Canzano: 'Great ones figure it out'

Travis Bazzana and Oregon State have their eyes on Omaha.

I bumped into Gary Bazzana in Scottsdale a couple of weeks ago. He’d flown through the night from Australia to get to the final Pac-12 Conference baseball tournament in Arizona so he could watch his youngest son play.

As the flight landed, Gary glanced at his phone.

There was a text from Travis.

“I’m sick,” the Oregon State second baseman wrote. “I’ve been throwing up all night.”

You forget sometimes that the subjects you cover — particularly ones hitting .415 with 28 home runs — are human. Travis Bazzana is blistering opposing pitching. But I saw the humanity in his father’s eyes that afternoon at Scottsdale Stadium.

“I hope he can get some fluids,” he told me.

Gary sells stone tiles for a living. They’re mostly marble and travertine. “I’m a humble sales rep,” he likes to say. He and his wife, Jenny, live in Wahroonga, about 40 minutes outside of Sydney. That’s where Travis grew up — the youngest of three boys — obsessed with baseball, dreaming about one day playing in the big leagues.

“If you sat down and wrote his story,” his father told me, “if you wrote it as it happened, you just wouldn’t believe it. A kid from Sydney is just not going to come to America and have an impact on college baseball.”

Travis Bazzana had big goals. He was focused on his swing, stance, nutrition, strength training, and speed. Over the years, he’d be told by naysayers that his swing wouldn’t hold up vs. top pitching in the U.S., that Australian players weren’t good enough, and that he’d never make it.

“He used to write the plan down every day,” Gary said. “‘What am I going to do today? Hit more balls. Eat better. Improve speed.’ Stuff like that. He was so determined.”

Gary spent the last week in Oregon, watching the Beavers win the Regional at Goss Stadium. He’s having the time of his life following the final few weeks of his son’s college baseball career. Jenny is flying in next week, in time to see a potential Oregon State trip to the College World Series.

“Travis has taken his mother and me some places,” Gary said. “Japan, South Korea, Guam… sometimes we worry about some of the things that are happening. His life is so busy between his study commitment, his commitment to the team, and some of what you’d call ‘external noise.’ But it’s fun.”

Next stop: Lexington, Ky.

The Beavers play a best-of-three series against Kentucky. Game 1 is on on Saturday at 3 p.m. PT (ESPNU). The series winner advances to Omaha. But before we talk about any of that, I want to take you back to a neighborhood in the northern suburbs of Sydney to meet a kid who grew up hanging around his two older brothers’ baseball practices.

“Travis was obsessed with bats and balls from a very young age,” said Gary.

He’d practice with his T-ball or youth baseball team and, then, scramble to his brother’s practices. He was often included. By age 13, Bazzana was playing in the 16-under division in their community league. His dad believes that ‘playing up’ accelerated Travis’ development.

“He’s always competed against guys older than him,” Dad said.

A lot has been made about Travis Bazzana playing cricket player in Australia. It’s true. He’d play anything that involved a bat and ball. But his level of participation, his Dad says, has been overblown. “Bazzana played cricket in Australia” is a fun fact and quirky thing for the television broadcasters on ESPN to banter about. But Gary set the record straight on Wednesday.

When Travis filled out the questionnaire and player profile as a freshman at Oregon State it included questions about his high school baseball statistics and coaches. Travis didn’t have anything to write on the form.

“In Australia, they don’t play baseball in high school,” Gary told me. “So Travis just put down all his cricket information. Now it comes up — over and over. He might’ve played a baseball game on a Saturday and cricket on Sunday. But he’d hit 200 baseballs off a tee before he went and played cricket. And people in Australia wouldn’t say that he played much cricket.

“His first love was baseball.”

Sydney hosted the Olympics in 2000. Travis wasn’t even born yet. But Gary and I were both there. He told me this week that he attended an Olympic baseball game between Cuba and Australia. Turns out, I was at the same game. We talked this week about how much has changed. Much of the conversation that day at the ballpark was about the talented Cuban players, who were a chronic threat to defect.

“They were afraid some of the players would jump the fence, climb into a car, and never be seen again,” Gary said.

Travis Bazzana won’t have to hop a fence to get to Major League Baseball. He crossed an ocean, though. He also worked hard, stayed focused, and got help. His dad said: “There were so many helpful people along the way.”

Rich Dorman, Oregon State’s pitching coach, is among them. He heard about Bazzana through some friends who were coaching. Grand Canyon University pursued him. So did some other schools in the Pac-12. But Oregon State was on the West Coast and had three national titles. Travis knew all about the Beavers.

Said Gary of the college decision: “I was trying to get my head around the options and Travis is like ‘Dad, Dad, I want to be a Beaver. The people are different there. Oregon State has elite culture and elite history.’ Travis was locked in. I think he nailed it.”

Teammate Gavin Turley told me this week that having Bazzana around is “like having a second hitting coach on the team.” Bazzana likes to discuss technique, mental approach, and philosophy. The two OSU stars played together last summer in the Cape Cod League.

Turley told me: “Travis likes to relax and go golfing, but a conversation with him can get pretty intense.”

This season, the talk about Travis Bazzana has pivoted from “Could he be a first-round pick?” to “Could he go No. 1 overall?” No Australian-born player has ever been drafted in the first round. Josh Spence (ninth round, 2010) and Mark Ettles (33rd round, 1989) are the only Aussies to ever get drafted.

“I try not to worry too much about it because it’s not something we can do anything about,” Gary said. “He might be in the first round. He might be the first name called. It’s hard to get your head around that.”

Oregon State faces an uncertain future. The university will compete next season in the Pac-12 as part of a two-team conference. The football program will play a schedule that features a half dozen Mountain West Conference opponents. The men’s and women’s basketball programs have signed on for a scheduling partnership with the WCC. But OSU baseball is an outlier.

It will go independent.

Several current Pac-12 baseball coaches and athletic directors have told me this season they plan to schedule the Beavers next season. It’s apparently what they’re telling OSU as well. But promises and handshakes aren’t enough for Beavers to build the 2025 season on. They’ll require written contracts.

I asked Beavers’ Athletic Director Scott Barnes for an update this week. How is the scheduling going? Is the plan viable? Barnes said: “It’s not easy, but it’s coming together.” Barnes told me that several of his staff members are currently involved in formalizing agreements for next season.

Travis Bazzana is having an amazing college career. Pick your favorite stat. Batting average? Home runs? I’m blown away that the guy has 74 walks this season and only 34 strikeouts. And that a player with his power also had 36 stolen bases in 39 tries last season.

Beyond all that, though, he’s fueling what might be the most significant baseball season in Oregon State history. The Beavers needed to matter on the national stage. They won the Corvallis Regional. Now, they’re determined this week in the Super Regionals to prove they belong in Omaha.

Travis Bazzana has a quote on the screen saver on his phone: “Great ones figure it out.”

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