Air Force pitcher Paul Skenes throws during an NCAA baseball game Friday, March 4, 2022, in Colorado Springs, Colo. (KeynoteUSA Photo/Matt Dirksen).
Don’t go crazy, Livvy Dunne. Apologies, swamp moms. Paul Skenes may have an LSU girlfriend and an LSU baseball card. Deep down, he’s still a Zoomie at heart.
“Anything I can do, or any of us can do, to bring attention to the Air Force Academy is good,” said Skenes, the Pittsburgh Pirates pitching phenom and former AFA baseball star. , to a circle full of reporters earlier this weekend at Coors Field. , where he was supposed to pitch against the Rockies, but he won’t.
“Especially because of how much it affected me. But I owe them a lot.
“So I want to keep it up as long as possible because the hard part is, for me, I get labeled as ‘The LSU Guy,’ because they obviously took me out of there. But I’m as much an Air Force guy as I am an LSU guy.”
Skenes found out last week that his scheduled spot in the rotation, Father’s Day at Coors Field, about 90 minutes (if there’s traffic) from the Academy, would be moved from Sunday to Monday.
So on Friday morning he returned to his old AFA haunts. He took some Bucs teammates with him, including rotation mate Jared Jones, to see the old stomping grounds. They met with AFA baseball coach Mike Kazlausky. They saw his cousin, who is now a glider instructor at the Academy. (Jones tested the virtual reality glider and landed successfully, Coach Kaz told me.) They walked around the Terrazzo. Mitchell Hall. The War Memorial.
It was like dancing with long lost love. As cameras surrounded Skenes, who has a 3-0 record, a 2.43 ERA, drawing comparisons to Justin Verlander, Max Scherzer and Stephen Strasburg along the way, the 6-foot-6 man-mountain with the right arm type rocket almost got confused. -Watching while he talked about his days in Colorado Springs. And what could have been.
“Definitely, as soon as you drove up there, some memories came up,” said Skenes, who played at Air Force as a freshman and sophomore (’21 and ’22) before transferring to LSU, the way station to becoming the number one pick in the 2023 MLB Draft.
“However, it’s cool to come back now as a major leaguer and think, ‘Wow, this is where it all started for me.’ Yeah, I was thinking about how I could have graduated there.’”
He might have, if Washington’s forwards could ever find a consistent strike zone when it comes to service academies and professional sports. Last fall, the national defense bill that ultimately passed a divided Congress included a provision that said any “agreement by a cadet or midshipman to play professional sports constitutes a breach of service obligation.” In layman’s terms, that translates to two years of active duty, at a minimum, before the clock on a potential athletic career begins. Although the whole two-year-service-first thing has changed back and forth at least half a dozen times (required, then not required, then required again) over the last eight years or so.
Knowing a third year could be a disaster, Kazlausky planned ahead. After Skenes hit .410, posted a 1.183 OPS and recorded 11 saves as a first-year catcher-closer with the Falcons, Coach Kaz pleaded with then-AFA superintendent Richard Clark to postpone his required service time. .
“I said, General Clark, this is the David Robinson of the Air Force,” Kazlausky recalled. “’This is the best athlete to ever come through our school… And unfortunately, the answer was going to be, ‘No.’”
Skenes, whose uncles served in the Coast Guard and Navy, never wanted to flee the Wild Blue Yonder. Coach Kaz told him to be smart on this one. Not his heart.
“He’s an old soul,” Kazlausky said. “You have been put on God’s green earth to make a difference. And I’m not just talking about baseball.”
The big right-hander ended up with the Tigers, where he won the Dick Howser Award, was named College World Series Most Outstanding Player and earned a $9.2 million signing bonus from Pittsburgh, the largest in draft history. the MLB.
“It shows you what kind of coach Coach Kaz is, to encourage him to continue that journey and that experience,” Aerik Joe, his former AFA roommate, told me over the phone from Japan on Saturday. “Besides what he says about Paul.”
Skenes’ stories are now the stuff of legend. When the great Paul saw a Mountain West women’s soccer player kneeling during the national anthem, he reportedly ran to the baseball locker room, grabbed the Stars & Stripes and carried it out onto the field, waving it proudly during the game.
In 2021, after an attack in Afghanistan claimed the lives of 13 US service members, at 4:45 p.m. the national anthem was played and the flag was lowered. Skenes and his baseball teammates stood at attention. Meanwhile, at the top of a nearby hill, Skenes could see two football coaches in a video booth hunched slightly, distracted, eyes averted from the flag. When the anthem ended, Skene walked up and reprimanded the managers for slacking off.
“The boy is an American patriot,” said Ryan Rutter, Skenes’ commanding officer at the time. “I don’t know any other way to say it. From a very young age, he showed that his colors were red, white and blue.”
Things came so easily to the young Skenes, even in one of the most rigorous college environments in the country, that Rutter once asked the future No. 1 pick if he had any weaknesses that bothered him. This is coming from a guy who hit .367 in the Air Force and hit leadoff while throwing above 90 degrees.
“I’m not that fast,” Skenes replied. “I wish it was faster.”
Rutter still laughs about it.
“Paul was ready to be a second lieutenant when he showed up here,” Rutter recalled. “He was ready to be an Air Force officer.”
Former AFA classmates sent him photos from their graduation last month. His mother still talks to her parents. First he’s a patriot, but shooting pays the bills.
“A big part of me wishes I could graduate there and do what I’m doing now,” Skenes said. “But that’s not very compatible in many ways. But (I) got the best of both worlds.”
Do you want more sports news? Sign up for Sports Omelette to receive all of our analysis on Denver teams.
Keynote USA
For the Latest Local News, Follow Keynote USA Local on Twitter.