By Pete Cava
PBR Indiana Correspondent

As the Victory Field grounds crew unfurled the tarpaulin, Brock Huntzinger glanced at the foreboding skies over downtown Indianapolis.   “Maybe it’ll come and pass,” he said softly.  

Huntzinger pitches for the Norfolk Tides of the Triple-A International League, who would open a four-game series with the Indianapolis Indians that Friday night.  

”I’ve been here plenty of times, just never on the field,” said Huntzinger, a native of Anderson, Ind., who starred for Pendleton Heights High School.   “I’d come with my dad.  One time our high school radio teacher brought a bunch of guys down.  But no, I've never pitched here.” 

Huntzinger’s pass list for the game hovered in the 50-to-60 range.  “My mom, dad, my grandparents,” 6-foot-3, 200-pound right-hander explained.  “My sisters, my aunts, uncles.  I had to call and talk to the head honchos, and say, ‘Hey, I’m from here!’”  

This night, however, there was more at stake for Huntzinger – a lot more than just another baseball game, more than pitching before family and friends for the first time in an eight-year professional career.  

And he wasn't about to tip his hand.  Not until the final out, not until after Victory Field’s traditional postgame Friday Fireworks.  

Brock Alan Huntzinger enjoyed a typical Indiana boyhood – “Throwing a ball around, playing some kind of sport,” he recalled.  “I probably told every elementary school teacher I ever had I was going to play in the big leagues.” 

Huntzinger started pitching in Little League when he was 10 or 11.  At Pendleton Heights he played for Bill Stoudt, the legendary Indiana Baseball Hall of Fame coach.  “He ran a tight ship,” said Brock.  “He kept everybody in line and instilled some values that I still carry with me today.” 

Those elementary school predictions began to take form in 2006, his junior year with the Arabians.  “We were playing Greenfield-Central,” he said.  “Kyle Gibson (now a member of the Minnesota Twins rotation) was a senior, and he had a bunch of scouts at the game.  We faced off against each other, and Pendleton ended up winning.  I pitched and had a pretty good game.”  

Brock’s performance impressed big league scouts, who handed questionnaires to his parents, Jeff and Patty Huntzinger.  “From that point on,” he said, “I started to notice the fisherman hats and whatnot in the stands.” 

College baseball programs also showed interest, and Indiana University offered Huntzinger a baseball scholarship.  “I decided early in the fall of my senior year,” he said, “whatever the national signing day was.”  

By his senior season, 2007, Huntzinger was one of several top pitching prospects with Hoosier roots.  Jarrod Parker (Norwell, Ossian) and Drew Storen (Brownsburg) were rated among the best high school prospects, while Alabama’s Tommy Hunter (a Cathedral graduate) was one of the best college arms available in the June draft.  Huntzinger had played with Storen and Hunter as a member of the prestigious Indiana Bulls travel team. 

Huntzinger finished the regular season with seven wins, no losses and a tidy 0.16 earned run average.  “I think I gave up a run against Shelbyville, like halfway through,” he said.  

Brock’s season ended with a 5-1 sectional loss to Hamilton Heights.  “The second hitter hit a ball off his knuckles over the lower 90 on the left field corner,” he said, “and the wheels fell off.”  

In the June draft ten days later, the Arizona Diamondbacks made Jarrod Parker their first-round pick (No. 9 overall), while the Texas Rangers selected Hunter in the compensatory round (54^th overall).  Storen, drafted by the Yankees, decided to enroll at Stanford (two years later, as a draft-eligible sophomore, he was the top draft pick of the Washington Nationals).    

The Boston Red Sox selected Huntzinger in the third round (114^th overall).  “It took me by surprise,” he said.  “From everything the scouts were calling and telling and asking, it looked like it was going to be seventh to tenth, eleventh or twelfth round.”    

Boston signed Huntzinger on June 12, 2007, and assigned him to its rookie Gulf Coast League team in Florida.  “It’s all about getting your body used to going out there and taking the ball every five days,” he said.  

Splitting 2008 between Lowell, Mass., (short season New York-Penn) and Greenville, S.C. (low-A South Atlantic), Huntzinger compiled a 7-3, 3.15 slate.  He went 10-9 for Greenville in 2009, and in 2010 he was 7-8 with Salem, Va. (high-A Carolina).  

“If you go to college to become an engineer, you spend four years in school, and then at the end you become an engineer,” he said.  “Well, for me those four years were like college, learning how to be a baseball player, how to act professionally, how to talk to people, how to act when you’re getting your stuff hit around a little bit, how to react when you’re throwing well, how to maintain a philosophy on how you’re going to attack the hitters, or develop a plan, or read swings.  It’s all about learning.” 

Huntzinger joined Portland, Maine (Double-A Eastern), for 2011 and went 5-11 with a 6.17 ERA in 25 starts.  After four starts and mixed results in 2012, he told Portland pitching coach Bob Kipper:  “If I keep doing this, I’m not going to have a job anymore.” 

Brock volunteered to become a relief pitcher, citing solid secondary numbers from 2011 that included 123 strikeouts in 124 innings and just 41 bases on balls.  “And come to find out, that’s what (the Red Sox) were thinking about,” he said.  “But they didn’t want to move me and have me feel like I got demoted, or I wasn’t important anymore.”  

Kipper, a reliever for the Angels, Pirates and Twins from 1985-92, guided Huntzinger through the transition.  That June, Brock went 1-0 with two saves and a 1.80 ERA over 15 innings to earn Red Sox minor league pitcher-of-the-month honors.  “It’s been a good turnaround,” Portland manager Kevin Boles told the Maine Press Herald.  “He really has taken to this role, turned into a quality reliever.” 

Promoted to Pawtucket, R.I. (Triple-A International), on August 28, Huntzinger helped the PawSox defeat Charlotte for the Governors’ Cup.  “That’s something I’ll have forever,” he said.  “No one can ever take that away from me or any of those guys on that team.”   

Dividing 2013 between Double-A and Triple-A, Huntzinger continued to put up excellent numbers in relief:  3-2, 2.32 with 13 saves in 25 games for Portland and 2-2, 1.43 in 24 appearances with Pawtucket.  

With several former minor league teammates playing for Boston, Huntzinger watched from home as the Red Sox went on to win the American League pennant and beat the St. Louis Cardinals in the World Series.  Brock never got the call.  “Any time you’re not in the big leagues at the end of the year,” he admitted, “it’s a little bit of a disappointment.”  

He became a free agent on November 5 when the Red Sox failed to add him to its 40-man roster.  “Yeah, it stung a little bit,” he said, “but it’s just another piece of wood on the fire.” 

After talking to the Athletics, Phillies, Cubs and Orioles, Huntzinger signed with Baltimore on November 14.  The following day he said so long to his new bride, Cait, a science and biology teacher at Fishers Junior High school, and headed to the Dominican Republic for winter ball with the Estrellas de Oriente. “Estrellas didn’t make the playoffs,” he said, “so after Christmas, I went into a draft and played for a team in Santiago, the Aguilas.  It was a great experience.  I’m really glad I went.”    

During spring training this year in Sarasota, Fla., Huntzinger was reunited with an old Indiana Bulls teammate, Tommy Hunter, who’d been traded to Baltimore in 2011.  “Me and Tommy were in the same PFP (pitchers fielding practice) group,” Brock said.  “We shot the breeze a lot about guys we’d played with on the Bulls.  Going into a new environment, it was cool to have somebody that I knew in camp and bounce some things off him.”  

Toward the end of spring camp, Hunter headed north as the Orioles closer while Huntzinger was assigned to Norfolk.  “He’s only 25, you look at the history of him, he might be getting ready to step to another level,” Baltimore manager Buck Showalter told MLB.com.  “I was impressed with him.  Aggressive, good presentation, he wasn’t scared, Indiana high school kid.  He’s got a good grip on it.” 

After wrapping up a four-game series in Louisville on May 8, Huntzinger drove north to his home in suburban Indianapolis, where he was greeted by Cait and their 75-pound Gordon setter, Walter.  “I bought the dog as part of my proposal to my wife,” said Brock.  “I figured she wasn’t going to say no to the dog.”  

The following afternoon Brock was in the visitors clubhouse, preparing for one of the 144 games Norfolk plays in a 150-day span.  “It’s not all peaches and cream,” he said.  “Everyone thinks you’re famous and you’re rich, and you’re not.  I come home for the offseason, and pick up rocks in cornfields for my dad, or wash dump trucks in the middle of winter. 

“I’m happy with where I’m at.  If you work hard at it, there’s nothing like going out there and competing and having success.  I want to go until they run me out.”   

Norfolk beat Indianapolis 10-7 that night, as Huntzinger watched from the right field bullpen.  After the game and the fireworks, he ambled toward a gate near the home plate side of the first-base dugout.  

On cue, Indianapolis Indians communications manager Brian Bosma swung open the gate and Huntzinger summoned his sister Jody and her boyfriend, Cal Wilson, onto the field – ostensibly to have a picture taken with Brock.  

With the throng of friends and relatives huddled in the stands, Brock stepped aside.  Cal got down on one knee and surprised Jody with a ring.  When she accepted, the newly engaged couple embraced and Brock’s night was complete.  

The following day, Huntzinger was the third of six Norfolk pitchers in a 3-2, 12-inning win over Indianapolis.  In his first appearance at Victory Field, he threw two and one-third scoreless innings with four strikeouts – wondering, perhaps, about his chances of pitching at Baltimore’s Camden Yards before season’s end.