W. MECK'S TRACY SCORES A BIG HIT WITH D'BACKS

Paper: Charlotte Observer, The (NC)
Title: W. MECK'S TRACY SCORES A BIG HIT WITH D'BACKS - YEARS OF SWINGING IN BACK
YARD PAY OFF WITH QUICK START IN MAJORS
Author: STAN OLSON, STAFF WRITER
Date: May 16, 2004
Section: SPORTS
Page: 1C

Chad Tracy's first major league at-bat, a nervous ninth-inning pinch-hit appearance in Milwaukee, resulted in a strikeout.

"I felt like I was swinging in water," he said.Tracy, though, has hardly missed a pitch since.

A former West Mecklenburg High star, he has made a home for himself in the Arizona Diamondbacks' lineup since that April 21 debut. Playing regularly at third base, Tracy was hitting .317 with nine extra-base hits and 13 RBIs through Friday. In 82 at-bats, he had struck out just eight times.

But then, Chad Austin Tracy could always hit.

That first at-bat followed an almost-sleepless night spent primarily in a Chicago airport, as Tracy joined Arizona in Milwaukee after being called up from Class AAA Tucson, where he had been hitting .400.

"I was just in kind of a daze," he said Friday. "I had flown in on the red-eye from Portland and then had a flight canceled."

The following night Tracy, rested and more relaxed, made his first start. He had four hits.

Tracy, a 6-foot-2, 200-pound Charlottean who turns 24 Saturday, almost seemed to have been born to hit. He grew up in the Oakdale community, and was 4 the first time stepfather Roger Wilson saw him swing a bat.

"He had a beautiful little swing then," Wilson said. "We had a 5- to 7-year-old coach-pitch league, and at 4, he was the best player on the team."

It had started before that, when Tracy was a toddler with his grandmother watching him while his mother worked. His grandmother couldn't chase the balls he would hit, so the kid would chase them, bring them back to her to toss and hit again.

Tracy grew up loving sports. He was quarterback on his junior high football team and a point guard in basketball. In high school, he decided to concentrate on baseball.

"He hit .422 as a freshman," Wilson said.

It was obvious Tracy had talent, but what wasn't as visible was the work he put in to develop his skills. Wilson built a batting cage in the back yard when his stepson was a sophomore.

"You know how some dads or coaches would make their kids take extra practice after the kids had a bad game?" Wilson said, chuckling. "Chad would make me stay out there and pitch to him before I could eat my supper."

If you wanted to find Tracy - winter or summer - your best bet was to walk out in that back yard, beyond the patio and beside the pines and gum trees. Toward the 70-foot-long batting cage and its pitching machine.

"We loved to sit on the balcony and listen to the `ping' of that bat hitting the ball," said Thelma Wilson, Tracy's mom.

"I hit and hit and hit and hit and hit," Tracy said.

He was always hitting, running through the bucket of 40 or so balls Roger Wilson or a high school buddy would feed into the pitching machine perhaps a half-dozen times. Hitting a bucket to the right side, hitting another bucket up the middle. Hitting yet another toward an imaginary left field.

"He practically broke my legs," Wilson said of Tracy's sizzling shots. "One time he hit me on the side of the head, about took my ear off."

Wilson added a protective screen in front of the machine after that.

The machine could be set to throw left-handed curveballs, right-handed curves, cutters, sinkers, whatever. It could be set to throw fastballs at 100 mph. And the machine work would be followed by hitting off a tee and often, soft tosses from Wilson at short range.

"He'd hit 200 or 300 balls just about every day," Wilson said. "A lot of times, he'd hit 'til he got a blister and had to quit."

As Tracy's hands grew tough and calloused, his ribs would tell him to ease up. If he woke up the next morning and couldn't move his mid-section without pain, he knew it was time to cut back.

*

`He'd rather hit than eat'

Joe Evans, now an assistant baseball coach at West Mecklenburg, starting playing ball with Tracy when they were 13.

"When we were playing American Legion ball, we would go to his house and take batting practice before we went to the games, where we had more batting practice," Evans said. "We fed balls to each other all summer."

Often a half-dozen kids would gather at the batting cage, giving Wilson a break. But vacations, trips and other obligations would pull them away, leaving Tracy and Wilson to work together.

"We didn't go to Disney World or things like that because he was always playing ball," Wilson said. "He would always rather play ball. He'd rather hit than eat."

Tracy's single-mindedness carried over from practice and games into weightlifting sessions and even his diet, said Jim McConnell, his coach at West Mecklenburg.

"His work ethic was unbelievable,"McConnell said. "You've got to have a certain amount of ability to begin with, but he would have blisters from hitting so much."

That translated into a .582 batting average his senior year, a spot on the All-Observer team and - as a shortstop - selection as the MEGA 7 Player of the Year in 1998. Then East Carolina lured him to Greenville.

"During the first few weeks of his freshman year, ECU coach Keith LeClair told me they couldn't find Chad at night," McConnell said. "They thought he was out partying."

Actually, Tracy had met an upperclassman who had a key to the weight room and batting cages.

"I'd sneak out of study hall through the back door and go hit," he said, laughing. "I figured coach couldn't be too mad about that."

*

Quick hands, quick start

In three seasons, Tracy hit .339 and finished in the career top 10 in five ECU offensive categories.

The Diamondbacks picked Tracy in the seventh round of the 2001 amateur draft. That first year brought a combined .331 average in stops at Class A Yakima and South Bend. In 2002, he hit .344 for Class AA El Paso and hovered near .400 until a shoulder injury cooled him off. Last season, he batted .324 for Tucson and was named the organization's Minor League Player of the Year.

Asked about Tracy's consistently high averages, Evans said, "He never seems to take a bad swing. And he has the quickest hands I've ever seen in my life."

Now, after honing those tools through millions of swings, Tracy is using them at the game's highest level.

"Every 15th day when I look at that paycheck, I think it's unreal; I get to get paid for this," he said. "So far it's been everything I imagined."

One thing he isn't concerned about is returning to the minors.

"I'm very confident that I can hit at this level. I haven't been overmatched at all, haven't been made to look stupid. The stress of winning is a little greater, but you still have to take it as a game and have fun. Without having fun, you can't play your best.

"Once you can tame all your surroundings, you should be fine."

A week after his big-league debut, Tracy called home and asked his mother, "Do I look like I belong out there?"

She smiled and said, "Yes honey, you do."

*

A hit on, off field

The batting cage is gone now, passed on to another kid with a dream. Tracy is in the big leagues, eagerly awaiting Tuesday, when 100 or so friends and family will head to Atlanta to watch the Diamondbacks play the Braves.

Meanwhile, every hit solidifies his status. Fans across the country are beginning to notice, snapping him up in fantasy leagues. One Web site is offering an El Paso Diablos batting helmet featuring his autograph for $19.95.

Another is selling his signature alone for $29.

But some people, like Evans, aren't really surprised.

"Ever since he was little, when a teacher or anybody would ask him what he wanted to do when he grew up, Chad would say `Play baseball,' " Evans said. "When they said, `But if you can't do that, what will you do?' He just told them, `But I will do that.'

"`I'm going to play baseball.' "

Author: STAN OLSON, STAFF WRITER
Section: SPORTS
Page: 1C

Copyright (c) 2004 The Charlotte Observer