A .158 batting average at a dinky JC-with the icing on top of a broken hand at the end of the season-would’ve been enough for many baseball kids to quit

For Park though, it was the beginning

The truth is every moment of adversity there is a simultaneous seed planted for the virtue of its matching

In this case it was his broken hand, as it forced him to take a gap year

And in that gap is when everything changed

Park asked that in his gap as he rehabbed and trained around his hand, if he could also do a throwing program; I told him I’d write one for him, but I also told him that there was a lot of ideas I had been having that were very outside the box and considering he wasn’t even a pitcher, he’d be the guinea pig for them.

He said he was excited to try it, and he went all in

The results were fast: 8mph in 2 months-but that still left him only 84-85, a D3 pitcher

But he kept climbing throughout his gap year and hit his first 90’s going into summer ball, where he dominated and committed D1

After a summer this past year of further Guinea pigging progress, he’s now in his second D1 season and hit 94 in his first fall ball outing

All at 5’6”

What does the future hold? The realities of baseball is organizations when drafting/signing are very height focused for a reason: only 6 pitchers under 6 foot have made an MLB start in the 21st century.

So the next step will be hard; but nothing different than what Park has already experienced

“If you’re going to do something good in life, it’s going to take a big effort

If you’re going to do something great, it’s going to take the BIGGEST EFFORT OF YOUR LIFE”

-Fenske