[Sly Fox]

Andy's son spent a year on the mountain. Here's how he is faring these days:

Van Slyke follows in dad's footsteps

By Mark Myers email
Collegian Staff Writer

Editor's note: This is the second of a three-part series about Spikes players and their fathers.

Baseball is a sport that induces childhood dreams and fantasies. Everyone's played Little League or at least pick-up Wiffle ball, so kids all over America sit and watch the major leaguers and wonder what it would be like to be in the clubhouse or even on the field.

For State College first baseman A.J. Van Slyke, those dreams could be summed up in one word: Normal.

"You don't know that it is different than what anyone else does because most of your friends' dads are big leaguers, too," Van Slyke said.

Life is far from normal when you're the son of former professional baseball star Andy Van Slyke.

Andy Van Slyke's name is golden in western Pennsylvania. He led the Pittsburgh Pirates to three consecutive National League East titles from 1990-1992. He had his best season in 1992, hitting .324 and finishing fourth in the MVP voting.

Andy Van Slyke's trade from St. Louis to Pittsburgh in 1987 -- along with the drafting of some player named Barry Bonds -- was regarded as the deal that put the Pirates back on the national scene for the first time since 1979.

But for A.J. Van Slyke, the memories of that era didn't really sink in until he was nearing high school.

"Once you get older you think, 'Wow, that was a pretty cool way to grow up,' " A.J. Van Slyke said. "The things you learn from being around big leaguers and stuff like that is pretty cool."

He transferred those childhood lessons into a career, which began when the Cardinals made him their 23rd round draft pick in the 2005 and immediately sent him to the Johnson City Cardinals of the rookie league.

He hit .380 that first season before being called up to New Jersey (now the Spikes) and making quite an impact. He was named to the New York-Penn League All-Star team but couldn't participate because of an injury suffered during a brawl against the Vermont Expos (now the Lake Monsters).

A.J. Van Slyke successfully recovered and was promoted after spring training to The Swing of the Quad Cities where things didn't go all that well, either. He struggled mightily in Davenport, Iowa, hitting .220 before he was demoted to State College. But according to Van Slyke, it's just a part of the game.

"Baseball has its ups and downs," Van Slyke said. "I've had my good years and bad years, and this has been a down year for me. You learn a lot of things for down the road, and you hope you can put them together."

Through the bad times in life, one usually looks to family or friends for help, but for A.J. Van Slyke it's been a solo mission this season. His father, Andy, is currently a coach under Jim Leyland for the American League-leading Detroit Tigers, and his brother Sean is beginning a career of his own in the Los Angeles Dodgers organization with the Ogden Raptors, which is about 2,000 miles away from State College. A.J. Van Slyke has only talked to his brother and father twice since the beginning of the baseball season.

But it's not like A.J. Van Slyke is completely roughing it alone. His current roommate and former college teammate Jared Schweitzer has made the transition quite easy on the veteran. A.J. Van Slyke knew of the consequences coming into the sport, but he said he made this choice on his own, and his father never tried to push him toward the game.

Even though A.J. Van Slyke was born with the natural ability to hit a baseball, he still regarded his years in Pittsburgh as a learning experience in the game of baseball. The 162-game grind was something that didn't appeal to the oldest of the Van Slyke boys early on.

"I wasn't really into baseball when I was growing up. I mean I liked it, but I really wanted to be a football player," A.J. Van Slyke said. "I really focused on football in high school. I was always good at baseball, but I was never the best."

A.J. Van Slyke played football throughout high school, but he threw in baseball just to fill in football's offseason. Being the son of a four-time Gold Glove winner surely came with expectations, but A.J. Van Slyke didn't let them bother him since he wasn't even sure if he was going to play after high school. But as the years dragged on, baseball became more and more appealing to him.

"It wasn't until going into college that I started to say, 'Hey, maybe baseball is something I really want to do for the long run,' " A.J. Van Slyke said.

Deciding between the two sports wasn't an easy one for the 6-foot-2 A.J. Van Slyke, who has what some would call the average body for a football player, but the toll that the body pays in football made his choice a little clearer.

A.J. Van Slyke's love of another sport outside of his father's is comparable to current teammate Brain Schroeder, whose dad was a professional quarterback. The only difference was that Van Slyke saw the writing on the wall before he left for college, and chose to leave the gridiron.

"I actually had more scholarship offers for football," A.J. Van Slyke said. "I only had about two for baseball, and they weren't very good. I had a few full-scholarship offers to be a quarterback, and football was something I really wanted to do, but I knew college was the end of the road for football."

So A.J. Van Slyke decided to follow in his father's footsteps and pursue a career on the diamond. But his career didn't start off the way he planed. A.J. Van Slyke had a less than stellar first season at Liberty University -- hitting only .287 -- but it was his transfer to Kansas that changed his life.

"I made a big leap in college from freshman to sophomore year," A.J. Van Slyke said. "I don't know what happened."

As A.J. Van Slyke avoided the dreaded sophomore slump -- parlaying that into improving enough to catch the eyes of scouts -- he realized that he had made the right decision, especially when he thought about the game he had left.

So as A.J. Van Slyke continues the climb to exceed what his father did in the majors, he admits that even though his dad is happy for him, there was never any pressure to carry on the family name in baseball.

"He would have been pretty excited if I played football," A.J. Van Slyke said. "It was just a life decision. I knew I could play at the professional level and it was something I always wanted to do. So that's the way I went."

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