Farming runs in Joe Borchard’s family. His ancestors helped settle Ventura County, planting grain there in the 1860s.
When he was little and his father was working rows of lima beans, Joe tagged along, riding the tractor and splashing around in the irrigation ditches. He learned by osmosis that diligent tilling yields good results.
Borchard, 21, has put considerable effort into both his fields, the one with hash marks and the one with foul lines. Now he’s looking at a bumper harvest of his own–so bountiful he soon will have to decide what to reap first.
Should he sign with this summer’s sensation, the White Sox, who made him their first round pick, 12th overall, in the amateur draft earlier this month? Or should he return for his senior year at Stanford, where he would be both the presumptive starting quarterback on a team that made the Rose Bowl last season and a switch-hitting outfielder for the Cardinal, which fell just short in the championship game of the College World Series earlier this month?
Or both, like Michigan’s Drew Henson?
“It’s a no-lose situation,” Borchard said. “Things can’t help but work out in a positive way. Honestly I couldn’t be more relaxed.”
Borchard, whose only previous visit to Chicago was a layover at O’Hare, will fly in this weekend for a round of meetings with the Sox organization.
Although serious talks haven’t begun, General Manager Ron Schueler is not shy about expressing his feelings.
“I would prefer that he just play baseball . . . on the professional level, every day, and that probably includes some winter ball,” Schueler said. “He needs to swing the bat a lot from both sides. Whether he can talk us out of that remains to be seen.”
Schueler brought up one obvious cautionary tale: that of former dual-sport star Bo Jackson, who still works as a special instructor for the Sox in spring training.
“We might want to have him talk to Bo about what it cost him,” Schueler said of Jackson, who starred on the marketing front but was forced into early retirement by hip-replacement surgery. “He probably would have had a 15-year [baseball] career.”
If negotiations get stressful, Borchard can fall back on three years’ worth of psychological survival skills sharpened by his peripatetic schedule.
“I had no idea, as an 18-year-old, of what you need to be prepared for as a two-sport athlete in college,” Borchard said. “I was one of the top students in my high school class, but at Stanford every class is difficult and you have to put forth your maximum effort. And a high school game is like a college practice in terms of intensity.”
Borchard elevated student-athletic multitasking to a new level. From April 10 to 29, when he played both spring football and baseball, he batted .326 with three homers and eight RBI in 10 games.
On one notable day during that stretch, Borchard took batting practice at 1 p.m., attended a football meeting at 2, practiced with the football team from 4 to 6 p.m. and changed into his baseball togs in the football locker room. His girlfriend, Erin Sones–an elite-level 10-meter platform diver who competed in the recent U.S. Olympic trials–drove him to San Jose State for a 7 p.m. baseball game, where he obligingly delivered a game-winning single.
“When you’re able to go through a day like that and you do succeed, it makes you feel confident in your abilities, and it makes you realize you made the right decision,” Borchard said. “The rewarding days are the reason to do it.”
All this and he’s still on track to graduate with his class next year, earning B-grades at an academically challenging school. Borchard’s major is history, a subject that intrigues him because of his family’s deep roots in largely transient Southern California.
Baseball has come calling for the 6-foot-4-inch, 225-pound Borchard once before, after his senior year of high school, when the Baltimore Orioles drafted him in the 20th round. He opted to go to Stanford on a football scholarship and redshirted his freshman year. He did, however, play three full seasons of college baseball.
Borchard has been a mainstay in the outfield, starting 185 of 186 games in which he has appeared. He has a collegiate average of .346 with 40 home runs and 187 RBI; his postseason numbers (.353, seven home runs, 18 RBI in 23 games) are equally consistent. The only downside this season was a team- and career-high 57 strikeouts.
His throwing arm is solid, having received a lot of extra work. Last fall, filling in for injured Stanford quarterback Todd Husak, Borchard logged consecutive 300-yard games against UCLA and San Jose State. Among his five touchdown passes against UCLA was a 98-yarder, a Pac-10 and Stanford record. Overall in 1999, he completed 42 of 71 pass attempts for seven touchdowns and is the leading candidate for the position this year should he come back.
Pursuing his dual dreams is more than a compulsion, Borchard said. It allows him to express different facets of his athletic personality.
“When you’re the quarterback, the focus is on you every play and you’re expected to be the leader,” he said. “In baseball things are more spread out. There can be a different leader every game.
“If I’m down at the end of the day, thinking, `Am I spreading myself too thin?’ I think about how fortunate I am to be doing so much so well and I use that as a motivational tool. The success I’ve had has been too overwhelming for me to think I was missing out on anything.”
Borchard said people who know him generally haven’t tried to dissuade him from erasing anything in his crowded appointment book. The last three summers, he has taken off a mere two weeks after the end of baseball season before hitting the weight room for preseason football workouts.
Other baseball prospects used their summers to heft wood bats in the Cape Cod League, but Borchard has had scant experience with wood–a liability in baseball terms, but apparently not a crippling one in the White Sox’s view.
“He’ll make the adjustment,” Schueler said. “I was with the A’s when they drafted [Mark] McGwire, and he did. I’ve heard so much about [Borchard’s] personality and makeup. I hope he’s as good a player as he is a person.”
Although Borchard’s coaches in both sports consider him a legitimate pro prospect, he doesn’t see himself attempting to double up.
“Athletes like Deion Sanders and Bo Jackson are unusually gifted–they’re up here and the rest of us are down here,” Borchard said, indicating a wide gap with his hands.
As the fork in the road looms, Borchard, despite his innate optimism, admits he is not looking forward to dropping any of his juggling balls.
“I’ve never known anything else,” he said. “It’s going to be tough to walk away.”
