Exclusive: Terry Rooney breaks down decision to come to South Carolina
By this point in his life, Justin Verlander has already accomplished so much. He’s the MLB active wins leader, he’s approaching 3,400 career strikeouts, he’s the recipient of an MVP, Triple Crown and Cy Young award in the same season (2011). He also owns a pair of World Series rings. Heck, he’s even married to Kate Upton. When it’s all set and done, there will be a spot waiting for him in Cooperstown someday.
But there was a time where he didn’t have all these accolades and not everyone knew his name. Back in the day, he was just a kid from right outside of Richmond, Virginia trying to make a name for himself as a right-handed pitcher.
It just so happened that Terry Rooney, who’s now the pitching coach/recruiting coordinator at South Carolina, stumbled upon Verlander when he was a junior at Goochland High School. At the time, Rooney was a young assistant at Old Dominion. And he was on the recruiting trail at a tournament where Verlander was pitching.
“They always throw the younger kids at the end of the weekend on Sunday afternoon cause nobody’s really recruiting them,” Rooney told GamecockCentral. “I was at Old Dominion, I was there and I saw this big 6-foot-3 guy jogging in. He was like 86-88, 89 miles an hour, which is decent back then. So all you had to do was circle his name and send him a questionnaire, that was it.”
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Roughly two weeks later, Rooney saw Verlander throw again, this time at the University of Richmond. He said to himself, “Jeez, this is that Verlander kid again.” And it was much of the same as what he’d seen before. Upper 80’s on his fastball but nothing more.
Fast forward to the spring, Rooney was going around to see potential recruits pitch in tournament/showcase games around the DMV area. But heavy rain caused postponed many of the games as he explained. Then he thought to himself, “Where’s Verlander pitching?”
“I find out it’s not raining and he lives right outside of Richmond. And I realize he’s pitching, everywhere else is rained out, so okay, let’s do it. I call the coach, I go to see the coach. He says we’re playing. I go to see him pitch,” Rooney said.
On that day, Verlander was up to 90 miles per hour on the radar gun. Rooney got in touch with him afterwards and was able to secure a visit for him to come check out ODU. He knew if he wanted to get him on campus, he’d have to get him to commit early.
“There was a big, huge, it’s called the Commonwealth Games they had in Virginia, it’s like an all-star game. And that’s where you find out about everybody,” Rooney said. “I said, ‘Man, I better get this kid committed right around this time or else it’s not going to happen.’ So Justin committed to us that summer and obviously ended up being great. Shows you the type of guy he is, shows the type of family he is.”
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Verlander eventually committed to ODU, which became a game changer heading into his senior year. And at that time, he was now starting to get more looks from bigger schools, even the pro scouts were checking him out. Then came a twist in the story as Rooney likes to call it.
“In his senior year, all of the scouts, cause now he’s a guy throwing a little bit harder — 90-92, 6-foot-3, 6-foot-4. A lot of the scouts came to see him pitch and he was sick. He wasn’t feeling good. I think he had strep throat, so the velocity was down for a few outings. Didn’t even get drafted out of high school,” Rooney recalled.
“Goes to Old Dominion, and he’s healthy and feeling good. Here we go, here comes the velocity, here comes the stuff, he’s back. And the rest is history.”
Verlander went on to have a solid stint at ODU where he went 21-18 with a 2.58 ERA over three seasons. He threw 17 complete games, five of which were shutouts, with 427 strikeouts to 129 walks.
The Detroit Tigers drafted him with the second overall pick in the 2004 MLB Draft. He’d go on to put together what will certainly be a Hall of Fame career.
Rooney admitted a lot of luck came with landing Verlander out of high school. He had no idea what type of pitcher he would eventually become at first. But as he enters his first year at South Carolina, there’s no doubt he knows how to recruit talent. And landing one of the greatest pitchers in baseball history should indicate that.
“I knew at that time at Old Dominion, our only shot at getting this dude was to get him early. And he stuck with it,” Rooney said. “So I never knew what he was going to be what he is but I know what you see is what you get with him. Even when he was in high school, it was the same. Tremendous family, tremendous guy and deserves all his success.”
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June 14, 2024 at 02:00PM
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