Klapak changes mindset, and self, to chase another dream

May 16—Pretty much everything about that night rated as forgettable.

A toasty, 80-degree afternoon had given way to an evening chill, as it typically does in early June in Green Bay, Wisconsin. A perfect night for baseball, except the baseball ranked far from perfect for the Wisconsin Woodchucks. Their Northwoods League rival, the Green Bay Booyah, built a 9-0 lead heading into the bottom of the eighth, a college summer league drubbing that forced Woodchucks manager Ronnie Richardson to scour the bench looking for a position player to take the mound in the bottom of the eighth inning, to save his weary pitching staff some tosses.

Zach Klapak raised his hand. The Woodchucks catcher out of the University of Pittsburgh told his coaches he used to throw a bit during his days back in the Lackawanna Baseball League for Delaware Valley. Could bring an 83 mph fastball, he remembered, and spin a curve, too, if they needed it.

Bottom line is, he thought more than anything that it might be fun to pitch an inning. He never figured it would change his life.

Yet, everything did change that June 7, 2019, night. What happened in the bottom of the eighth with Klapak on the hill is part of the reason he'd head out of Pittsburgh not too long after, a major motivation for his recent run at Lackawanna College, and the impetus for a future in baseball that seems quite a bit brighter now than it did when he was a catcher looking to forge a college career.

It's not that he retired all three Booyah batters in that inning, striking out one. It's that he could barely believe the radar gun.

"It turns out, I was 90, 92, and I hadn't pitched in three years," Klapak said, still marveling a bit at the reality of it all. "And there was command. And the breaking ball was there..."

When Lackawanna opened the 2021 NJCAA Region XIX baseball championship tournament at Scranton High School on Friday morning, it was the former Pitt catcher on the mound, stifling fourth-seeded Sussex. Pumping 91 mph fastballs past Skylanders hitters. Dropping breaking balls to finish them off. Working backward. Being aggressive. Looking every bit like the more polished pitcher he hoped he'd become during his time in his second collegiate program.

He allowed just one groundball single in a five-inning triumph, enabling the potent Falcons offense to easily outdistance Sussex, 11-1, in five innings. He walked one, struck out five and got his most aggressive after the Falcons grabbed a big lead.

It was an outing impressive in its simplicity, 90 minutes worth of evidence as to why he went from a highly regarded high school catching prospect to a pitcher promising enough to get a second chance to play Division I baseball next season at the University of Delaware.

"He had enough talent to get to an ACC school swinging a bat," Lackawanna coach Mike McCarry said. "But he had the self-awareness to think, 'I don't know if my body can do that at that level for 70 games a year in professional baseball, but I do have this special skill of my arm. And I'm willing to kind of give up what got me to the highest level to chase something else.'

"He really has dedicated the last 14 months to changing his body from a catcher to a pitcher in a lot of ways."

Let it be clear, the last thing Klapak figured he'd learn about himself that night in Green Bay is that he had 90 mph heat. But Pitt wanted him to stay at catcher, and when he transferred back to Lackawanna in the spring of 2020, he spent his early time with the Falcons as a catcher.

There were a few things still circulating in his mind after that fateful inning the summer before. What if he focused on pitching? What if he could fine-tune his mechanics? Was there something more there?

Eventually, he gave up catching altogether. He worked out like a pitcher. When he sought a chance to play in the Baseball U Collegiate Summer League last year, he was one of the top picks in the league's draft, as a pitcher. And in his first full season as a pitcher for the Falcons in 2021, he went 5-4 and struck out 79 batters, allowing just 46 hits in 52 innings.

And what's scary is, he's still learning.

He has learned the two-seam fastball he worked on is more effective than the four-seamer he used early on. He'll bring it at 91-92 mph now and he has touched 96, when it was 89-90 mph last year in the summer league.

His curveball has become a knee-buckler; He has tried to make that and his change-up more refined offerings, and he knows he'll be working on that well into his time at Delaware. He'd like to work on a cutter there, as well.

That's what college baseball is about, especially at Lackawanna. It's finding unrefined talent, molding it, and seeing how it plays. And in his pursuit of refining that raw talent, Zach Klapak just had to give up something that was maybe a little bit more certain, if a little less dynamic.

He gave up what he always knew, to go after what he felt that night in Green Bay.

"It was always like, 'If I learn some new things, I wonder what I could do,'" he said.

Now, it's fair to wonder what he can't do.

DONNIE COLLINS is a sports columnist for The Times-Tribune. Contact him at dcollins@timesshamrock.com and follow him on Twitter @DonnieCollinsTT.