Throwing a Changeup

Charles Chatman was an exceptional running back and safety at Costa Mesa High, but his days as a football player ended while he was on scholarship at Kent State.

Now, with some guidance from his uncle, Cleveland Indian batting coach Clarence Jones, Chatman is playing baseball at Concordia and hoping he didn’t wait too long to change his focus.

“This is what I should have been doing all along, playing baseball,” said Chatman, who rushed for 2,500 yards and 29 touchdowns at Costa Mesa in 1994. “I kick myself in the butt. People told me I could have been a professional baseball player, but football seemed to be my calling at the time.”

With four regular-season games remaining--including a key doubleheader at noon today against visiting Westmont--Chatman is batting .376 and has set school records with 15 home runs and 55 runs. He also has 51 runs batted in and 19 stolen bases.

Chatman is hardly the first to go down this path. Fred Lynn, John Elway and Danny Ainge are among numerous examples of athletes who excelled in two sports but ultimately chose one over the other.

Lynn went to USC on a football scholarship but quit to focus on baseball, later becoming an all-star center fielder with the Red Sox and Angels. Elway, who played football and baseball at Stanford, briefly played in the New York Yankee farm system before his all-pro career as a Denver Bronco quarterback. Ainge played baseball for the Toronto Blue Jays while he was at BYU before beginning his long NBA career in 1981.

While Chatman’s attempt is comparatively low-profile, Concordia Coach Jackie Schniepp believes the 22-year-old has a good chance of being drafted.

“He’s been in school awhile and they like them younger,” Schniepp said. “But he’s their kind of an athlete. Charles has the best speed we have seen and raw athleticism.”

Chatman, who began his college career at Golden West in 1995, has earned this second chance by taking advantage of NAIA eligibility rules, which offer young athletes greater flexibility in the number of seasons they can play. Chatman joined the Eagle baseball team this spring, and plans to play again next year if he isn’t drafted in June.

If Chatman stays at Concordia through next year, he would have the benefit of six seasons of competitive play--three in baseball--which is unusual for a college career. It might help impress the scouts, said Chatman’s uncle.

“Scouts may look at him, see that he’s been in all these programs and say, ‘This kid is coachable,’ ” Jones said. “ ‘He hasn’t had any problems. He’s been able to take direction wherever he’s been.’ ”

One of 10 children in a family divided by divorce, Chatman attended high school at Tustin, Foothill and Costa Mesa. In 1994, he was a second-team all-county football pick. His 414-yard performance against Aliso Niguel was four yards short of the county single-game rushing record at the time.

He also was an All-Pacific Coast League baseball selection, but football seemed to be his ticket to a free college education, Chatman said.

Most college football recruiters passed on him, though, telling Chatman he was undersized at 5 feet 10, 185 pounds and a step too slow. In the end, he went to Golden West to start over again.

“It was frustrating,” Chatman said. “What I had done in football [in high school] and then people were telling me I wasn’t good enough to get a Division I scholarship. That drove me to go to Golden West to prove that I was good enough.”

Chatman was urged on by current Tustin football Coach Myron Miller, a longtime mentor to Chatman who coached him at Costa Mesa and opened his home to him when the young man had no place else to go. Miller advised Chatman to earn his associate of arts degree and Chatman followed through, also earning back-to-back All-Mission Conference football honors.

Chatman calls Miller “a second father.”

“I’ve lived with him since I was 16 or 17,” Chatman said. “I drive his truck. I’ve stopped tryin’ to understand why Coach Miller does this for me and I just learned to appreciate him, because there’s not too many people in the world like him.”

It was as a freshman at Golden West in late fall of 1995, when the football season had ended, that Chatman started to feel the tug between the two sports. He attempted to go out for the Rustler baseball team but quit, saying he didn’t feel he fit in because he played football.

In 1997, he followed two Golden West offensive linemen to Kent State, where he received a scholarship to play football. He played in 10 games and was the second-leading rusher for the Golden Flashes. But the team went 0-11 and the coaching staff was fired.

Chatman went out for baseball in 1998 but struggled because he was rusty. His decision didn’t sit well, either, with the new football staff, which wanted him to compete in spring practice.

The next fall, he started the first football game of the season at Georgia but was replaced in the second quarter and played little after that.

“I came in thinking that I was going to be ‘the man’ in my senior year there,” he said. “It really hit me in the heart. I felt like the year before I had earned my stripes.”

Chatman said he fell into a deep depression and failed to pass enough classes to be eligible to play baseball in 1999.

“There was a lot of pressure on me,” Chatman said. “I was the first person in our family to go to college. That A.A. degree I got was the first anyone had. The other kids would look up to me. I was a role model.”

While in Ohio, Chatman began spending more time with his uncle, who had recently joined the Indians after 11 years with the Atlanta Braves.

“I gave him a glove and a couple of bats and he would come down to the ballpark and we would talk,” Jones said. “He always wondered if he should have concentrated on baseball.”

Jones encouraged Chatman to give it a try.

That spring, Chatman improved his grades and then moved back to Orange County. He decided to restart his baseball career at Concordia.

Those who know Chatman best are not surprised by his accomplishments at Concordia.

“He’s a tremendously motivated kid,” Miller said.

He’s also developed quickly into an all-around player, Schniepp said.

“What he has done for us at the plate has been incredible this season,” he said. “Charles’ speed and baserunning ability is a great asset. He would have even better [base-stealing] numbers if we didn’t swing the bat so well.”

Concordia (25-20) trails Westmont by one game for the fourth and final playoff spot in the Golden State Athletic Conference.

Jones said his best advice to Chatman has been “to swing down on the ball,” a reminder that helps level out his swing, improving the chance for better contact.

Chatman says playing at the NAIA level, where pitchers tend to nibble at the plate rather than throw 90-mph fastballs, has taught him to be a better hitter.

“Anybody can hit a 90-mph fastball,” he said. “The guys who have always been problems for me are the thumbers, the guys who live on the outside of the plate, don’t give you nothing, don’t challenge you. They try to beat you mentally.

“That’s why I like it here, because it’s given me a chance to work on an aspect of my game that I have never worked on, the mental part.”

Chatman knows he faces an uphill battle.

“When I was playing football I never thought I’d be a professional football player. I just thought I’d get my education paid for,” Chatman said.

“But there was something in my stomach that kept telling me it’s really not what I wanted. Now it’s starting to come around to me that this is what I really should have been doing all along.”