Biddle Is Living The Dream
Jesse Biddle remembers hearing the pop in his left elbow while having a catch with his father.
It wasn't a pleasant sound, like the explosive pop that occurs each time a Biddle fastball lands in a catcher's mitt. This pop had more of an eerie feel to it.
He couldn't straighten his arm, though he didn't want to say anything in fear the injury would shut him down. He pitched through it — striking out three in one inning of a Little League game. Soon after, Biddle found his left arm in a straight-arm cast.
The pop, Biddle found out, was a fractured growth plate. He was pitching with a broken arm. That was when Biddle was 12.
In most cases, atrophy sets in and it takes time for an arm to recover from an injury like that. Not Biddle. He was a bio-mechanical marvel. His left arm was much stronger after the cast was cut off. It always seems that way for Biddle. Nothing has been able to get in his way.
It's probably why the 6-foot-5, 235-pound Germantown Friends senior left-hander, who had already committed to Oregon, was selected by the Phillies with the 27th overall pick in the first round of the Major League Baseball draft Monday night. The Phillies made it official by signing Biddle Thursday afternoon, announced Marti Wolever, Phillies Director of Scouting, just three days after Biddle heard the news that changed his young life.
Biddle will be assigned to the Phillies' Gulf Coast League team in Clearwater, Fla. This rapid movement is nothing new. It's always been Biddle's goal to play Major League Baseball. Now the goal has arrived. Biddle's reached this point by displaying a history of guts, poise, and above all else, he's shown great character in the face of adversity. No, Phillies fans won't have to worry about this young prospect breaking his pitching hand in a bar brawl at three in the morning.
He reminds Phillies' scouting director Marti Wolever of Los Angeles Dodgers lefthander Clayton Kershaw.
"He was outstanding," said Wolever, who admitted Biddle's private workout at Citizens Bank Park last Wednesday convinced the Phillies to make the move. "He was even better than we had seen him during the course of the year. We draw a lot of comparisons to [Los Angeles Dodgers lefthander] Clayton Kershaw when he was in high school. I think ceiling-wise and stuff-wise, Jesse has a chance to be that kind of guy. We just felt at this time that he was the best high school lefthander on the board."
This past season, Biddle posted a 9-2 record, with a 1.06 ERA and 140 strikeouts in 59 1/3 innings, giving up a scant 9 earned runs this season. He has an overpowering fastball that's been clocked as high as 96 mph, and averaged 91-93 mph.
He's shattered every Germantown Friends record, with 19-, 17- and 15-strikeout performances this year, including a no-hitter in leading the Tigers to their seventh straight Friends Schools League title.
A four-year starter, Biddle, 18, has been clocked as fast as 96 mph, and has thrown consistently in the 91-93 mph range. But it is not just overpowering velocity that's sitting down batters, Biddle has done it with movement, mixing in a curveball and shifty slider.
Of the 30 teams in Major League Baseball, 25 had visited his home, with the Atlanta Braves flying him down for a visit, including the Phillies, St. Louis Cardinals and Los Angeles Angels.
But being selected by the hometown teams all adds up to a special time for someone who quite literally has always stood head-and-shoulders above everyone else his age since birth.
Tall tales
David Biddle, Jesse's father, likes to tell the story of when Jesse was in kindergarten, and the other children would always gather around him each morning when Jesse arrived at school. David found this interesting, and asked Jesse's teacher why.
"Because Jesse is so much bigger than everyone else, they think he's a superhero," the teacher told David.
"Geez, Jesse was born big, 11 pounds, 1 ounce; the second-largest baby born at Chestnut Hill Hospital, back in the 1990s," David said. "He was always bigger than everyone else, and the kids thought he was Superman, the Incredible Hulk, Shaquille O'Neal. I think of Jesse as a good-looking version of Shrek, and he always had this intense, competitive passion for sports."
Biddle's real transformation took place his freshman year.
He used to have a whip-like pitching motion when he threw. He was effective, throwing in the early to mid-80s, topping out at 88. But Biddle was winning on brute strength and power.
Enter local coaches Chuck Bechtel and Chuck Bushbeck — Jesse's "Two Chucks."
They videotaped Jesse's delivery as a freshman, and Biddle and his father both distinctly remember the two laughing: one, because Biddle was so ridiculously good for his age; and two, because he was so good despite his horrible mechanics at the time.
"I remember laughing myself," Jesse recalled. "I was winning despite myself. I thought it was funny, too. Once I saw the video, it was kind of funny that I was doing almost everything completely wrong. I was in a little bit of a pitching slump at the time. My velocity was pretty good, but not where I wanted it to be. My mechanics weren't perfect, either, far from where I wanted them to be.
"I listened to everything they had to say that day. I bought into their system, though I am someone who is open to criticism, if it's constructive and helps."
It helped. Biddle took off.
California trails
Though the Friends Schools League is not bristling with Division-I baseball talent, Biddle found a much more competitive level playing summer baseball for a Norcal baseball club based in San Francisco Bay Area, one which boasted former stars such as Jimmy Rollins and Pat Burrell.
Biddle pitched against Norcal the summer between his freshman and sophomore year of high school, losing a 2-1 duel to Scott Griggs, who eventually went to UCLA. Biddle's performance raised many eyebrows on the Norcal side, so much so that Norcal coaches approached the Biddle family a month later at a tournament and asked if Jesse could join their team.
Jesse stayed with a host family and spent summer of 2008 in Oakland. It marked the first time in his life when he was just a pitcher.
"It was around this time, Jesse admitted to me, he loved baseball and that's when I knew it was all over and that's what he wanted to do and he's doing it," David Biddle recalls.
There was a strong possibility Jesse will be selected on the first day of the draft, and it happened. He's given every indication that he's "signable," now a code word among Major League scouts when it comes to high school prospects.
"I want to go, I want to play Major League Baseball, it's been a dream of mine my entire life," Jesse said. "Right now, the way I feel, whether I go to Oregon or to the major leagues, I'll be playing baseball. I'm ready. And on top of that, the Phillies pick me.
"Now I can live my dream. The coaches at Oregon told me they don't expect me there. I always wanted to play for the Phillies. Now I am. You can't dream this."
Nor is it good to doubt Biddle. He's let nothing get in his way so far — not even a broken pitching arm.
