Tim Barger stands at the plate in the bottom of the eighth, MIAA Championship game, scored tied at 4.
Central Missouri pitcher Ron Martin throws a pitch, and Barger takes a hack. He doesn’t come close.
Emporia State baseball coach Bob Fornelli can’t help but hear the jeers in the background. Some of the players and fans start to make fun of Barger’s awkward, loopy swing.
Barger has heard it all before. “Just put it over the plate, and it’s an out.” He’s learned not to listen.
“If they make fun of him,” Fornelli said, “they just don’t know how hard he works.”
• • •
Fornelli calls Tim Barger the ultimate Hornet.
Yep, that Tim Barger. The one who bats in the nine-hole, who is 12th on the team in hitting with a .276 average.
“I can’t say enough about him,” Fornelli said. “He’s the most special kid in baseball that I’ve been around.”
It’s high praise for Barger — a kid who after one season at Coffeyville Community College contacted Fornelli just asking if he could come and compete for a starting spot.
The senior and three-year starter perhaps has earned his playing time more than any other player in Hornet history.
• • •
It all began for Barger when he was much younger. He would always want to take more groundballs.
And no one ever wanted to hit them to him.
“From the time I first started, I wanted to see how good I could get,” Barger said. “I did as much as I could.”
When finding a groundball partner became too difficult, Barger experimented with other ways to improve his fielding. He started throwing a tennis ball off the wall, then fielding the rebound. He tinkered with the method, finding out that a golfball came back harder and faster.
Pretty soon, he was throwing golfballs off the walls and bunting them. Then he was bouncing them high off the ground to work on his flyballs.
It turned into his own training program.
Barger, who jokingly calls himself a nutcase, was given a key to the HPER gym at ESU from Fornelli. He made a routine of going every day to work on his coordination for 45 minutes. Five minutes of throwing a golfball off the wall with no glove was followed by five with a special bouncy ball and no glove. Then five minutes each with a glove.
After that was five minutes of individual work on bunting, then about 20 minutes to work on his swing. In the last two weeks, that has meant tossing up sunflower seeds to himself and focusing on making contact with them.
“I’m a big muscle memory guy,” Barger said. “I want to keep the feeling of the game fresh.”
There were times, though, that keeping the game fresh started to wear Barger out.
The routine became such an important part of his day that he would do it after the team came back from a doubleheader on the road. After coming off the bus, his first steps would be back into the gym to get his training in after a 10-hour day of baseball.
Fornelli saw signs of fatigue with his third baseman, so last year, before the second-to-last series of the season, he actually took away Barger’s key to the gym.
“He made me promise not to work out,” Barger said. “It was hard to do. At practice, I was almost mad at him because I wasn’t able to do my stuff.”
It’s not often that Fornelli has had to force a player to not work so hard on his game.
“He might not be the most talented, but he makes the most out of his ability, I believe, than anyone in the country,” Fornelli said. “He wills himself to do well.”
• • •
It’s the annual Fall World Series for ESU, and Barger is facing fireballer Gabe Medina, who throws in the low 90s.
A pitch comes high and in, and Barger can’t get out of the way quickly enough. The ball hits him in the helmet, resulting in a bad concussion.
Though woozy, Barger still makes his way over to the ESU dugout between innings.
And picks up his glove to try to go back to third base.
“He wouldn’t come out,” Fornelli said, “and he couldn’t even walk straight.”
• • •
There’s another reason that Fornelli likes Tim Barger so much — it’s because in many ways, the two are a lot alike.
“He lives, eats and drinks baseball,” Fornelli said. “He has phenomenal grades, but all he thinks about is baseball.”
“Sometimes I think about it too much, and it’s caused problems,” Barger said. “There’s not a lot of times when I’m thinking about something else.”
There have been days when baseball seemingly has been too important to him — days at junior college when he felt he had played so terribly the day before that he didn’t want to get out of bed.
Ask him why the game became so significant, and Barger describes it the best way he can.
“Just the feeling of hitting it on the sweet spot, or standing on second after a double, when you feel like you’re on the top of the world,” Barger said. “Or when you make a good defensive play, and you know that it took a lot of practice to make that play.
“It’s a good feeling. I’ve gotten lured into that feeling.”
Which makes this last few days of his Hornet career that much more difficult. He’s thought about playing somewhere this summer. Or perhaps coaching a high school freshman team. Or maybe even umpiring just to stay in the game.
“I like it too much to get away,” Barger said.
“It’s going to be hard when he finishes,” Fornelli said. “I’m sure he’ll miss the game.”
• • •
Barger is playing catch down the right-field line when an overthrown ball from the Washburn third baseman hits him in the side.
Because he is distracted, Barger forgets that he is playing catch with a teammate, and a second later Jerry Cook’s throw smashes into his face.
Blood immediately starts to pour out of his mouth, and the blow has knocked loose a few of his teeth.
Barger still starts the game at third base for ESU.
“By far, he’s the toughest kid I’ve been around,” Fornelli said. “A lot of kids would have come out, and he didn’t even think about it.”
Barger gets his first at-bat of the game in the second inning.
And, sure enough, he gets hit by a pitch — right in his side.
• • •
In many ways, Barger just has the look and mannerisms of a throwback player.
His trademark eyeblack is present during afternoon games, and Barger goes to every plate appearance without batting gloves — gripping the bat with just his bare hands.
Still, there’s something more about Barger — a part of him that separates him from today’s disabled-list prone, I-need-a-day-off-to-rest major leaguers.
Barger doesn’t remove himself from the game. Ever.
“I just want to play,” Barger said. “The whole goal is to help the team win, and I can’t do that if I’m not playing. I love being in games. There’s just those little things with teammates that I don’t want to miss.
“I don’t like to come out. If I come out, someone else has to come in to take my spot. I love playing too much to let anybody else take my spot.”
Barger has started 60 of ESU’s 61 games this season, fighting through injuries and the bruises he gets from taking the game so seriously.
The senior — always willing to sacrifice for the team — has been hit by pitches 23 times this season, which ranks fifth in all of Division-II.
In one series against Northwest Missouri State, he was called back to the plate three times after the umpire had ruled he had leaned into pitches.
“If I can get on that way,” Barger said, “I’ll gladly do that.”
Others coaches have come to notice the effect that Barger has for the Hornets.
Last week, the senior was named honorable mention All-MIAA for the second consecutive season.
“I haven’t become a great player,” Barger said, “but the goal is to help the team win. I think that I’ve done that.”
Fornelli said the admiration extended to Barger’s teammates as well.
“I don’t think there’s a guy,” Fornelli said, “that doesn’t have the utmost respect for him.”
• • •
Tim Barger stands at the plate in the bottom of the eighth, MIAA Championship game, scored tied at 4.
Central Missouri pitcher Ron Martin throws a pitch, and Barger takes a hack. He doesn’t come close.
Emporia State baseball coach Bob Fornelli can’t help but hear the jeers in the background. Some of the players and fans start to make fun of Barger’s awkward, loopy swing.
Barger has heard it all before. “Just put it over the plate, and it’s an out.” He’s learned not to listen.
Two pitches later, Barger lines one to the right-center gap. He hustles into second base, while Fornelli smiles in the third-base coaching box.
Three batters later, Barger scores the go-ahead run.
No one is laughing now.
“The baseball gods take care of those who work hard,” Fornelli said, “and they’ve definitely taken care of Tim Barger.”