Wake Forest Athletics
Wake Forest Baseball's Scott Daeley
6/21/1999 12:00:00 AM | Baseball
March 22, 1999
By Jay Reddick
WINSTON-SALEM, N.C.--Around this time a year ago, most baseball coaches might have been wondering what they had gotten themselves into with Scott Daeley.
Sure, the junior college transfer was providing great defense in center field, and his rapport with teammates was great, but he just wasn't swinging the bat.
On March 31, the Deacon leadoff hitter's average was .171. But George Greer knew it was only a matter of time before Daeley snapped out of it.
"I went to him one afternoon and told him, 'You're going to be our center fielder, and you're going to bat leadoff for the rest of the year, no matter what,'" Greer said. "And it took some pressure off him. I don't know if that did it, or if it was just timing."
"I just got into a funk and couldn't get out of it," Daeley said. "But the coaches stuck by me, and that was key. I just started not trying to do so much, not worrying so much about the outcome, and the hits started coming."
Daeley's turnaround was immediate and dramatic. He batted .398 in April, hit .417 in the ACC Tournament and finished the year at a respectable .299 average.
This season, he's shown even more why the Wake Forest coaching staff was right to put its faith in him. Through mid-March, he was batting a scorching .368 with a team-high seven stolen bases.
"He's the catalyst for our team," said Greer. "As he goes, we go."
What drives Daeley is the sense that he always has something to prove. Unrecruited out of high school, he has earned his way into an everyday starting job for one of the top 25 teams in the country. And all it took was hard work and perseverance.
Daeley and Greer have several theories between them to explain why Daeley had to go the junior college route instead of jumping straight from Mater Dei High in Orange, Calif., to Division I.
The first, Daeley admits, is his size. He's listed at 5-foot-10, 178 pounds in the media guide, which makes him the only Deacon outside of middle infielders shorter than six feet.
Second are his statistics. "I've never been a big numbers guy," Daeley said. "You're not going to hear about me hitting .450 or something. I do a lot more of the little things you don't see. People don't notice that unless you see it every day."
Thirdly, Daeley was stuck at shortstop as a high school senior, and recruiters weren't able to see his full range of abilities. As Greer says simply, "Scott is a center fielder."
And fourth, Daeley says, he just may not have been good enough for Division I coming out of high school.
"I think I could have had an opportunity to (play Division I), but I would have sat my freshman year," Daeley said. "I certainly wasn't going to get scholarships thrown at me. I would have walked on somewhere if I had gotten any interest. But I never got any phone calls back."
So Daeley went to Cypress Junior College in his home state of California, a decision he now calls "the best I ever made." His skills were appreciated at Cypress; he got to play center field, and he got stronger and more confident.
And it showed in his numbers. He hit .350, set school records for runs and stolen bases and was named MVP of the 1997 junior college state championships after hitting two home runs in the title game.
"I got a chance to develop as a player at Cypress," Daeley said. "There's great coaches, and it was what I needed at the time, playing 150 games a year. It's a great opportunity. I learned a lot, got a lot stronger, then after that I was ready to play Division I, a lot more than I was in high school."
And the Division I coaches started calling. He ended up with official visits to Oklahoma, Tennessee and Wake Forest, and the Deacs soon became the favorites.
Wake Forest discovered Daeley through Scott Pickler, the Cypress coach and a friend of Deacon assistant Bobby Moranda.
"Scott told Bobby, 'I have my favorite player ever here, Scott Daeley, and you have to take a look at him,'" Greer said. "He did, and we're lucky to have him."
Whether the news spread from there to other coaches, or whether Pickler was touting Daeley to other coaches as well, the player was gratified.
"I had a decent year as a freshman, not great," Daeley said. "And all of a sudden, people started calling. I probably got overrecruited, if anything, but that's the respect a Scott Pickler has. It had always been a case of 'yeah, I guess we'll take you,' but not this. It was pretty exciting, and the first time I ever really felt wanted."
Which, he realizes now, is why he tried so hard to push at the beginning of last year. But now that he knows his position is safe, he just keeps getting better.
"His confidence is way up there, and he passes that on to the other players," Greer said. "And they've shown confidence in him by electing him captain. He's been great for our program."
