Driven: Michael Mancini proceeds with eyes fixed on a future in baseball
Michael Mancini freely, unabashedly expresses single-minded concentration on one objective with regard to his future.
Just short of celebrating his 20th birthday, the erstwhile three-sport ace at Maine-Endwell High whose resume includes the designation “World Champion” has it mapped out. He makes it sound as if it’s an expectation rather than mere wishes or dreams.
“My Dad always tells me, ‘You’ve got to think outside of baseball.’ But I don’t ever think about that,” he said. “There is no Plan B. There is one road. It’s not a straight road but I see the end line. I don’t know what’s in-between but playing baseball at the professional level is where I intend to go.”
Through his first year removed from the local athletic scene, he’s done his prospects no harm whatsoever.
Mancini was an every-game starter at second base in his freshman season for James Madison University, a Sun Belt Conference member in Harrisonburg, Virginia. Team leader in walks and triples, he batted .284, settling into the No. 4 spot in the order for the 56-game season’s second half.
He proceeded to a fine summer with the Kingsport (Tenn.) Axmen of the Appalachian League, a collegiate league stocked mostly with freshmen and sophomores. That trophy symbolic of his selection as Appy League All-Star Game MVP late last month joins an already fetching display of awards.
He acclimated summarily, learned, improved and persevered through predictably unavoidable stretches of struggle and emerged wiser, humbled here and there, but increasingly ambitious to pursue the destination. Through 96 baseball games across 5½ months, he remained thankfully healthy and productive, having embraced demands of physical conditioning required to handle a degree of grind previously not experienced.
The transition from high school to an intensified workload is obviously one many before him have negotiated, only, not so many hereabouts as successfully as he has at that level of baseball.
“I think I worked very hard to stay in 56-game shape and be able to compete all throughout the spring, all the fall and summer without an injury,” said Mancini, who’d previously coped with a couple lingering physical issues. “I think it’s all how you eat, how you sleep. I think sleep has been crucial.”
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He positioned himself for the starting role at second base with an impressive showing during fall ball, when he also took just-in-case reps at shortstop and third. Come spring, the newbie had 12 hits in the Dukes’ first 12 games and closed with 57 hits, 48 runs, nine doubles, three triples, two home runs and 11 stolen bases.
Statistically he is most proud of limiting errors to four, and most eager to cut back substantially on those 46 strikeouts.
Naturally there were rough patches, i.e., that few-game segment when “I couldn’t hit the ball if it were a beachball. But that’s part of baseball. Look at Mike Trout, he started the season like 0-for-25. If the best player in the world can do it, I can as well.”
In 40 Appy League games, he had 42 hits, seven doubles, two triples, stole 24 bases and scored 34 runs – all ranking first or second for Kingsport. His .318 average was the team’s second-best by a percentage point.
But in Tennessee, too, there were spots of bother. Atop that list was a free-fall, as he recalls, from a .380 batting average to .257. Ouch! Through that he leaned on his telephone to connect with family and friends back home. “You just call anyone you can who knows who you are, the type of person you are. I think that was huge.”
The Maine-Endwell community is and will remain huge to Mancini, just as Mancini will remain a significant piece of that community’s lore.
More: Michael Mancini’s sports lore includes more than just Little League world championship
His legacy was cemented for good in 2016, when Maine-Endwell’s Little League team played to an unbeaten summer capped by the Little League World Series championship, with pitcher/shortstop Mancini its most visible performer. That no doubt has had a hand in sculpting his unflappable nature. Play before nearly 30,000 spectators in Williamsport on national television with a blimp hovering, what’s to rattle you thereafter?
Come high school, he was a freshman starter for a state baseball finalist and as a senior a standout for M-E’s semifinalist. And there was football, in which he was New York’s Player of the Year as quarterback for the Spartans’ 2021 state champion, creating three made-for-video touchdowns in a title-game rally. He was Elite 24 Player of the Year that season.
But none of that mattered when he headed to college ball at JMU’s level, where so many teammates and opponents were likewise “The Man” in high school days.
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Were it suggested to him a year ago he’d grab and hold a starting spot from Day 1 in the Sun Belt Conference?
“In the back of my mind I’d say, ‘I know.’ ” he said. “I know it’s never a given. I think I’d have said that’s my goal, that’s what I’m going there to do. But I’d probably work even harder because, in college ball the guy behind you is just as good as you. You get the opportunity to start and they give you a leash and say ‘Go play’ but as soon as you drop or fall or get injured, the next guy is right behind.”
All told, just about no complaints from Mancini, who after having caught up with folks on the home front will head back Aug. 18 for Year 2 at JMU.
“Put it in perspective: I’m healthy and I’m playing baseball through the summer. I get to wake up, lift, play baseball. How many kids are dying for that? … 3-4 years ago you’d have told me I’d be playing every day as a freshman in college and then playing another 40 games in the summer? I mean, one day I want to be playing as my job so why not start now?”
This article originally appeared on Binghamton Press & Sun-Bulletin: Maine-Endwell alum Michael Mancini’s baseball ambitions only enhanced
