Sleeper Sensation: 44th-Round Pick Bostick Making Most of Baseball Journey

This is the long and winding road of a 44^th-round draft pick. Or how Christopher Bostick traveled from the snow belt of western New York, to the lineup of the Indianapolis Indians, bringing along one of the hottest bats this season in Triple-A baseball.

It is June, 2011.
For nearly three days Bostick and his father have followed the baseball draft from their home in Rochester; a futile vigil for the moment that never seems to come. The rounds go by . . . the 10^th . . . the 20^th . . . the 30^th . . .
"A lot of waiting around. A lot of watching and listening in," Bostick says now. "There were the emotions I was going through, thinking that I wasn't going to get a shot. Finally, I just stopped watching and went to get ready to play. I had an American Legion game that night. Then I heard my father going crazy in the other room. He told me I'd been drafted by Oakland. I looked it up, it actually happened."
OK, he wasn't exactly a bonus baby. Just out of high school - where by his count he played only 17 games as a senior because of Rochester's moody spring weather - he went in the 44^th round. That doesn't even exist anymore. He'd waited for 1,335 players to be chosen ahead of him. A small town. But the journey had started.
"It's a situation where I knew nothing was going to be given to me. I knew I was going to have to work for everything, and I like it that way. I knew whatever I was going to get was going to be earned. It makes me appreciate it a lot more."
December of 2013.  Bostick is traded to the Texas organization.
December of 2014. Traded again, to Washington.
September of 2016. One more move, to the Pittsburgh Pirates, and eventually Indianapolis. Four organizations, and not yet 24. Grasshoppers don't jump that often.
"When you start, you never think you're going to be the one that gets traded and goes somewhere else," he says. "You don't expect to get traded one time, and then after once, you really don't expect to get traded again, and then a third time.
"I've gotten to meet a lot of people. I joke and I say I don't think I've ever played against a team that I don't have an ex-teammate on. It's been a cool experience, learning from all the different minds. I've basically got a new set of coaches every year, new set of teammates, new set of everything. All organizations are different. I've kind of gotten a scope of how different places do things."
It is May 8, 2017.
Bostick was one of the few Indians who hit well in April, and his average is .320 when the Pirates tell him to meet them in Los Angeles.
He makes two of the best calls of his life, dialing his fiancé Lora and his parents, to give them the news. He is in dreamland, as all first-time call-ups invariably are. "The phone is ringing, and you feel like it's ringing forever," he says now. "You keep going, pick up the phone, pick up the phone.'''<br>Eventually, they do, and they all gather in Dodger Stadium to watch Christopher Bostick - the kid who waited three days to get drafted - in the first major league game of his life. His parents have never been to a big league game before. Have never been to the West Coast. "It gave them a reason to go to Hollywood," he says.<br>"It's still hard to fight back tears. It's hard to really put into perspective everything I've gone through - through trades, the 44<sup>th&nbsp;</sup>round of the draft, all the places I've been. It all kind of culminated to one moment."<br>He is with the Pirates only four days, goes 0-for-4, and returns to Indianapolis. But something has happened. "When young players go get a taste and come back, they realize,OK, I can do this. I'm a major league baseball player,''' Indians manager Andy Barkett says. "When you have that feeling as a player, it changes you a little bit."
It is May 19.
Bostick has been back eight games and gone 18-for-35 for the Indians. His bat could grill the hot dogs at Victory Field.
"Just the experience, even though it was just four days, ignites something in you," he says. "Understanding that you can be there, I think that definitely gives you some added confidence. And then trying to take the confidence and put it into your approach and your attitude. Just a combination of things happened at once, where I was feeling really good, and that's kind of like baseball is."
It is now, in early June.
Bostick is hitting .316 to lead the team. Until the Pirates call again, he is a mainstay in the Indians lineup, not to mention an articulate and thoughtful young man. Talk to him five minutes, and you can't decide if he should be playing second base or running for governor.
"Obviously," Barkett said, "his parents did a great job raising him."
That'd be Ken, the carpenter, and Nancy, the nurse. Bostick keeps his broken bats for a reason. Ken uses them to build stools, bedside tables, coffee tables. "So I have a ton of really cool things," Christopher says, "and they're all made out of my bats."
The bats that aren't broken have been producing pretty well.
Barkett suggests a few reasons. "His swing is very simple, he has a short compact approach, he hits the ball hard, there's not a lot of holes. And his speed also helps him stay consistent. When you can run, it helps you stay out of slumps."
Bostick is engaged, he's playing well, and his future is bright. A lot of guys picked before him back in 2011 should be so lucky. He takes a moment to put his road in perspective. By the way, he's pretty good at that.
"A first-rounder who might not make it, they look at them and say, `Oh, was he a bust?' So I kind of look at myself as a 44^th-rounder and think, well, I'm kind of a steal, then.
"It's hard to put into words. Long journey for sure. A lot of ups and downs. I've always said I can't express the gratitude I have for everyone who has helped me. There's a lot more than just me out on the field. A lot of people say they can't wait to make it, just because of all the people who said they couldn't. For me it's the opposite. It's for all the people who said I could. It means so much more to me because of that.
"We as players put a lot of pressure on ourselves because we want to do well, and it is our livelihood. But at the end of the day, it's always good to remember that baseball is still a game. It's a child's game. We all do this because we're too afraid to grow up."