Stories from the MILB: Article 1

February 17, 2026 by mindfulhitting

Height Round

While playing at one of the highest levels in baseball, I couldn’t help but be in awe and disbelief from time to time. While I was apparently good enough to reach the minor leagues, the talent surrounding me was out of this world — sometimes so much so that I simply had to laugh at the raw physical abilities of some of the guys I played alongside.

One quick example was a player who did eventually make it to the Big Leagues. One day I was hitting in one of the four cages at the minor league facility in Tampa. The cages were laid out two by two, and I was in the front left cage. While watching my teammate take his round, my back was to the group in the cage next to us.

Now, I’ve heard big league hitters square up baseballs to the point it sounds like a gunshot going off. It’s something you hear quite often at the highest level, but it never ceases to impress. What I had never experienced, though, was that sound coming from a ball that wasn’t moving. As I watched my teammate take his cuts, I actually caught myself flinching from the crack behind me. “What the hell was that noise?” I asked out loud. “Oh, that’s just Pete.”

I turned to see this player casually taking swings off the tee, making balls pop as if he were hitting water balloons. They were exploding off the bat and echoing through the cage. That kind of sound I had only ever heard off a live pitch. Here I was at the highest level I’d ever played, and I didn’t even know it was possible to hit a stationary ball that hard. He had a bit of what you might call a natural born gift — when I asked one of the veteran coaches how someone could hit a ball like that, he simply laughed and said, “His mom and his dad are the reason he can do that.”

I later watched that same player catch a ball off the end of the bat during a game. My first thought was, oh, he just missed that one — until I watched it sail over the left field wall.

That experience, as impressive as it was, still pales in comparison to another player I crossed paths with — one of the most gifted athletes I have ever encountered. For fun, this guy would throw a ball from home plate over the hitter’s eye, 410 feet away. I didn’t witness it myself, but teammates told me he once threw a ball from center field on one of the minor league fields all the way onto a building across the road. That might not sound remarkable until you consider that from our field to the road was probably 100 feet, followed by six lanes of traffic, a parking lot, and then the building. Simply insane.

One day I had the pleasure (or pain) trying to keep up with him in BP during one of our rehab days — lucky me. I had broken a bone in my wrist, and from where I was standing, whatever he was rehabbing didn’t seem to be slowing him down much. It was my first day swinging on a field in a while, and I was struggling to hit the ball out of the infield. Meanwhile, this guy turns to our coach and says, “I’m just not feeling it. I need to create some more backspin. I need a height round!”

I’d been playing this game a long time. What the hell is a height round?

“I’m going to hit balls as high as I can and try to land them on top of second base!” he announced.

Well, I had to watch this.

First pitch, he missed his target and hit a ball about 430 feet to dead center field — well over the hitter’s eye. We all agrees that he had created some backspin. There I was, struggling to reach the outfield grass, and this guy’s miss traveled farther than any ball I had ever hit in my life. He laughed it off, then hit the next pitch a mile high. It came down just beyond second base. He was pretty pleased with that.

I have to say I was stunned watching both of these guys. Seeing some of the best players in the world do things I didn’t know were possible was eye-opening — and genuinely fun to witness. I can’t say I’m not still a little jealous, but I always knew where my skillset stood, and I’m proud of the level I reached. Sometimes you just have to sit back and enjoy pure talent in action.