Reese Kaplan -- A Two Way Superstar Prospect Before Shoehei Ohtani

As Christmas season approaches, regardless of your religious affiliation or lack thereof, it's a time for stories that seem almost too fantastical for words.  As closely as I follow the sport of baseball, I just encountered one such story about a minor league draft pick who since Babe Ruth and prior to Shoehei Ohtani was reputed to be the next two way superstar with a 95 mph fastball and the ability as a switch hitter to club 460 foot home runs from both sides of the plate.  

Back in the year of 2001 when the Mets drafted Aaron Heilman and in the supplemental round picked some guy named David Wright, this gentleman went undrafted and was signed by the Tampa Bay Devil Rays (as they were then known) to a $30,000 bonus.  His name is Greg Nash, but given his size 18 feet he was given the nickname of "Toe" and it stuck.  Toe Nash's story is one for the ages.

A baseball amateur scout had first seen Nash play as a 12 year old and was stunned at the 5'10" kid's talent.  Nash struck out 17 of the 21 batters he faced.  You can't make up that level of talent.  Unfortunately amateur scout Benny Latino lost track of this remarkable future ballplayer.

Years later that same man had gone to work for Tampa Bay as a pro scout and he was determined to see if he could find the little kid who overwhelmed everyone with his early baseball prowess.  Unfortunately in the few years since that first encounter, things had not progressed well in Nash's life. His mother left the family to go to the much larger city of Baton Rouge and Nash was left without much parental guidance as his father and sisters all had their own issues.  He was twice expelled from school before age 15, had a few minor scrapes with the law and before he completed 9th grade he dropped out entirely.

This young man who taught himself to hit with a broomstick and bottle caps his father would toss to him wound up living with a few friends in a shared travel trailer that had no phone.  Toe had never learned to read or write but as he developed into a strapping 6'5" young adult there was no denying his athleticism.  When Latino found him again at age 18 Toe Nash had no Social Security card, still was illiterate and the occasional legal troubles were still happening.  

What helped Nash through this difficult period was a relative of his named Hot Rod Williams who had a solid NBA career.  He became a charitable leader in rural Louisiana, providing Nash with a job in the sugar cane fields and building his own organized baseball league called Williams All Stars.  They set up their diamond on the periphery of the field of growing sugar cane which ended up resembling the cornfield from the movie "Field of Dreams".  Toe Nash flourished on the diamon and when Latino saw him he knew he had the makings of a future star.

Being a relatively new scout Latino needed to get Nash to one of the Devil Rays' sites to let others see what the man could accomplish on the field.  Nash had no driver's license as he could not read the street signs, so he got a friend to drive him there.  One of the Devil Rays pitching coaches gave Nash a tip on what to do and between the first inning 90 MPH pitching he embraced what he was shown and finished the stint throwing 95 MPH.  Remember, Nash had never played organized baseball with any kind of coaching whatsoever as he wasn't in high school nor even Little League, just that sad sugar cane set of games Williams had developed.  

When the Rays decided they wanted to draft him he was told he needed to report to the Princeton, West Virginia site to begin his pro career.  To hear others tell it, you have a kid who went from the sandlot to the pros with NOTHING of any kind in between.  The raw talent was undeniable, but the depth and breadth of just how raw it was seemed unfathomable.  

In that initial year in the Devil Rays minor leagues he showed there were major issues on the field that needed to be addressed.  He was used primarily as a hitter and he was struggling with a .240 batting average, striking out 69 times in 171 ABs, a 47-game K rate of 40%.  However, he showed that even against far superior pitching than he'd ever before encountered the power was real as he was easily in the top ten in home runs for the league.  

During that winter his scout, Larry Reynolds, sent him off to California to spend some time in a workout regime with major league professionals that included his brother, Harold Reynolds, Tony Gwynn and others.  At one point during a car ride Reynolds got a call from Ken Griffey, Jr. and handed the phone to Toe Nash to allow him to talk to the future Hall of Famer.  (Larry Reynolds might have had a bit of an odd selection of prospects as that particular client who referred a coach to help Toe Nash was future Met Carl Everett.)

Unfortunately, as much as Nash enjoyed and learned during his California period, his return to rural Louisiana for the remainder of the winter was not good at all.  He was picked up by police for having sex with a 15 year old and continued to get into more encounters with the law.  That first impression people got in 2001 of the on-the-field performer Nash would become was the last the pros ever saw of the man.  

If you want a feel good, feel weird and feel bad story wrapped up into one, take 11+ minutes and have a look at the Toe Nash video so you can see his exploits on video and learn more about his struggle from dropout to the pros.  Obviously one would have liked to see him become a major league ballplayer or at least progress above his initial start in West Virginia, but he made his own bad decisions that interrupted what could have been a true storybook career.