DUNEDIN, Fla. – Video of an 11-year-old from Bermuda hitting amid swaying palm trees impressed Adam Stern when it popped up in his email, and sure, he told the player’s dad, the kid was welcome to attend his Christmas camp at Centrefield Sports in London, Ont. But the former big-league outfielder also made sure to try temper expectations. Lots of kids have ability. Few are prodigies.
Adam Hall’s parents signed him up for the camp during their trip home for the holidays and very quickly he caught everyone’s eye. It’s true that very few kids are prodigies but the wiry, quick-twitch shortstop with a relentless competitive bent just might be one.
“I’m sitting there going, ‘This might be the best player I’ve seen at this age – ever,’” says Stern. “He’d play soccer in another part of the camp and he looked like a world-class player. I’m talking to my guys and I’m not knowledgeable about what a great 11- or 12-year-old looks like, but I said, ‘This kid is pretty special.’ The way he hit, the way he fielded, the way he moved athletically – everything he did.”
Afterwards, Hall remembers meeting with Stern, Chris Robinson and Jamie Romak – all former national team members – to discuss things. His talent had long outgrown what the baseball leagues in Bermuda could offer and the trio delivered a simple message.
“They said you need to do something with baseball if you want to go somewhere,” recalls Hall, “and you’ve got to do something now.”
The advice was the push needed to send Hall down a path that has him positioned to be the first Canadian player selected in this summer’s draft. Some 40-plus scouts were on hand to watch the junior national team’s annual spring game against the Toronto Blue Jays, a 16-0 loss Saturday, many of them there to keep tabs on the potential early-round pick.
Hall went 0-for-3 with a walk and made a couple of nice defensive plays.
“He’s got some sandpaper to his talent which is a good thing,” says Greg Hamilton, Baseball Canada’s director of national teams. “He’s a kid whom I think will handle the ups and downs of the game quite well because he competes through challenging times, he doesn’t give in to them. He fights. He battles. He grinds. That part will serve him real well as he moves forward.”
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The move forward for Hall started when at 12 years old, he left parents Ty and Helen, both teachers at the time, to stay with his grandmother in nearby Woodstock, Ont., so he could join the London Badgers baseball program.
During the summers, his parents headed north to be with him, and the family’s plan was to make the move back to London more permanent when he was ready for high school. Instead, in April of his Grade 7 year, Hall moved in with Badgers coach Ken Frohwerk and his wife Karen Stone, to speed up the process. During the off-season, he went to work out every day at Centrefield Sports and he rapidly gained notice.
Stern remembers alerting Hamilton during a Canada Cup tournament to the 13-year-old kid serving as a bat boy and saying that he would soon be the shortstop for the junior national team, which is typically stocked with players aged 16-18.
Hamilton was skeptical but Stern was right. At the age of 15, Hall made the club.
“I set a goal for myself in Grade 9 to make the junior team in Grade 10 and I was able to do that,” says Hall. “Making that goal was the start of everything.”
Playing against players far more advanced than him was nothing new for Hall. He played several sports as a kid, and added baseball at the age of seven, when he was the youngest player in a grouping that included children up to nine years old.
That ended up helping him find a love for the game.
“The thing with baseball was I was one of the youngest kids in the league when I first started playing and I found it challenging and whenever I find something challenging and I’m not the best, I want to become the best,” Hall says. “So that made me work extra hard at that.”
The league used a pitching machine for that age grouping and having no previous hitting experience, it made for a long first season. “The next year I was good,” he quickly points out, and the growth has come steadily and quickly ever since.
The decision at age 12 to leave his parents, who have since moved to London, Ont., was an easy one for him, if not for his folks, who made sure to give their son every opportunity to chase his dream.
“They were probably missing me more than I was missing them, because I was doing what I wanted to be doing at the time,” Hall notes with a grin. “I got to see them a decent amount. They came up and visited a couple of times throughout the year and they were there the whole summer.
“I was playing baseball so I was happy.”
By Grade 9, Hall “started realizing I had a shot, seeing the attention I was getting,” which compelled him to push further. He eventually started playing with the Great Lakes Canadians, started finding his way to various showcases, impressed at the Blue Jays’ Tournament 12 and served notice with the junior national team.
He’s a strong-armed defender with speed and the ability to both hit and hit for power. Due to turn 18 on May 22, Hall has the tools scouts look for and intangibles Stern believes are the real separator.
“Adam has always had the focus on baseball, he’s had the focus of, ‘I’m a big-leaguer, this is what I want to do,’” says Stern. “I started working with him then, and it’s never stopped. It’s a very rare thing that the kid you work with at 11 is still the best player when he leaves high school at 18.
“He’s just always kept above the crowd.”
The next challenge will be pro ball, although Hall will have an option in his back pocket as a Texas A&M commit. He’s met with plenty of scouts and will soon find out how things play out.
“Relief that it’s finally here,” is how he describes the run-up to the draft. “This is what you’ve worked toward pretty much the whole time. Yeah, you can say there’s a bit of pressure but be prepared for it, I know I’m prepared, so I go out there and play and do what I can and do my best. That’s all you can control.”
Notes: Landon Leach, the 6-foot-4 right-hander from Pickering, Ont., allowed four runs on five hits in two innings of work, but sat 93-94 and touched 95, further piquing the interest of scouts who like not only the gas, but also his big frame. … Blue Jays shortstop prospect Bo Bichette turned on a high fastball from Leach and ripped it off the left-field wall for a double, impressing one veteran Blue Jays player, who said most big-league hitters wouldn’t have been able to handle the pitch. … The lopsided score was of no concern to Greg Hamilton, who feels there’s nothing but benefit for his kids from the experience. “We played half a game that was tight and you look for small victories, especially when you’re dealing with 16-18- year-olds versus advanced players,” he said. “For us it’s the experience to play against guys they see on TV, play at the speed of the game that happens here, those are building blocks for our guys. They find out if they throw the ball in a good spot they can get someone real advanced out, and if they don’t expand the strike zone, they can put the ball in play against some pretty good pitchers.”
