newjerseynewsroom.com

BY MATT SUGAM

NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM

PISCATAWAY – Pat Kivlehan never planned on playing college baseball. His dream was always to run out of the tunnel on fall Saturdays. So growing up he went to football summer camps rather than baseball showcases.

Baseball was a hobby. Something to do with friends.

He spent much more time on the gridiron than the diamond in high school, but it was the latter that he grew tired off.

“At the time [of looking at college] I was all about football,” Kivlehan said after practice today. “I was kind of burned out of baseball. I’d had enough, but once I didn’t have it I really started to miss it a lot.”

It was the case of “you don’t know what you got ‘til it’s gone.”

“It’s kind of true,” Kivlehan said of the saying. “Springs would go by and I’d come watch some games and watch the Mets and the Yankees and be like ‘damn, I miss it a lot’ and then the opportunity presented itself.”

That opportunity was an open tryout. One coach Fred Hill thought Kivlehan could excel at given his athleticism. And the fact that he played safety in football meant he had the speed needed to run the bases effectively.

“The one thing that he could do definitely was run, so at worst he could be a pinch runner,” Hill said. "We didn’t know whether he could play defense or whether he could hit or anything like that until we saw him a few times and it looked like he could do some things.”

Though Hill would have never predicted what Kivlehan has been doing.

After four years of not picking up a bat, the West Nyack, N.Y. native needed some time to shake off the rust. Once he did so, he went on a tear.

Through 26 games the 6-foot-2, 211 pounder is batting .381 with 24 RBIs and seven homeruns. The senior’s got the best bat on the team, much different than his role in football.

In four years on the team, Kivlehan was mainly a special teams contributor, seldom seeing the field otherwise. Because of that, Kivlehan decided not to participate in Rutgers Pro Day despite knowing he could put up good times.

He was yearning for baseball, and now he may have a chance to play professionally.

Hill noted that MLB scouts have been inquiring about Kivlehan when they come to games. And fortunately for Kivlehan he has another year of eligibility left.

According to NCAA rules, a student athlete has five years of eligibility, participating in a sport for four. Since Kivlehan spent four in football and this is his first in baseball and also still his fourth year as an athlete, he can come back for a fifth year to play one more season of baseball.

But Kivlehan is not sure if he will come back for that fifth year yet. The third baseman's also not sure if he would get drafted after this season or the next if he did come back.

“I guess that’s [getting drafted] a possibility, but I haven’t been playing long enough to worry about that stuff. That’s a whole long process,” Kivlehan said. “If that opportunity presents itself, who wouldn’t want to do that? But I don’t know — I feel like I’m playing with house money being out of the game so long and just to come back now I’m just having fun playing.”

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