LoonsNest: Family Like a Rock for Seager
MIDLAND, Mich. - Corey Seager has a lot going for him. At just 19 years old and loaded with baseball talent, the sky is the limit for the native of Kannapolis, N.C. The Los Angeles Dodgers selected Seager with the 18th overall pick in the MLB amateur draft around this time last year and he could very well be playing his home games at Dodger Stadium, instead of Dow Diamond, within a relatively short period of time.
Seager, a 6-foot-4, 215-pound shortstop, started his professional career last summer in Ogden after the draft and began his first full season in the professional ranks this April with the Great Lakes Loons in Midland and is adjusting well.
"It's not bad to be able to wake up every day to come and play baseball," Seager said. "But other than that, you just have to work through the little stuff and daily grind to try and win games for your team."
Seager comes from a family that is as athletic as they come. His dad, Jeff Seager, played college baseball at Fairleigh Dickinson in New Jersey and his mom, Jody Seager, was a three-sport high school athlete. Corey is the youngest of three brothers. The oldest is Kyle, who played at North Carolina. Now he starts at third base and hits third in the batting order for the Seattle Mariners. The middle brother is Justin, who is a junior at UNC-Charlotte that plays corner infield and outfield. He was the Atlantic 10 Conference Co-Player of the Year this spring.
"They've really helped prepare me," Corey said. "I talk to my oldest brother just about every day since we have the same schedule, so it's easier to talk to him. I talk to my middle brother as much as I can. They helped me because I got rundown a little bit (at the start). It was good playing against them when I was younger because it helped me mature as a player."
Along with his brothers, Seager lists his biggest baseball influences as his dad and his high school coach, Joe Hubbard, the head coach at Northwest Cabarrus HS in Concord, N.C. Seager and his brothers all played for Hubbard. He added that his parents created an atmosphere that helped succeed both athletically and academically.
"Because he played ball, my dad was a tremendous help for me being a baseball player," Seager said. "But they were both big on school. If I didn't do well in class, they wouldn't let me play. It was a good environment and they were very positive."
The Northwest Cabarrus Trojans went 39-12 over Seager's last two seasons. Seager, who was committed to perennial college baseball powerhouse South Carolina, also played high-level travel baseball when the Trojans were not in season.
"I was able to play against the best kids that were my age," Seager said. "The cool thing is you see a lot of them in this league and you recognize a lot of faces. It just really helped prepare me for the level of competition."
Seager was also able to play for the USA Baseball 16U baseball team in 2010, bringing home a gold medal 2010 COPABE "AA" Pan-American Championships.
"It was a lot of fun," Seager exclaimed. "We got the chance to play Mexico and it was just another opportunity to see some good competition and to just see players from different countries."
After an impressive high school career, Seager was drafted by the Dodgers in the first round in 2012. Even though both of his brothers played college baseball, he said that the decision of whether to play college or professional ball was easy.
"I got picked by a great organization and they made the transition easy," Seager said. "It was a good fit for me and I saw that, so that's why I made the decision to sign."
Even though his post-draft decision was an easy one, it didn't change his anxiety levels in the days leading up to the draft.
"I didn't talk to anybody for three days before the draft," Seager said. "I just let it all go and had my parents deal with most of it. It was nerve-racking, but exciting at the same time. It's a different feeling when your name is actually called on that screen. It's really exciting and it's one of those experiences you need to have to know what's it's really like."
The North Carolina native has not given much thought as to when he might reach the ultimate goal of playing in the Major League, trying to live in the moment as much as he possibly can, adding that Midland and Dow Diamond make it easy to come to the park every day.
"This is a great place to play, it's a nice complex and everyone is really nice," Seager said. "It's easy to come to the park when you have a nice one. It's a nice small town and I don't mind that at all."
Seager, who was a good high school basketball player, is also a huge country music fan and can often be found in his corner of the locker-room with country music blaring. Seager has a Luke Bryan song for his walkup music at Dow Diamond, but added that Eric Church, the last concert he attended, is his favorite artist.
"(Tyler) Ogle is a good country guy, but there's not many. They play the same rap songs every day and that gets kind of old," Seager joked. "I have some speakers in my locker, so we get in our corner and listen."
This feature ran in the June issue of LoonsNest: The Official Magazine of the Great Lakes Loons (Volume 7, Issue 2). Pick up the August issue of the LoonsNest (Volume 7, Issue 3) at Loons home games throughout the rest of the 2013 season.
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