'He's just a gritty dirtball:' Astros' Hunter Brown takes blue-collar path to major league dream
Astros righthander Hunter Brown made his first major league start a memorable one, earning a victory with six shutout innings against the Texas Rangers.Homecomings pay homage to the past and retrace paths taken to prominence. Hunter Brown walked one of his every day this winter with a German Shepherd husky mix named Whiskey. Dog and dad traversed the streets of downtown Detroit toward the ballpark that bred Brown’s dreams.
Detroit instills a drive in those who live there, an attitude audiences of HBO’s “Hard Knocks” got a glimpse of this fall. The city’s football coach guzzled giant amounts of caffeine while going on and on about grit. To outsiders, the Lions' Dan Campbell can seem like a caricature. He preaches to a choir for those who call the city home.
Brown has blossomed into one of baseball's best pitching prospects. A fastball that once peaked at 91 mph now can touch 99. His mechanics share striking similarities with Verlander’s, creating understandable — yet unenviable — comparisons.last Monday only augmented the enormous expectations. He tamed the Texas Rangers for six scoreless innings and wielded the arsenal of an ace: the type of front-line starter clubs can’t often draft and develop.
“That was Hunt,” said Chuck VanRobays, one of the coaches who retrieved him. “He was like, ‘Aw, that kinda stinks. Let’s go figure it out.’ ” “I would have been the 35th out of 35 guys,” Brown said. “It was basically just a nice offer. Like, ‘We’ll have you here, but we don’t have any plans for you.’ ”
Before he did, Brown played for VanRobays’ Oakland Bulldogs, a Detroit-based travel team. Brown split his allegiances between the field and shifts at a construction job.
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