Joey DeNato shouldn’t be here

Joey DeNato was having the game of his life.

On June 15, 2013, IU was playing Louisville in IU’s first ever College World Series. Through seven innings, DeNato had given up no runs and IU led 2-0.

Now it was the bullpen’s turn. That’s what everybody thought, except DeNato and IU Coach Tracy Smith.

Matt Chess was DeNato’s high school coach at Torrey Pines High School in San Diego. When DeNato texted him that he was starting against Louisville a few days prior, Chess wanted no distractions. He drove two hours north to Palm Desert and watched the game on ESPN at a friend’s house to get away from everything.

Upon the conclusion of the seventh, Chess said “‘Atta boy,” and switched the television to Game 2 of the Stanley Cup Finals. DeNato, he thought, was done.

Joey’s mother, Amy DeNato, also thought her son was done. Amy is always a nervous wreck when her son pitches. When she and her husband, Steve DeNato, listen to Joey’s games on the radio — they still live in California, so they only see about half of Joey’s games in person — she has to leave the room because of nerves. She makes Steve tell her what happened afterward.

One time when Joey pitched in high school, Amy was taking pictures but she had to stop. Her hands were shaking too badly to hold the camera.

When she sees her son pitch in person the nerves are worse, she said. That’s why she made herself the team’s “unofficial” photographer. The distraction helps calm her nerves.

But she had never seen her son pitch in this type of atmosphere. Thousands of people in the stands all had their eyes on her and Steve’s only child. At the end of the seventh inning, she kept looking over to the bullpen to see who Smith had warming up to replace her son.

It was empty.

Nobody was coming to relieve Joey. This was his game.

“I just wanted him to be done pitching,” Amy said with a laugh, recalling the nerves.
Despite throwing 115 pitches through seven innings, in the bottom of the eighth Joey trotted back out to the mound.

DeNato didn’t even talk to Smith before the inning. In fact, the two never spoke the whole game. “I was just going in and out of the dugout,” he said.

He wasn’t supposed to be out there. He had thrown too many pitches.

But nothing about DeNato’s journey to that mound was conventional. DeNato wasn’t supposed to be the winningest pitcher in San Diego high school history. DeNato wasn’t supposed to be an ace pitcher in Division I baseball. The pitcher who lacked elite size and velocity on his fastball was overlooked by California colleges. He was overlooked by the MLB, which didn’t draft him last year despite his 10-2 record.

For more reasons than his pitch count, Joey DeNato wasn’t supposed to be on that mound in the eighth inning in the College World Series.

***

When DeNato came to Torrey Pines High School as a freshman, he was among a group of seniors.

The first thing Chess thought when he saw DeNato was, “He’s a little guy.”

DeNato is listed at 5-foot-10 and 175 pounds on the IU roster. But he was significantly skinner when he was 14.

Chess had heard good things about DeNato, and his plan was to start him on junior varsity each week and then pitch relief for varsity.

“We already had three solid starters,” Chess said.

But DeNato kept getting better. After the game when everybody was leaving, he would run the stairs of the stadium and do his crazy workout, Chess said.

Chess said he had to give DeNato a chance on varsity.

It was the playoffs. Torrey Pines was playing Poway High School in the semifinal game. Poway beat Torrey Pines the previous season, ending Torrey Pines’ year. The staff ace had already pitched, so Chess couldn’t pitch him again against Poway.

Chess had a choice: go with his No. 2 starter Jerrud Sabourin — who went on to play at IU — or his No. 3 starter Kevin Vance — who is now in the Chicago White Sox farm system — or freshman Joey DeNato.

He went with the little guy.

When Chess asked DeNato if he wanted to pitch, DeNato was too nervous to even speak. DeNato had only started one game earlier that year.

But Poway had trouble hitting against DeNato. So to distract Poway, Torrey Pines used Vance, the No. 3 starter, as a decoy in the bullpen before the game began.

When DeNato started, it was a surprise to everyone. Chess had made a deal with the frightened DeNato.

“I said, ‘Just get me around the lineup one time. Just get me around the lineup one time and I’ll put Jared or Kevin in,’” Chess said.

DeNato ended up throwing a complete game. Torrey Pines won 6-2.

***

Even though DeNato had cemented himself as one of the premier pitchers in Southern California, he wasn’t getting interest from local schools.

“Out west,” Amy DeNato said, “They like those players that are over 6-feet and throw about 100 miles an hour,”

DeNato, standing at 5-foot-10, has a fastball around 85-89 miles an hour. He wasn’t a flamethrower but rather a craftsman, Chess said.

But the craftsman had no offers that interested him until IU. Hoosier Coach Tracy Smith went to see DeNato pitch in person. IU and the DeNato family were in talks about how big a scholarship Joey would get and Smith told Joey if he wanted more scholarship money, he needed to strike out more people.

“And then he goes out and punches out 14 guys,” Smith said.

To Smith, it showed the competitive nature that Joey possessed.

“It was pretty much the best game that Joey pitched that I saw,” Chess said. “Other then the game last year against Louisville.”

Then it was Joey’s turn to visit Smith and his program. Steve DeNato and his son decided to visit IU in January. Steve remembers it being bitter cold.

“I played devil’s advocate and said, ‘Well Joe, you know its cold back there,’” Steve said. “He’s been in Michigan for a weekend. So he’s been cold for two days and then came back to California.”

The two stayed at the Biddle Hotel. The next morning Steve made his son get out of the car and scrape the ice off the windshield. He wanted to make sure this was what his son wanted.

“He never blinked,” Steve said.

***

DeNato went 7-3 in both his freshman and sophomore year at IU. He had a 2.80 and 3.22 ERA each years, respectively.

But his junior year, the ace broke out. He finished 10-2 with a 2.52 ERA. DeNato finished with more than double the amount of strikeouts than walks given up.

Smith gave DeNato the nod against Louisville in the College World Series. DeNato had given IU seven strong innings and then everybody thought DeNato’s 115-pitch performance would go down as a gem in Hoosier lore.

But it was more then a gem. DeNato went through the eighth inning unscathed.
Chess had flipped the channel back to the IU-Louisville game to check the score. He was shocked to see DeNato still pitching.

“I was like, ‘What is this? Is this replay? What’s going on?’” Chess said.

Once again, to everybody’s amazement, DeNato trotted back out to the mound in the bottom of the ninth inning. He had to finish the masterpiece he had spent eight innings crafting.

Six pitches later, DeNato, the guy nobody thought would amount to much of anything, finished the complete-game shutout in the College World Series. His final line: 9 innings pitched, 4 hits, 0 runs, 3 walks and 8 strikeouts on 136 pitches.

His mom was just glad it was over. “I can’t even describe how I felt,” Amy said.

His father, watching from the stands, felt relief as IU right fielder Will Nolden caught the fly ball to end the game.

“I can’t imagine that experience ever being matched,” he said. “I know it’s imprinted on his life forever. And I know it’s the same for Amy and I also.”

When the team bus arrived at the hotel, Hoosier players filed into the lobby like a parade, Joey said. Amy and Steve stood waiting to meet their son who had overcome all the doubt to shine on the biggest stage in IU baseball’s 118-year history.

They were at a loss for words.

“What do you say, ‘nice game?’” Steve said. “It seems like anything you could say would be an understatement.”

They don’t remember the exact conversation. They just remember being with their son.
“When I talk about it, I start getting choked up,” Amy said. “It was one of the most amazing moments in our life.”

***

DeNato saw three of his teammates selected in the MLB Draft last year. Not him, though.

“He’s probably not the sexiest guy from the professional perspective,” Smith said. He always jokes with DeNato and calls him everything from 5-foot-9 to 5-foot-5. “But the guy just wins. I look for him to get his chance professionally.”

Chess said he wouldn’t be surprised to see DeNato make it big-time.

“An organization that wants to win would have a kid like that on their team,” he said.
By the time DeNato graduates, he could be the most decorated pitcher in IU history.
 So far in his senior season DeNato is 3-0 with a 0.47 ERA in 19 innings pitched. IU is 3-0 in games he starts and 1-4 when he doesn’t.

“Joey’s been phenomenal,” his catcher Kyle Schwarber said. “Joey’s Joey. I’ve said it for three years now, Joey’s gonna be Joey.”

In his last outing he faced a familiar foe: Louisville. He went 7 innings, gave up 5 hits and 0 earned runs. This time he only threw 97 pitches en route to a 6-2 IU win.

Even though Joey wasn’t pitching, when the Cardinals tallied a run in the ninth to make it a four-run game, Amy was a ball of nerves.

Steve took a picture on his cell phone of Amy on the floor with her hands over her head. He sent it to Joey after the game.

“She was basically in the fetal position,” Joey said. “It was pretty funny.”

The MLB draft falls on June 5, 6 and 7 this year. DeNato will wait, and hope, for his name to be called.

“He’s really a once-in-a-lifetime kind of athlete,” Chess said. “I’ve never had another kid like Joe.”