Playing with Purpose by Mike Yorkey

Author:Mike Yorkey [YORKEY, MIKE]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-60742-822-0
Publisher: Barbour Publishing, Inc.
Published: 2012-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

7

STEPHEN DREW:

GOOD THINGS COME IN THREES

Countless boys across America dream of being major league stars one day. But not many actually feel pressure to become one.

Welcome to Stephen Drew’s world.

When you’re a prep star whose two older two brothers were both drafted in the first round, pressure to reach The Show is inevitable. Stephen, the Arizona Diamondbacks’ shortstop, was fourteen years old when Cleveland selected his middle brother, Tim, out of high school with the twenty-eighth overall pick in 1997. One year later, St. Louis chose Stephen’s older brother, J.D., out of Florida State at No. 5.

“I always got compared,” Stephen said.

Stephen was born on March 16, 1983—four-and-a-half years behind Tim and seven-and-a-half years behind J.D.—in Hahira, Georgia, a nondescript nook off I-75 near the Florida border. Never heard of it? Well, scan the map for neighboring towns like Adel, Barney, and Cecil, and you can’t miss it. Honest.

With a population of roughly sixteen hundred during Stephen’s youth, Hahira had one stoplight, a Main Street, and an old-time city hall. It’s the type of place where the town barber knows your name, honeybee festivals draw a big crowd, and the collective twang in conversations sounds like competing steel guitars.

“It’s growing a little,” Stephen said in his sleepy Southern drawl. “Now we’ve got some eating restaurants—you know, the kind of little hole-in-the-wall places.”

Like most brotherly trios, the Drew boys were a rough- and-tumble bunch. Sports and skinned knees ruled the days. The boys enjoyed baseball, basketball, football, hunting, and fishing. As long as the activity was outdoors, it made the cut.

But baseball was king. J.D., the quiet brother, a 6-foot, 1-inch lefty, was a power-hitting monster who became a two-time consensus All-American and the national Player of the Year in 1997 at Florida State University. Tim, the outspoken one, was a 6-foot, 1-inch righty with a blazing fastball who landed a professional contract without stepping foot in college.

As baseball mentors go, Stephen couldn’t have asked for much more.

“Tim could throw the fire out of a ball,” said Stephen, whose personality is a mixture of his brothers. “He was always a pitcher. It helped us out. He always threw harder than what I could hit. [J.D.] is the one who taught me to hit left-handed.”

Stephen followed J.D. to Florida State, where he starred for three years after turning down a $1 million offer from Pittsburgh out of high school. He earned Baseball America’s college Freshman of the Year award in 2002 and Collegiate Baseball’s second-team All-America honors in 2004. When Arizona tookhim fifteenth overall in 2004, the Drews became the first sibling trio in major league history to be drafted in the first round.

“[Stephen] saw all that with us and continued to work hard,” Tim said. “For him, he was never awestruck by anything because he’s like, ‘All right, I belong.’ That’s a God thing. God prepared him for something special.”

God had been preparing Stephen’s heart for a long time. His parents, David and Libby, raised their sons at Bethany Baptist Church, a dirt-road mile from the Drews’ five-acre property.

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