On Monday morning, Oregon State second baseman Travis Bazzana will become the first Australian-born player selected in the opening round of the Major League Baseball draft.
But when Bazzana’s name is read out by MLB commissioner Rob Manfred, as important a moment as it is, the Sydney native — never one to stop dreaming — has grander plans.
Plans that started, and will end, back home in Australia, because as much as Bazzana is one of the best prospects in this year’s draft class, he is so much more than that.
“He’s a big thinker, a big dreamer, a visionist,” Bazzana’s longtime mentor and former Australian major leaguer Trent Oeltjen puts it.
“And he’s now down a path which no one’s been before”.
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It is a path Bazzana carved himself. A path he was told was not there, especially not for a kid who was told he was too small. Too small for such big dreams.
But Bazzana kept dreaming. Until his dream became a reality and even now, his goal of going in the first round on the verge of being realised, he’s already thinking of what comes next.
Thinking of green and gold and, maybe, standing on top of the podium at Brisbane in 2032 after claiming another slice of Australian sporting history.
“This is super exciting right now,” Oeltjen, who played three seasons for the Arizona Diamondbacks and Los Angeles Dodgers, told foxsports.com.au.
“But he will not slow down right now. He’s got some huge goals that he’s running after.”
Namely, “making Australia a real baseball powerhouse,” as Bazzana put it in an interview with foxsports.com.au last year.
That process starts at the Under-23 Baseball World Cup in China later this year, with Bazzana already starting to organise zoom calls on his own accord with the rest of the team.
“He’s already contacted everybody,” National Player Development Manager at Baseball Australia Andrew Riddell told foxsports.com.au.
“He said, ‘We’re playing at the ‘23 World Cup, let’s get everybody together’.
“He’s the biggest driving force that we have at the moment for baseball in Australia playing and representing your country.”
TRAVIS BAZZANA TWO-PART SERIES
PART ONE: The start of a dream… and critics that fuelled his fire
PART TWO: The ‘rare’ call that helped take Bazzana to another level
Riddell told foxsports.com.au Bazzana could be the “centrepiece” of Australia’s team for the 2032 Olympics, describing him as “the catalyst” for the next generation.
Which is a funny way to talk about a 21-year-old given Bazzana literally has his entire MLB career ahead of him. But it’s not an exaggeration.
In fact, the proof is already there. Ty’Relle Harris, Bazzana’s former Sydney Blue Sox teammate and mentor, has seen it first-hand in the baseball camps he has been involved in.
Harris was helping out last December at camps run by NxtGen Baseball, a performance company founded by former Australian major league pitcher Ryan Rowland-Smith.
“I had 1,000 kids tell me they want to go to Oregon State,” Harris, whose professional baseball career spanned 13 years, told foxsports.com.au.
“They weren’t speaking about the Yankees and the Red Sox.”
It was all about the Beavers, and Stanford too. One of Bazzana’s best friends Jimmy Nati, a Cardinal first baseman and fellow Australian, is also draft eligible, although he is more likely to spend another season at Stanford increasing his stock.
“I heard Jimmy Nati’s name being thrown around by parents…. speed up 10 years from now, you’re going to hear about a lot more first rounders, Australians out of college, and Travis is going to kind of be responsible for that,” Harris said.
Harris recalled kids at the Canberra camp bringing up Bazzana’s name, while others at Castle Hill wanted to take photos of the Oregon State gold chain and helmet he was wearing.
“The biggest thing about Travis is he is going to change how Australian kids see what’s possible,” Harris added.
Aussie star to be No.1 MLB draft pick? | 00:16
He is also going to change the way scouts look at Australian players and, once again, there is proof. Proof to the tune of over $1 million.
MLB team the Oakland Athletics, who will relocate to Las Vegas in the near-future, confirmed on Saturday afternoon that they had signed 17-year-old Max Durrington to a professional contract worth $700,000 — which is $1.04 million AUD.
Riddell said it is inside the top-five highest professional contracts ever signed by an Australian.
“I think it’s a direct correlation because he’s very similar to where Travis was at the same age,” Riddell added.
“He’s a left-handed hitter that can run and is a lead-off type guy. He’s very, very similar to Travis. I think a lot of the clubs in Australia and a lot of the scouts at the moment are seeing how much money they’re going to have to spend on Travis and realise that they could have got him for a lot cheaper out of high school in Australia.
“So they don’t want that to happen again. So now other kids in Australia are getting more money, they’re getting more opportunities, et cetera, because of the Travis Bazzana trickle-down effect.
“Every young kid now in Australia is seeing the development of Travis. They’re seeing a different path. Part of my role is to help get kids into college environments similar to Travis and we’ve seen a real switch and more kids going over, we’ll be up near 200 kids that will be in college in August when the school semester starts.”
MORE TRAVIS BAZZANA COVERAGE
EXPERT VIEW: How three US experts view Bazzana’s stock ahead of the draft
COACH’S FAREWELL: Coach says Bazzana is ‘changing’ Australian baseball
These are examples of the indirect way Bazzana is paving the way for the next generation of Australian baseball talent, proving the only limitations are the ones you put on yourself, as Oeltjen used to tell him.
There was another piece of advice Oeltjen had, one he gave Bazzana when he was just 13 years old which the Sydney native says still has stuck with him to this today.
“I just told him to just always be yourself,” Oeltjen said, which sounds simple. Sounds cliché.
But there is a reason he said it to Bazzana.
A reason Harris had a similar message when the then-15-year-old would so confidently tell him during their time playing for the Blue Sox that he thought he could not just make it to the major league but be a first-rounder.
“He’s so passionate when he plays the game of baseball and I never wanted anyone or for him to feel that he needs to be anything different or anything else or ever change that,” Oeltjen said.
“That’s him. That’s how he plays the game. There’s one speed and it’s in sixth gear and that’s what people love about him.”
Those intangibles, Bazzana’s makeup as it is called over in America, is what has put him in the conversation for the first overall pick in Monday’s draft, along with his obvious bat-to-ball skills.
“He’s obsessed and there’s been something different about him with every team he plays on,” Oeltjen, who has known Bazzana since he was 10 years old and almost sees him as his “little brother”, said.
“When you do big things and you do great things, I think a lot of people try to put you in a box. When you stretch beyond what they think they’re capable of, it makes people uncomfortable.
“It’s the same thing when you’re coming from Australia and say, ‘Hey, I want to be a major leaguer’. Not many people have done that so for a lot of people it’s uncomfortable for them. They say, ‘Be a realist and stay between lines’ and all these different things.”
Bazzana heard all of it, and while it is no longer his primary motivation, it is still a part of his story. A part of who he was and still is. A part of why he is where he is now, set to make Australian sporting history and prove all those people who told him to “be realist” wrong.
“Sometimes when adversity hits, it makes the best player out of you and honestly, that’s how Travis felt,” Harris said.
“The truth is there’s this chip on his shoulder. When you see him play with all that energy and all that passion, yes he loves the game, yes he’s very good at the game, he has tools that some kids don’t possess, but the biggest thing is he wants to prove to people who he is.
“… There were still some people who didn’t believe the level where he set his goals because he set his goal to be this first-rounder, big leaguer and there were still some doubters and people saying, ‘Oh, that’s a little too big for you. I don’t think you can achieve that. Are you sure mate? You think you can really achieve this?’
“That was that extra drive that everyone needs. Travis has that, ‘I want you to prove that I’m capable of capturing my dreams. Yes, I believe it. But I want to show the rest of the world this is who Travis Bazzana is’, and you have to have that if you want to make it.”
Harris has it too and told Bazzana of his story, how he was drafted and signed for just $1,000 and a year-and-a-half later was in AAA and just one more step away from playing in the majors.
“No one really gave me a lot of love… and I got really, really close to making the major league,” he said.
“I played in Australia and I won a championship in Brisbane, I had really good success and lasted 13 years at the professional level playing baseball and I signed for $1,000. That’s a success story in itself, to me.”
It is why he would constantly tell Bazzana that if he thinks he can be a first-rounder, he could do it.
Whatever it is he wanted to do. “You can do anything,” Harris would say, “You just have to put the work in”.
Bazzana did just that. He put in the hours working out in his spare time in what Harris described as “140-degree” heat in the shed at Blacktown International Sportspark, where the Blue Sox played their games.
Even when they were on the road, whether it was in Brisbane or even New Zealand, the two would walk or ride bikes to gyms, paying their way, again just putting the work in.
“It was like, this kid is 16, I’m like 32 in my career and he’s doing things to be like that,” Harris said.
“And I’m thinking, ‘Man, this kid’s already doing things at the professional level and most 16-year-old kids, even in America, they’re not doing this. They’re not taking it to this extent’.
“So right away I’m thinking, ‘This kid’s special’… and if he’s going to push his work ethic like this, there’s really no limit.”
And like Bazzana, Harris also has big dreams.
Dreams of being involved with Team Australia, like American Jim Bennett, who is the pitching coach and an “inspiration” to Harris.
So, one day he hopes to be standing in the green and gold alongside Bazzana, who he took under his wing six years ago and whose story is now prompting Harris to do some dreaming of his own.
“That’s what I want to do,” he said.
“I want to coach Team Australia one day when Bazzana and these guys are veterans one day… I want to be in the dugout.”
Proving that no matter what stage you are in your career, it is never too early or late to dream.
Which is why when all these kids Bazzana has met along the way reach out to him on social media, he makes the time to reply.
“To every one of them,” Oeltjen said.
“Which is just incredible because he’s so busy right now. The most exciting thing is he’s never changed… he remembers where he’s from… he’s not only an incredible player, but he’s also an incredible person as well.”