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Fabulous foursome
By BRANT JAMES
© St. Petersburg Times, A.J. Pierzynski isn't exactly a household name. As a platoon catcher for the Minnesota Twins, the one-time Brooksville resident can mingle almost anywhere with anonymity. Except, maybe, in Brooksville. Or Seattle. "We were in Seattle and I got a note from a girl that went to Hernando High with me who lived there," Pierzynski said. "I don't even know who she was. She wrote me a note that said, 'From Brooksville to the big leagues. Congratulations, Class of '92, Hernando High.' "Kind of really strange," Pierzynski said. "Hernando's not really a big school and I was only there my freshman year. I wasn't expecting that in Seattle, the farthest place on the map." Pierzynski's time in Brooksville was brief. His family moved there from New York via Orlando when he was 9 and left when his parents, both BellSouth employees, were transferred to Clermont. But his stay was intriguing. Before 1998, only one man with Brooksville roots -- Mike Walker -- ever played in the major leagues. Maybe two if you count Crystal River's Mike Hampton, who was born in Brooksville. But last summer, four ex-Hernando Dixie League All-Stars from the late 1980s started arriving in the majors. Pierzynski got a brief call-up with the Twins. Pitcher Bronson Arroyo was next and made his big-league debut with the Pittsburgh Pirates. Relief pitcher Brent Stentz, the 1998 Rolaids Minor League Fireman of the Year, spent parts of the past two seasons in Triple A with Minnesota before an arm injury ended his year, and Bert Snow started the season in Triple A with the Oakland A's before he underwent season-ending elbow surgery. Pierzynski, Arroyo and Snow, all 24, played together on several all-star teams because of their proximity in age. Stentz and Landon Hessler, who pitches in the independent Texas-Louisiana League, were a rung ahead. The fact that former youth all-star teammates from the same small town play at the same time in the major leagues is hard to fathom -- even for the players themselves. "Me and my dad (Gus Arroyo, who coached several of those teams) talk about that at least once every offseason," Arroyo said. "Think how small a town Brooksville is. We really haven't had that many come out of there in sports in general. To have four guys pretty much the same age play Little League, Pony League and high school together is pretty unbelievable." Pierzynski said it's a story he has been compelled to share. "It's pretty unbelievable," he said. "I tell people that story, that that many guys from a little town like that made it or are close to making it, and it's hard to believe because it takes a lot of schools a lot of time to have as much success as we've had." Pierzynski said he calls Snow once a month to check on his rehabilitation, and Pierzynski shares the same agent, Tony Giordano, with Arroyo. He and Arroyo got to reminisce in person during an interleague series in June when their teams played at the Metrodome. "I try to keep in touch with those guys as much as possible," Pierzynski said. "It's kind of hard in this business, sometimes, though." With so many future pros on those teams, how did they ever lose? Well, they didn't often. Pierzynski, Arroyo and Snow's squad won the Dixie district title as 10-year-olds in 1987 and went to the state tournament three consecutive years (to the finals as 12-year-olds). At 14, Arroyo moved briefly to Pensacola and was a member of that city's national runner-up team. As good as those future major-leaguers must have been, they weren't the only stars on their clubs. "At that age, the two people that stuck out most were Hessler and Eddie Prather," Arroyo said. "Prather was so big. He was 12 -- yeah, he was really 12 -- and 6-foot, 240 (pounds)," Arroyo said. "He was just a monster. He and Landon threw (hard). We were scared hitting against them." Prather played baseball with Arroyo at Hernando, went to college for a year, then got a job driving trucks. "I'm not surprised about (Arroyo and Pierzynski)," said Prather's father, Edgar II. "I always figured Eddie would make it too, but he went in a different direction." Eddie Prather is the supervisor of a medical supplies delivery company in Jacksonville -- with memories, he said, and a few regrets. "You always have reservations ... maybe what you should or could have done," Prather said. "But that was a long time ago." Yet they remember, with clarity and a smile. "I remember Brent was on Brooksville Concrete, I was on SunBank, A.J. was on Rotary and Bert was ... Springstead Oil," Arroyo said. "I remember that like it was yesterday. I was pretty serious about my baseball." And he wasn't alone.
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