and a group of players have returned to the batting cage in left field to work with Graham, now an undergraduate assistant. Sanders has worked extensively with Graham to make strides in the area that presents his biggest challenge to making the roster: hitting elite college pitching.
Sanders rarely saw opposing pitchers break 90 miles per hour while at Crescent Valley. Over the summer, the Pac-12 had 29 pitchers selected in the MLB draft. It would be a prodigious transition for any newcomer, let alone one away from the sport for more than a year.
Graham said he makes sure to highlight everything Sanders does well on good swings, from lower body position to bat path to hand placement. Sanders admitted that he had a long way to go, yet Graham praised the newcomer’s power to the opposite field.
“He’s a quick learner,” Graham said. “He’s obviously having a lot of things thrown at him right now.”
Sanders is also learning to bunt. He said he never attempted one in high school, but it is an essential tool to make Casey’s roster. The former high school player of the year must quickly learn to execute all phases of the game in order to find a spot amid a squad stacked with top prospects who committed their youths to the sport year-round.
“At first it was a little bit nerve-racking,” Sanders said. “It’s really pushed me to elevate to that level or else I’m going to get exposed pretty quickly.”
Positions are still fluid at this point of the year, but it appears Sanders’ best shot at making the roster will come at first base. Casey said he will be able to work with the team for the remainder of the fall and into winter workouts.
“I’ll find out how it goes from there,” Casey said. “It’ll be interesting to find out what kind of adjustments he can make.”
Sanders has said he wants sports to be part of his college life no matter what. If he can’t make up enough ground on the baseball field, that desire could end up taking him away from the place he has called home for 20 years.
Until that day comes, he’ll continue working toward the landing spot at Oregon State that has eluded him, and delivering a storybook finish to the tale that has already seen an abundance of plot twists.
— Danny Moran
