Actions speak louder

As much as Blake Phillips wants to be just like every other local high school baseball player, he isn’t.

The Coahulla Creek shortstop, who will be a senior next school year, is hearing impaired in both ears and has a speech impediment. Those are considerable challenges anywhere on the baseball field, but particularly for someone playing a position where communication is one of the biggest responsibilities.

But the disadvantages Phillips was given in life and on the field are not the main reason his coaches and teammates think of him as different.

It’s how far he has come and how far he can go.

One Sunday afternoon

Phillips wears hearing aids in both ears, but he wants to be treated the same as everyone else.

“The main thing Blake wants is he doesn’t want to be treated or viewed as any different than any other kid or player,” said his dad, Dan Phillips.

But the obstacle blocked some avenues in sports. Football was never an option due to fear of the aids being damaged. Basketball was a prior interest for Blake, but his hearing troubles reduced his reaction abilities.

Because, as his dad said, “everything is visual” for him.

“In basketball he couldn’t react quick enough because in basketball you hear the squeek of a sneaker on a court and you know someone is coming,” Dan said. “It’s a reaction and you know you have to go. He doesn’t get that reaction.”

So, Blake took to baseball, earning a spot in the Northwest Whitfield program and playing for the freshman and junior varsity teams as an underclassman. When it came to sports, the diamond was always his favorite place to be anyway.

“Basketball was not as important to me as it used to be, so I wanted to focus more on baseball,” said Blake, who gave up basketball after his eighth grade year.

Growing up, he played everything from third base to pitcher to outfield, and he plays all those for the Chattanooga Cherokees travel team during the summer. His natural position in high school was third base, but when he transferred from Northwest to Coahulla Creek last year when Whitfield County’s newest high school opened — joining him in the move were his two best baseball friends, Scout Plott and Tucker Sheram — Colts coach Michael Bolen had something different in mind for Blake: shortstop.

“I wasn’t sure how he would react to playing shortstop with all the responsibilities that go with it,” Dan said. “I’ll be honest with you. In his first three games, I was convinced he would go back to third. ... But (Bolen) said Blake was his guy, and he was going to stick with it.”

Blake struggled at first, making six errors in his first 12 fielding attempts. Even he admitted it wasn’t an easy transition.

“The first couple of games it was hard learning all the stuff,” Blake said.

Then everything changed.

“Coach Bolen worked with him on a Sunday afternoon,” Dan said. “He and a couple other guys came over and worked with him in a voluntary practice for about an hour and a half. He just worked with him and hit him ground balls, ground balls.”

Plott and Blake then had a fielding competition at the next practice. Plott remembers Blake’s progress more than the actual details of the contest, though.

“The first four or five non-region games he just didn’t make the adjustment very well,” Plott said. “He just worked hard in practice, and me and his Dad were making jokes about earlier in the season about how we made some kind of game, and (Blake) would try and beat me when I hit ground balls to him, and we would switch. At that point, he just kind of seemed like he settled down.”

Strong signs

Most infielders communicate by voice. Shouting out scenarios for each situation is key to keeping infielders organized and ready to react.

Any position on the field requires communication, but the shortstop is depended on to be the cutoff man on relay throws from the outfield to third base. Usually the cutoff position relies on verbal instruction to tell him where the runner is heading and where the throw needs to go.

But Blake cannot hear that.

A proper relay requires the cutoff man to be lined up with the outfielder and the target base, which also is dependent on communication.

Again, Blake is on his own.

“He has to be the relay man and get lined up from the third baseman on a relay from third. Of course he can’t hear that,” Bolen said, noting the hearing aid doesn’t help because the infielders are too spread out. “So he had to rely a lot on practices with me when I’d work with him.”

Said Blake, “The first games when I started playing shortstop I had to learn things. So as I learned more and more about playing shortstop, I realized I had to keep looking behind me when I was the cutoff.”

Plott, who has played baseball with Blake since the third grade, thinks the bigger obstacle is not playing with hearing aids in general, but doing so while playing a position like shortstop in high school varsity baseball.

“Him being at third and then making the transition to shortstop, it’s a very vocal position. You’re in charge of the infield,” Plott said. “The pitcher relies on you and you have to make double plays.”

So Phillips developed a way around his hearing impairment.

“He can lip read, but they have different signs they can give him here and there,” Bolen said.

Said Plott, “If we just point to second, he will know based on his extensive knowledge of baseball.”

Even if Blake is lacking in one sense, he makes up for it by giving extra attention to sight and baseball intuition.

“He is very visual,” Dan said. “He will do something and remember what you do. He’s a pretty good pitcher and can see baserunners and can determine in subtle body language whether they are going to steal or not.”

Blake’s eyes catch onto things — arm angles and release points in a pitcher’s motion — that other players don’t see.

“He’ll see an arm angle and he’ll tell me something about it after and I never noticed it,” Dan said.

When not playing, Blake is usually watching. Whether he is at home watching his favorite team, the New York Yankees, or standing in the dugout watching a teammate at bat, Blake is always looking for things and registering signs.

“When I’m in the dugout and our team is at bat,” Blake said, “sometimes I’ll like study the pitches and can tell if a pitcher is doing a different motion like for a curveball or going downward. I can tell from watching him.”

No excuses, just adjustments

Bolen admires his shortstop. So do his teammates. Some players would lean on the hearing problems, or similar disadvantages, as a reason for not succeeding.

Blake refuses to allow himself to do that.

“He has every excuse in the world to use it as a crutch but he works twice as hard because of that,” Bolen said, noting Blake shows his love for the game even when practice isn’t on the minds of most teammates.

“He’s either in the cage or working on his game with his dad. Sometimes he calls me and I go out there or we get a coach out there to meet him and we practice ground balls.”

Plott sees Blake’s entire career as a series of “adjustments,” whether it be adjusting to a new position or adjusting to an unorthodox way of communicating with teammates.

“He’s made adjustments over the past few years that not many people would do,” Plott said. “He doesn’t think of it as a disadvantage of any sort.”

And even if Blake can’t hear like others, he still gets his wish: to be treated the same as everyone else.

“Blake likes to think of it as, ‘Yeah I can’t hear,’ but he’s just like one of us,” Plott said. “We don’t treat him different. We treat him the same as if we could talk to him.”

Well, not really. Everyone else isn’t good enough to play in college.

Blake hasn’t received any considerable interest from schools, but Bolen said the calls will start coming soon.

“He’s as smooth as he can be,” he said of Blake’s fielding skills. “He’s got some colleges who are interested in looking at him next year. He’ll have the chance to play at the next level.”

That’s good news to Blake, who wants to keep playing.

“In the mornings when I have travel ball games, I can’t wait to when we leave our house to get to the field,” Blake said.

His dad can vouch for that.

“The thing to do is get to a game one hour early,” Dan said. “He wants to get there prior to that. He wants to get there an hour and 15 minutes, an hour and a half early to be the first one in the batting cage and the first one on the field.”

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