Torn Between Two Loves : Hutchinson Chose Stanford Over Braves and $1.4 Million

You hear it so often now, it has become a cliche: An athlete turns pro before his time “to help my family,” but why is that help so often a Mercedes-Benz parked in front of the same old homestead?

Chad Hutchinson rides a bicycle around campus at Stanford.

His family could have used help. Martha and Lloyd Hutchinson had split up after a long marriage, and Martha was left to raise the five children in San Diego with an Amway business in her home.

Chad was 18, 6 feet 5, 230 pounds, and the Atlanta Braves liked his 94-mph fastball so much they offered him $1.4 million after making him their first pick in the 1995 amateur draft.

Stanford liked his passing so much, they offered him a football scholarship.

“I think he was personally ready to sign [with the Braves],” said Ed Burke, Hutchinson’s football coach at Torrey Pines High. “He was in early practice at Stanford and Atlanta had finally come up with the money he felt was appropriate. [His mother] flew up there. She’s quite a strong woman, and it would have been very easy for her to just say take the money and help out.”

No it wouldn’t.

“I told him I didn’t want the money,” Martha Hutchinson said. “It was his money. He’s a boy. He’s part of a family, but he’s a boy.

“I knew he was sensitive to my situation, and his family values could have swayed him. But I’ve lived my life and made my choices. It was time for him to live his and make his choices.”

Martha knew about life in the minor leagues. Lloyd Hutchinson had been an outfielder in the Philadelphia Phillies’ farm system, and rode buses from Spartanburg, S.C., and Clearwater, Fla., and Reading, Pa. It’s an adventure that quickly becomes a grind for a teenager away from home for the first time.

“I know that he is intelligent and gifted in other areas,” she said of Chad. “If sports was all that he had going for him, it would be different, but he’s smart, disciplined and motivated.”

So Chad chose Stanford. He was a redshirt his first season, then this September was named starting quarterback over senior Tim Carey. Carey left for Hawaii, and Hutchinson started his first college game Sept. 7, passing for 265 yards in a 17-10 loss to Utah.

It has been an up-and-down season for Hutchinson and Stanford, which is 2-5 overall, 1-3 in the Pacific 10, before Saturday’s game against UCLA.

“There’s still a great deal of learning that Chad has to do, and I think Chad will be the first to admit that, but we’ve been really pleased with the progress that he’s made,” Coach Tyrone Willingham said.

“He’s very much like our team at times. We’ve all taken steps in the wrong direction.”

Hutchinson passed for 365 yards in a 27-24 overtime victory over Oregon. But he had games of 161, 148 and 171 yards in losses to Wisconsin, Washington and Oregon State. He has eight interceptions and only four touchdown passes.

“Every game, I’ve taken something away,” he said. “It’s been a learning experience for the whole offense. We’ve had some injuries, and many of us on the offense are redshirt freshmen. We’ve had some hard knocks.”

His development has come without spring football practice, because he pitched for the Cardinal. He was 7-2, with a 3.51 earned-run average as a freshman.

He had been an outside linebacker in football, having come to the sport late, as a high school freshman, but played quarterback as a senior.

He completed 85 of 183 passes for 1,441 yards and eight touchdowns and made some all-star teams when Willingham, then the new Stanford coach, and his staff came to call. They saw that Hutchinson was not a prototype drop-back quarterback.

“In his senior year, we were really hurting in the offensive line and in the first game, the fourth quarter, he got tired of taking the pounding and took off on a scramble,” Burke said. “The cornerback came up and Chad let his frustration out and just ran over that cornerback. It was the best hit by one of our running backs all season.

“The Stanford people who were recruiting him saw that on the film and looked at me as if to say, ‘How can you let someone with that kind of talent do that?’ I just told them that he was frustrated that we wouldn’t let him play linebacker that year.

“He has a linebacker’s mentality.”

Make that had.

“One of the things I had to learn here was to get away from that,” he said. “In high school, you could do that, but now I can’t take that approach.”

For that, Stanford baseball Coach Mark Marquess should be glad, though he says he does not fear for injury to his pitcher.

“Well, you can worry, but my perspective is a little different because I did both,” he said. “You can’t worry about injury. He’s a great competitor and has to compete.”

He also has to think about the future. On the horizon could be another decision, perhaps just as hard: the NFL or professional baseball?

Hutchinson can be drafted again after two more baseball seasons at Stanford. But he has three more seasons of football eligibility.

“The decision [to turn down the Braves] was the hardest I’ve ever had to make in my life,” he said. “I don’t want to think about having to do it again.”

And if somehow the 94-mph fastball goes away, and football doesn’t work out, there is a Stanford degree, being earned while he rides a bicycle around campus instead of buses around the minor leagues.