Hoeing keeps home at heart

Coming home can be defined in a number of ways. It can mean something as simple as walking through your front door after a long day at work, perhaps it means a college student back for the summer or even a former native back in town for a reunion or a local festival. Maybe it’s an active member of the military back after a tour of duty. Define it however you wish.

How about defining it as coming back to the ballpark where you grew up watching a game you loved and facing a Major League Baseball team that you idolized as a kid? That’s a homecoming fit for one person in Ripley County … and his name is Bryan Hoeing.

Hoeing, a native of Batesville and 2015 Bulldog graduate, was back in the area for the first time as part of his Major League pitching career this past weekend as part of a three-game series between the Miami Marlins and Cincinnati Reds. Last week’s rotation schedule prevented the 6-foot-6 right hander from throwing a pitch for the Florida bunch at Great American Ballpark but nonetheless it was a return home that was a dream come true.

“Being back in Cincinnati is one of the coolest moments of my baseball career … it goes right up there with my debut,” Hoeing said in a one-on-one interview prior to Sunday’s matchup between the Marlins and Reds. “Just growing up around here, going to four or five games a year and I have memories here with my mom, brother and friends. Actually being on the field and not in the stands is very surreal to me.”

Hoeing’s journey on the field has been well-documented and his latest return to the Marlins after a lengthy rehab from a left hamstring injury has been a focus of the sports section over the past couple of months. So Sunday morning’s conversation didn’t necessarily revolve around statistics or his work on the mound. Home came up quite a bit though and rather quickly it was Hoeing inside the Miami dugout praising Batesville and the people who make the city so special.

After all, the product you see today in the Major Leagues is a direct result of home and Batesville certainly prepared Hoeing for his professional journey. That includes the recent hamstring injury and the perseverance to battle back from it. Go back a little less than 10 years ago and Hoeing’s All-State basketball and All-American baseball career as a Bulldog were forced to be put on hold due to a knee injury and arm injury respectively.

He stayed the course, recovered from both and went on to a stellar four years at the University of Louisville before being drafted in the seventh round of the 2019 MLB Draft. He had been drafted twice prior -2015 to the Arizona Diamondbacks and 2017 to the San Francisco Giants- but opted for a full four years as a Cardinal.

“I’m never one that likes to be in the training room,” Hoeing said. “Just going through what I did in high school with the knee and the elbow just makes me appreciate being healthy and never taking being healthy for granted. It made me see the game from a whole new perspective and just overall made me tougher mentally.”

Home also means quite the fan club. According to “Baseball-Reference” online, Hoeing is just the third Batesville-born player to appear in the major leagues and the sixth MLB player overall out of Ripley County, making it easy over these past couple of years for our neck of the woods to latch onto his career since being called up to the Marlins in 2022.

Two of his biggest fans just happen to be his former head coaches at Batesville. Varsity basketball head man Aaron Garrett remains a mentor to Hoeing while a prior Bulldog baseball coach in Alex Davis was in attendance with family to see his former ace in Cincinnati.

“Coach Garrett and I are in contact quite a bit,” Hoeing noted of his high school coaches. “At one point obviously he was my basketball coach and now he’s like a life coach to me. His texts and words of advice are always appreciated by me and really help guide me through the season. They are very important. Coach Davis had just reached out to me this week. He was my baseball coach for four years and now he’s texting me saying his son is coming to watch me play. It’s really cool hearing those stories.”

And Hoeing is well aware that there’s many more in our area cheering him on, to the point where he acknowledges that it’s overwhelming to see and hear the support bestowed upon him by his hometown and surrounding area.

“I never take it for granted,” Hoeing said of the support from home. “Batesville is everything to me. I spent the first 18 years of my life there so that’s really the place that molded me into the person I am today. They’ve shown great support throughout my entire career whether it be in high school or up until the minor leagues going into the majors. It’s a small town but they know their sports and they’ve just really embraced the ride I’ve been on. I’ve appreciated everything they’ve done for me.”

In return, Hoeing still keeps tabs on the local sports scene in Southeastern Indiana and says the area has been a hotbed for baseball talent over the past several years. In addition to Bryan himself, his cousin Alex Meyer graduated from Greensburg in 2008 and went on to an MLB career with the Minnesota Twins and Los Angeles Angels. Hoeing’s former Bulldog and Louisville teammate Zach Britton is currently playing Double-A baseball as part of Toronto Blue Jays’ minor league system.

Hoeing says he hopes that his journey along with the likes of Meyer and Britton serves as a guiding light to the youth of the area who are small town kids with big league dreams.

“You know there’s kids from where we are from who are growing up and sitting in those stands dreaming of being a big leaguer. Again our community is small towns but we know our baseball and know how to play the game. There’s so much talent going through Southeastern Indiana right now. I just really hope that those kids know anything is possible. I was in their shoes at one point and I played on those same fields they are playing on. It’s going to take hard work and it’s going to mean a lot of extra effort and practice but they can be here one day just like I am.”

Hoeing and Miami managed a win on Sunday in Cincinnati but fell twice in the three-game series against the Reds which is now followed up by the MLB All-Star Break that extends through Thursday of this week.

The Marlins resume action on Friday night as part of a three-game set at home against the New York Mets. Miami hosts Cincinnati next month for four games beginning on August 5.