Quick but winding path to stardom for Kilgore's Todd
By KARY BOOHER The Springfield (Mo.) News Leader

File photo by Kathy Bowden ONLY A SHORT WHILE AGO - Four years ago, now, Jess Todd (right) was a senior at Kilgore High School, helping the Bulldogs almost get to the Class 4A state tournament. Fast forward four years and Todd is on the cusp of baseball stardom - he's tearing up the minor leagues and has a chance to even make the U.S. Olympic team. The folks in Springfield, Mo., where Todd now pitches for the local Cardinals' minor league team, can't seem to read enough about the softspoken Kilgore native. This story was originally printed earlier this week in the Springfield News Leader.

EDITOR'S NOTE: This story was written a few days ago as a preview of the Texas League All-Star Game on Thursday by a reporter from Springfield, Mo., where Kilgore native Jess Todd now pitches for the Springfield Cardinals of the St. Louis Cardinals organization. Kilgore News Herald sports editor Mitch Lucas felt this article was a good description of the path that Todd has taken since he graduated from Kilgore High School in 2004. Here it is, courtesy of the Springfield News Leader.

I'VE BEEN EVERYWHERE, MAN - Kilgore native Jess Todd, who signed with Texas Tech out of KHS, decided not to ply his trade in Lubbock, opting instead to play at Navarro College in Corsicana (above, left). From there, Todd made his way to the University of Arkansas (right), where he had a spectacular junior season, even setting the Southeastern Conference Tournament single-game strikeout record before being drafted by the St. Louis Cardinals organization last June.

Who knows where life would have taken him had he stopped believing, had he quit trying to kick down one door after another until one finally opened?

Maybe he'd be living near his mom and dad's 20-acre spread back in east Texas and driving along the same dirt roads and passing by the same prairie fields he did as a teenager.

Jess Todd could've been leading that life these days. And that would have been OK -- a quiet, small-town life hundreds of miles away from the nearest big-league ballpark and his childhood dreams.

Left photo a file photo from Navarro College; photo at right an AP file photo

Yet the regrets might have tugged at his heart before too long, especially had the wind kicked up the runaway gossip from old-timers around town. There would have been endless and unnecessary debate about why he didn't just stick it out at Texas Tech instead of coming home three weeks into his freshman year. Others might have wondered why he wouldn't have swallowed his pride and headed somewhere, anywhere, after Tech later blocked his way to the rival Texas Longhorns baseball program.

Looking for a conversation piece in tonight's Texas League All-Star Game at Hammons Field? Todd, a Springfield Cardinals right-hander and likely North Division starter, could've been back in Kilgore, Texas, tonight doing nothing, being a could-have-been.

"He could have thrown up his hands and gone to work, which is what me and my husband worried about," said his mother, Kim

Todd. "It seemed like every door he tried was slammed in his face. It seemed like whenever the door was shut, he would run around and try to find another one to go through."

Which is why Todd himself is in awe of his place among the elite of Double-A baseball.

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"Things are happening so fast right now," Todd said the other day. "I never would have thought it."

Well, maybe ...

"You can't let anything get you down," Todd said. "You never know when it can be taken away from you."

What a year it has been already.

When the St. Louis Cardinals assigned Todd to its High-A Florida State League affiliate at the end of spring training, the consensus was that he would eventually push his way to Double A Springfield but likely wouldn't arrive until well after June.

Seemed a safe assumption. The 23-year-old pitcher, after all, was beginning his first full season in pro ball after St. Louis snagged him in the second round of the June 2007 draft out of the University of Arkansas.

But could anyone have seen this coming? He's here with a season earned run average of 1.74 ... with election not only to the TL's summer showcase but the Florida State League's all-star team, too ... and there is the sinking fastball adopted only last month ... and a near no-hitter already against Corpus Christi ... and the stat line of 72 strikeouts in nearly 83 innings.

If the minor leagues aren't on notice now, they better be.

Todd's not one for long, drawn-out answers in interviews and never tries to offer snazzy quotes, but that's probably to be expected. He's no-nonsense right down to his pair of leather cowboy boots.

"Todd has been superb!" St. Louis farm director Jeff Luhnow wrote in an e-mail to The News- Leader. "Our scouting model sure worked well with him."

Said Springfield pitching coach Bryan Eversgerd: "He's all business when he's out there."

And, paying Todd the ultimate compliment, Northwest Arkansas manager Brian Poldberg, his team in town a couple of weeks ago during the thick of a playoff race, shook his head and grinned.

"I'm glad we missed him," Poldberg said.

Ol' college try

In Texas, friends and family in and around his hometown of Kilgore are tracking Todd's season. The Kilgore News Herald runs an occasional update, and the nearby Longview newspaper 10 miles away keeps tabs after almost every start. Some friends even listen to games via Internet.

But tracking Todd, too, is a man in Austin, the University of Texas pitching coach.

"He'd have been really good to have at the University of Texas my first year," Skip Johnson, a former coach at Navarro College, said. "He's a special human being. You give him the ball and ..."

Yeah, it might have been something -- might have, had Texas Tech not blocked Todd's path to Austin.

It's a long, complicated story triggered by a change of heart that led to a long, lonely road through two junior colleges and two lost appeals to the Big 12 Conference.

Sure, Todd eventually found his way through the University of Arkansas, where he parlayed one season of success - he struck out 17 South Carolina batters in a Southeastern Conference Tournament game - into a second-round draft pick and a reported $400,000 payday.

Yet it almost never happened.

"He was really disappointed about it," Johnson remembers of the Big 12 denying Todd's entry into UT. "That was his ultimate dream, to pitch for Texas, and I tried to tell him not to worry about it, that he just had to go out there and prove himself (somewhere)."

Todd and Johnson's paths had crossed in 2004, months after Todd abandoned Lubbock and Tech because he was homesick, and returned home. That fall, Todd was taking night classes at Kilgore's local juco and was somewhat back to his comfort zone.

Kilgore, a town of about 11,300, sits between Dallas and Shreveport, La., just off Interstate 20, and it was there that Todd not only starred on the baseball team but also as a starting linebacker on Kilgore High School's football team that reached the Class 4A quarterfinals.

Lubbock was nearly 500 miles away.

"It was tough for him to come back home," Kim Todd remembered. "Everybody had been calling him, 'Jess Todd, the Texas Tech signee.' They were so proud of him."

One day, Johnson called to gauge Todd's interest in Navarro, a junior college south of Dallas where Johnson was the head coach.

The phone wasn't ringing off the hook at the time, and locals were beginning to wonder. A friend of the family acknowledged that he heard the gossip.

"From my perspective, I don't think he ever felt like giving up," said Scott Majors, whose son Josh was a high school teammate of Todd's - Majors was an excellent catcher for the Bulldogs, who came one win short of making the 4A state tournament in '04. "I don't think there was ever a doubt he was going to play somewhere in college again, and I think he always had that dream."

In Johnson, Todd found a mentor, and the two could have been some tandem for the Texas Longhorns. At Navarro, Todd served as the team's closer his first season and then blazed a trail as a sophomore, finishing 9- 2 with 73 strikeouts and a 1.47 ERA. trail as a sophomore, finishing 9-2 with 73 strikeouts and a 1.47 ERA.

A 1-0 victory for Navarro in a juco regional tournament earlier that spring opened eyes.

"That 1-0 game separated him," Johnson said.

Road block

That junior college success led to Texas offering a scholarship. Todd qualified academically because he graduated with an associate's degree, which was confirmed by UT's sports information department.

But Tech, a conference rival of the Longhorns, threw him a curve. In the NCAA, student athletes may transfer and play for another Division I school if they are released from their letter of intent. Tech refused to do so when it came to Texas.

"It's just standard," said Blayne Beal, associate director of media relations for Tech. "That way people can't transfer to another Big 12 Conference school - and it's that way for all leagues - because we wouldn't want to face them."

Two years later, it's still a touchy subject with the Todds.

"All Tech told me was that I had to graduate from a junior college. We had it in writing and everything," Todd said. "But it still didn't matter."

His mother said she presented the Big 12 Conference's appeals board with an e-mail she received in 2004 from Tech's athletic academic advisers, noting the letter made clear that Tech wouldn't stand in the way of Todd transferring after he graduated from a juco.

She also said she and her husband Tom pleaded with Tech, telling school officials that Todd transferred out because he had been homesick, that he had lost 20 pounds because of the stress he had placed on himself in his short time in Lubbock.

"He'll be the first to admit that he got stars in his eyes when (Tech) offered him a scholarship," Kim said. "He had a closet full of burnt orange shirts and hats (Longhorns colors), but Tech was still Big 12 and he thought it wouldn't be far away."

The Todds lost that appeal and then Todd himself pleaded with the conference later in the summer of 2006. That appeal, too, was denied.

Little did he know that Arizona State, Florida State and Arkansas would soon be calling. Arkansas had recruited him in high school, the first to make inquiries, Kim Todd said.

With less than three weeks before the fall semester got under way, Todd transferred to Arkansas.

Road ahead

Now all eyes are on Todd and whether he will blitz through Springfield and reach Triple-A by season's end.

For the season, he has issued only 18 walks to go along with the 72 strikeouts in 83 innings - an outstanding 4-1 strikeout-towalks ratio.

Honestly, he has endured only one forgettable outing since climbing into the Texas League, that coming Sunday when he allowed five runs, all earned, in five innings of a 7-1 loss at Tulsa.

In his seven prior appearances, Todd (2-2) had worked at least 6 1/3 innings.

While he owns a variety of pitches, including a hard slider enhanced at Navarro and a diving circle change-up that acts somewhat like a split-fingered fastball, Todd is throwing a new wrinkle at batters.

It's a sinking fastball learned in the first week in Double-A.

"We thought he could use something that would go in the other direction," said Eversgerd, Springfield's first-year pitching coach. "And he took to it pretty quickly, and it's elevated his game to another level. He learned it in the bullpen, brought it out and he's used it very effectively, to say the least."

Todd appears wise enough to use it when he needs to. If it's not working, it's out.

Take a May 30 start, five days after nearly no-hitting Corpus Christi. Unable to get his fastball over for strikes, Todd used his slider. That night, he threw 17 of them, 16 for strikes. That was the game in which he allowed a single on the third pitch of the game and then retired 21 of the next 25 San Antonio Missions, handing the ball to the bullpen after seven innings.

"For his first full season, he's obviously impressed," said catcher Matt Pagnozzi, who has caught Todd in most of his starts. "For him to learn new pitches and to develop so quickly, it's pretty neat to see.

"In his seven innings down in Corpus, he had pretty much everything on. That was fun. No matter if you were going inside or out, if you're using your fastball, change-up or slider, it's fun to catch that."

It has been some journey, for sure.

"We knew he loved the game. We knew he didn't want to ever quit," Kim Todd said. "We're just very proud of him for not giving up. He kept his head on straight.

"You know, he hasn't completed his dream yet, but he's on his way, I hope."