Bonfires, 360 dunks and a cannon arm: The story of Jacob deGroms college days

April 2024 · 17 minute read

Imagine this: A small-town kid from Florida goes to a small school to play college baseball, struggles to hit, gets benched, considers walking away, and then becomes one of the greatest major-league pitchers of his generation.

You probably know the story of the Mets’ Jacob deGrom. How could you not? He’s won two straight NL Cy Young awards. He’s working on a third. He is, as one of his former college coaches put it, Greg Maddux with a 98 mph fastball.

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The story of deGrom is irresistible. Yet the particulars of his three-season journey at Stetson — a mid-major program in DeLand, Fla. — are worth a closer examination. From the epic hometown bonfires, to the legendary white pickup truck, to the 360 dunks on campus, and the arm that seemed to unleash thunderbolts without warning.

“Is it crazy that Jake’s this good?” one teammate said. “Yes. 100 percent. It doesn’t make sense.”

It’s been 10 years since the Mets selected deGrom in the ninth round. This is the story of his college years.

Nick Pugliese, pitcher: The definition of him was this: After a game, we’d go out to a bar and get something to eat. After the game, he’d go out to the farm and have a bonfire. 

Ian Thompson, pitcher: He’s got that good ol’ boy spirit, in a good way.

Clint Chrysler, assistant coach: He’s just a humble, small-town kid. 

Thompson: He was a hometown guy, so he didn’t live on campus. He lived in DeLeon Springs, which was about 20 minutes from campus. 

Rick Hall, American Legion coach: I don’t even know if it has a traffic light. 

David Burns, pitcher: His local buddies were all crazy. Jacob would tell us this story about how he and his friends go out and grab 3-foot alligators … There were all these stories. They rented a huge backhoe and built huge waterslides and had water pumping down. They would build these dirt mounds and turn them into a water park.  

Kevin Mierzwinski, outfielder/catcher: This one time, he took three or four of us to a hometown, outdoor party.

Jeremy Cruz, infielder: I remember going to a bonfire with him one time and being like: “Jacob, where are you taking us?” I’m a city boy from Miami. And he took another city boy from Connecticut, and it was like: “Where are we right now?” It’s like a bonfire, literally the size of half a football field. 

Kyle Maulbetsch, infielder: It’s the biggest bonfire I’ve ever seen in my entire life. I think a backhoe had to grab all this wood and throw it on top.

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Burns: It was really surprising. Nobody on the team really knew him that well, because he didn’t live on campus. But everybody there knew him and loved him. 

Mierzwinski: He wasn’t even this athlete superstar at that point. He just had the respect of everyone in that town. I didn’t realize this guy was a town legend like he was.  

Cruz: I’m like: “Dude, this is crazy.” He’s like: “Yeah, this is how we do it down here.” 

Pugliese: He had a weird college experience.

Aaron Crittenden, first baseman: He came in as an infielder. He didn’t swing it very well. 

Thompson: He played third base for the majority of his freshman year. The coaches were really hard on him. They kind of expected him to step right in and be the next Braedyn Pruitt, who had been a four-year starter at third base.

Burns: There was a lot of pressure on him to come in and play at a super high level defensively and offensively and it just didn’t click early on for him as a hitter. 

Pugliese: I saw him really come in and struggle and essentially get benched.  

Mierzwinski: He wasn’t even a starter-caliber hitter. 

Cruz: Don’t get me wrong. He had a beautiful swing. But I used to joke that he had a hole in his bat, because I’ve never seen a guy have such a nice swing and not make contact at times. 

Pugliese: It was kind of rough on him, because he’s a really quiet kid and he’s not going to go in there and say: “I can hit. I need more chances.” It just happened really quick. 

Courtesy Stetson Athletics

Chris Roberts, pitching coach: He’s not going to talk a lot about too much. 

Mierzwinski: He was very low key.

Thompson: He would pretty much go home after practice and games. 

Cruz: He was almost like a defensive replacement at short. He’d come in a lot at the end of games and do his job. He’d joke a lot: “Hope I don’t get an at-bat today.” 

Pugliese: He was upset a lot with baseball at that time. 

Hall: At the verge of almost wanting to hang it up.

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Maulbetsch: I think Jacob was ready to quit baseball. And that was before the pitching thing and all that … and I told him: “I don’t think you should do that. You’re a Division 1 athlete. If you hate it, that’s something different.” He said: “No, I don’t want to do that, I don’t hate it.” 

Hall: We had a lengthy conversation about how to get over the hump, how to get past your freshman year. I told him: “Look, you got a great future ahead of you. Don’t be thinking anything foolish.” But he struggled. 

Pugliese: When we were on the same summer team, he would do some stuff and we would say: “Holy crap.” He would just walk up and do a 360 dunk without giving you a warning.

Mark Jones, infielder: It was just scary how athletic he was, but you wouldn’t know it because he was so easygoing and mild mannered.

Crittenden: Basketball was moratorium No. 1 for Coach (Pete) Dunn.

Thompson: It was pretty strictly forbidden. 

Jones: But we would play basketball sometimes in school. We weren’t supposed to, but we did anyway. 

Burns: I heard many stories about how he was in high school. 

Pugliese: He played a little like (Kristaps) Porzingis. He was pretty athletic.

Jones: He could do it all. He could shoot. He could dunk. 

Chrysler: He could 360 dunk a basketball. 

Jones: When we played, it started as us just shooting around, playing HORSE. The next thing you know, we’re playing. We would play one-on-one and once he started to go, he would get by me and go up to dunk. I just got out of his way. I didn’t want any problems. 

Pugliese: That’s how he is in baseball, too. He just does things without warning. You’re like: “Wait, you just threw 99 and you didn’t warn me that you were going to do that.”

Crittenden: As a fielder, he was one of the best defensive guys I’ve ever seen. For being as tall and lanky as he was, the guy could glove it. 

Mierzwinski: We would do infield and outfield practice, and this was before he was starting at shortstop. The last round of infield, they would do the backhands in the hole and throw it across, from deep shortstop. He would launch that thing. It looked like it would rise. When he would throw it across the infield, it was clearly different than everyone else. 

Cruz: He could definitely be a big-league shortstop, defensively.

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Crittenden: For a guy that tall and lanky, you could see him tripping over himself and being a little bit cumbersome, but it just never happened. He could track down just about anything in the infield … If it hit his glove, he was a vacuum. 

Burns: We would play little hacky sack games and we had little soccer balls, and it was crazy how — you would never expect him to be so good at something like soccer. But everything he did was smooth.

Roberts: You could put him on a skateboard and he could take right to it, because he can control his body. 

Chrysler: It never seemed to matter where his momentum was going. If he was spinning, if it was a backhand, if it was a slow roller, he always seemed to be able to throw the ball where he wanted to throw it.

Mierzwinski: We were playing UNF, and he started a game in right field. He hadn’t started any games in the outfield, and he was out there with me during (pregame) infield and outfield, and his throws to third base and home were just incredible. He had never thrown a ball from the outfield to third or home. Obviously, he had the best outfield arm on our team, too. 

Cruz: We used to always joke: You knew he would become a pitcher. Get this guy on the mound already.

Crittenden: Our best pitcher was playing shortstop. 

Crittenden: I remember him driving around in this oversized white pickup truck that was jacked up, with a large antenna off the back.

Mierzwinski: This big nasty Dodge Ram 1500 that was 20 years old and all rusted out. But he loved that truck.

Justin Dechert, pitcher: Big tires. Loud exhaust. Not great paint. But that’s kind of Jake.

Thompson: He definitely used that truck for some mudding down there. 

Crittenden: He had a CB radio in his pickup truck, for whatever reason. 

Burns: It had some antenna that seemed like it was 30 feet tall.

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Crittenden: I just remember I was riding in the passenger seat, and I was toying around with the CB radio. I’m from Florida, and I did my fair share of hunting, but I also never had a truck with a CB radio in it. For him to be able to pick that thing up and talk to truckers that were on the road, he was completely at home doing that. 

Thompson: There was something wrong that it would violently veer to the right or left every quarter-mile. I asked Jacob the next day … he was like: “Well, I was in a hurry because my lights are out and it’s getting dark, and I have to make it home before I get pulled over.” 

Burns: Anytime practice was running late, it was interesting to see how he would get home without lights. 

Jones: It sounds crazy, but he really just kind of ran by himself. I think that’s why everybody liked him. 

Pugliese: I’ve spent a lot of time with him, and at the same time, I don’t know that much about him. He’s kind of — not mysterious — but he’s a superstar that lives a very normal life. 

Crittenden: He could also be completely at home talking to whomever. He’s a guy who’s just as at home talking to a mechanic as a reporter. 

Pugliese: He could go unnoticed really easily. He’s the guy who likes being in the corner, making jokes where no one can hear him unless you’re sitting next to him. He’s really funny. But he doesn’t want to be in the limelight. 

Crittenden: When you bring 30 guys in from all over the nation, when you put 30 guys in a room from all walks of life, not everyone is going to like everyone else. But Jake was the guy that could get along with anyone in the clubhouse. I think it was his laid-back personality. 

Pugliese: My brain just goes to him making fun of me giving up home runs. I’d be pitching and I’d come in after a home run, and he’d be in the corner just giggling. I’m looking at him like: “What’s your problem?” He’s like: “You know, that ball went really far.”

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It was like: “Hey, the bench kid is making fun of me.” 

Thompson: He’s the guy that’s going to follow you over to the water cooler after a bad outing and say something. It’s not reassuring or encouraging. It’s probably something sarcastic, but in a way, it worked for us. It was his way of saying: “It’s all right.” 

Crittenden: He’s always had a massive amount of confidence. 

Hall: You hear people talk about that inner confidence, and that’s the way Jake is. He’s got that internal confidence. He doesn’t have a strong swagger. He doesn’t express himself outwardly. 

Dechert: I had a couple different classes with him, and one of our teachers is going around and asking everybody in the class what we plan to do when we’re done with Stetson. I told the teacher: “I’m going to play baseball.” The whole class kind of laughed and said: “What’s a more realistic goal if you don’t make it to the major leagues?” I was like: “Maybe graphic design or something like that.” So then we got to Jake, and the professor asked him: “What are your plans?” He’s like: “Baseball.” We kind of laughed again. (The professor) was like: “No, really, what’s your backup plan?” He was like: “No, there is no backup plan. Baseball is what it is. I’m gonna make sure baseball happens.” 

Dechert: We were kind of joking around down in the bullpen during his sophomore year, and he’s like: “Man, I can throw harder than all you guys.” Then all the pitching staff was kind of like: Haha, yeah right. Our pitching coach was like: “If you think you can throw hard, get up on the mound and throw. If you can throw over 90, I’ll get you into a game one time.” 

He got up on the bullpen pitching mound and threw three or four pitches. And we all kind of sat back and looked at the radar gun. We watched him pop 94 a couple times. And we were like: “Holy crap. He’s not a shortstop. He’s a pitcher.”

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Mark Leavitt, assistant coach: He pitched in the Florida Collegiate Summer League in 2009 after his sophomore year, for the DeLand Suns. I was managing the Clermont Mavericks. Frank Viola managed one team, and Davey Johnson managed the DeLand Suns with Jacob. 

I’m coaching against the DeLand Suns and Jacob had a relief appearance, struck out three guys in two innings or something. It was like: “All right, this guy has a chance.” Well, Davey told Jacob: “Look man, you’re not going to play shortstop. You’re going to pitch for me.” And this is probably a couple weeks into the summer, and Jacob is like: “Well, then I’m not gonna play then if I don’t play shortstop.” 

Roberts: When we made the conversion to pitching, it started with: “Hey, let’s go throw a bullpen. Let’s see what’s going on here.” I knew before we even got to the mound that he was going to be able to throw the ball accurately. But I didn’t realize it was going to be at that level. 

Mierzwinski: He would finish a bullpen and I’d talk to Coach Roberts. I’d be like, “This guy is unbelievable.” The way he would take to coaching and pick stuff up. 

Roberts: It was me and him. We got down there and he threw a few pitches and as expected, the ball was right there. And then I said: “Well, we got to throw from the stretch.” He kind of looked at me like: “Well, what am I doing here?” I was like: “Well, get yourself set up, just lift your leg, maybe go a little quicker with a guy at first. And then, same thing, right to the mitt, over and over and over.”

Then I asked: You got a breaking ball of any kind? He was like: “Ehh, not really.” So I was like: “Well, hold it like this and throw it.” And it was pretty good. He was instantly getting better and better. 

Leavitt: The first time I saw him pitching in intrasquads, I was like: “Dang, this guy could be a third-round pick.” 

Burns: It was almost like: Why wasn’t this done before? Just watching his first couple bullpens. He’s one of those people who could pick up a baseball at the beginning of the day, and that first throw goes exactly where he wants it to go.

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Mierzwinski: In high school, I actually got to catch Zack Greinke a couple times because his little brother went to the same high school I did. And Jacob was kind of really similar to Zack. He was a baseball player first, and he just developed into a pitcher on natural talent.

Courtesy Stetson Athletics

Jones: He started his junior year as our closer, and we just weren’t that good.

Leavitt: He was playing shortstop, he’s closing, you weren’t sure what was going to happen. Well, three weeks into our season, we were not playing very well, especially Friday night. You got to win Friday night. So we decided in our coaches meeting that we had to get our best guy out there, and our best guy was Jacob. 

Pete Dunn, Stetson coach: We called him in and said: “Listen, you’re our best chance to win.” Well, of course, his first question was: Can I still play short?

Mierzwinski: His first start during the regular season was a Friday night, and it was against Chris Sale (and Florida Gulf Coast), and there had to be 70 or 80 scouts there. I remember a lot of the guys on the team were kind of concerned that this was going to be when we first rolled him out there, in such a big spot. But he went out there and stayed right with him and kept us in the game. 

Leavitt: The next five or six starts were good and then he tired toward the end. 

Mierzwinski: It all came down to that natural athletic ability. He would make a slight tweak and he would load up, and all of a sudden the ball would explode and come out 3-4 mph harder. He could learn to throw a slider in two minutes. It was pretty incredible to watch. Of course, I didn’t see the Cy Young coming.

Roberts: He hit one ball off Chris Sale that I don’t think has ever come down yet.

Burnes: That was wild.

Mierzwinski: It was in the Atlantic Sun Conference tournament in Nashville, and I want to say it was a noon game. It was a no-doubter. 

Jones: That ball may still be going. 

Burns: That was one of the furthest balls I’ve seen hit, and one of the most surprising things I’ve seen. 

Roberts: I just remember the reaction of the team. It was excitement, but also like: Did that just happen? You knew Chris Sale was going to be a major leaguer. He was devastating to left-handed batters. 

Burns: I don’t even think Jacob said anything about it. There was almost no reaction out of him. He made a little smile. 

Crittenden: I’ll never forget that home run. 

Leavitt: He thought he was a hitter, and hitting a homer off Chris Sale in the Atlantic Sun Conference tournament helped. 

Crittenden: Typically when the conference championship was over, especially upon elimination, that was the one free pass that the seniors had to go out after the game. Curfews were sort of lenient a little bit. So all the seniors went out that night in downtown Nashville, and Jake came with us. He had a pretty good understanding that he was going to get drafted and wasn’t going to come back for his senior year, so he tagged along. 

Thompson: His ID was when he was 16, and he was like 5-9 in his ID, and he had this long, shaggy hair, which he didn’t have in college. 

Burnes: He was 7 inches taller. It was weird. 

Crittenden: He had trouble getting into some of the bars.

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Thompson: The funny thing is, he was only like a month younger than me, and I was 22 at the time. I was like: “He’s going to be 22 in a month. C’mon, let’s go.” We had to find a place that would let Jacob in. We bounced around. 

Crittenden: It was a funny way to end our relationship with the program: Seeing Jacob deGrom get denied entry. 

Pugliese: If you had told me to put all my money on him not ever playing past junior year at Stetson, I would have taken that bet. 

Crittenden: To say that he’d be the most dominant pitcher over the last three or four years, that would have been a stretch.

Chrysler: No one could have imagined him becoming the guy he’s become at this point. 

Roberts: He’s a guy who has perfected his craft, almost like a Greg Maddux might have done. But then, add 10 mph. Don’t forget about this 98 mph fastball. 

Chrysler: It feels like he might win 10 Cy Youngs in a row. It’s so unbelievably dominant at this point, and it keeps getting better. 

Thompson: I used to live in St. Petersburg and even after his Rookie of the Year and maybe his first Cy Young, he was down playing the Rays, and Jacob went out with David Burns and us after the game. 

Jones: He’s still the same guy.

Hall: He’s a guy that, if you’re a dad, you’d just love to have as a kid.

Pugliese: To me, he’s the same exact person. He’s the guy who likes being in the corner, making jokes. 

Hall: He’s driving an even bigger white truck right now. That part of him hasn’t left.

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