(Photo: Nicholas Badders/WCSN)
In Ty Neal’s first season as a graduate assistant and assistant coach at Southern Illinois University, he and the late Dan Callahan, SIU’s head coach, went to dinner with a recruit. After dinner, Callahan pulled his new GA aside and said, “Hey man, we’re not going to win any of these recruits unless you learn how to hold a fork the right way.”
At 23, the pitching coach learned how to properly hold a fork at dinner, the first of many things he learned not only from Callahan, but at SIU.
Neal, now the quality control analyst for the Arizona State baseball team is working in his seventh position in collegiate baseball for his fifth school, most recently having served as the head coach at the University of Cincinnati. Now, he’s living 1,800 miles away from his family to continue his passion for the sport of baseball.
“The situation sucks, family in Ohio and all that but I’m making the most of it,” Neal said. “As a coach, as player, I think I was very, very good at making the most of an opportunity. I never took it for granted, ever took it lightly. Just always appreciated it and embraced it. And I think my upbringing has prepared me for I guess this.”
The West Elkton, Ohio native has dealt with adversity his entire life, from the early years of his childhood to his departure from UC, but his attitude of making the most of every opportunity, staying loyal to all in his life and his passion for the game of baseball kept him in the sport after things didn’t go his way in his first experience as a collegiate head coach.
Early Beginnings
Look up West Elkton on a map and it will be hard to find. Nearly impossible, actually. But the 0.58 square-mile village that as of the 2010 census was home to 197 people is the birthplace of Neal and the reason he is the man that he is today.
Surrounded by woods, he learned to hunt, fish and trap when he was in kindergarten, everything from fox to rabbit, even raccoon and squirrel. He quickly picked up on how to shoot a squirrel to avoid getting shotgun pellets in the body to save the meat for dinner. Immersed in the woods, he rarely spent time indoors, playing pickup basketball and football or driving around on a motorcycle through the open woods.
Growing up in such a small town taught him to be social, a skill he has carried into his present day life, a skill that developed him into a skilled recruiter and coach too. These small town values provided Neal with a unique work ethic and leadership skills not even found in many athletes.
Being raised by his father, who left for work early in the morning, a young Ty took on the task of wake up duty on school days, ensuring he and his brothers, Tanner and Jared, made it to school on time. The quarterback of the football team and point guard on the basketball team, he continued these duties through high school, ensuring his older brother Jared would provide rides to school.
The idea of working hard and being the best to earn opportunity was a work ethic learned from his dad that stood out to Miami baseball coach Tracy Smith when it came time to find a pitching coach for the 2000 Miami RedHawks.
West Elkton to Oxford
When he went on a recruiting visit to Miami University in 1994, Neal’s father told him to walk in with confidence. He did that, impressed then head coach Jon Pavlisko and earned himself a scholarship as a pitcher on the RedHawks roster. After Neal had played one season, Smith, a Miami alum, was brought on as the head coach and three years later, added Neal to his staff, a decision that was a “no-brainer.”
“He’s good to the soul, he’s loyal as the day is long,” Smith said. “If you have those qualities, my father-in-law, longtime AD, said you hire good people and you can teach them anything. So I already knew I had a good person, which was the most important piece, then you add in the loyalty piece and then oh by the way, he knows a little bit of baseball? Pretty much a no-brainer.”
Neal finished with a lifetime ERA of 4.92 at MU, throwing 222.1 collegiate innings and earning 19 wins as a member of the RedHawk staff. While his velocity sat in the low 80s, he had the ability to get hitters out. But more importantly? An unmatchable baseball mind.
In the fall of 1998, a few months after finishing up his junior season, his second season as a player under Smith, Neal was stopped by his head coach following an offseason practice and asked what his plans were post-graduation. He informed Smith that he needed an extra semester to graduate, so he was going to stick around a little while longer. Neal was quickly offered a post-graduation assistant coaching position in the fall of his senior season and went on to join the staff after his playing days ended after the spring of 1999.
Before he was even on the payroll, Neal was mentored by Smith, who allowed him to coach third base at the end of his senior season, but also held him responsible for the conditions of the bullpen.
As a full-time coach, he took 15 hours of classes to graduate in the fall. That left Neal exhausted on a more regular basis than he wanted. It was because of this Smith told him to keep his priorities in order. Neal did just that, graduating in December with a bachelor’s degree in sports management and joining the staff and payroll officially in January.
However, Neal’s time at Miami was cut short.
The 22-year-old pitching coach helped guide his team to a 40-win season in 2000. The RedHawks won the Mid-American Conference Tournament and made an appearance at the Arizona State regional, the first regional appearance the program had seen in over 20 years. But after the season, Smith let him go.
“I can remember that conversation,” Smith said. “Man I know you’re not going to be happy about this but you’re not coming back with us … I’m not telling you that we’re not going to work together in the future, but you need to go hear somebody else, grow as a coach.”
The two would work together in the future, and have on multiple occasions since but this tough love from a man whom Neal looked up to as a second father figure humbled him.
20-Hour Days in Carbondale, Illinois
While he was leaving Miami University and Oxford, Ohio, Neal did not have to leave the game of baseball, or even coaching. Smith helped him line up a job as a graduate assistant at Southern Illinois University. But he was more than just a graduate assistant. Making $600 a month, he was the pitching guy. And the strength and conditioning guy. And the recruiting guy. And the academic liaison. He also did the team’s laundry every night in two machines that were better fit in a family’s home than a Division 1 clubhouse while only getting four hours of sleep a night.
Applying what he learned from his childhood, from his parents, from Smith and from playing Division 1 baseball, he gave his all to Southern Illinois for three seasons. More importantly, he made a mark on the program in Carbondale, Illinois.
In his first season working a 20-hour day while earning his masters, SIU finished with a record of 19-36. Having been a part of a successful 2000 team at Miami, Neal knew what it took to win. And he learned to speak up.
Just a few years older than the players, he let his players know they needed to work harder and began to recruit harder because he saw they were capable of winning. And just a year later, they began winning. In 2002, Southern Illinois went 32-24, experiencing its second winning season in 10 years. They followed it up with another 30 win season in 2003. Neal also helped develop three freshmen All-Americans and had four pitchers selected in the MLB draft.
It was at Southern Illinois that Neal first made a name for himself and established himself as an elite recruiter, but it was also where he truly learned to manage his time.
While he learned a lot from Callahan, his tenure at Southern Illinois allowed him to be himself. While coaching under Smith, there was a unique level of respect and a father figure kind of fear, having played under him as well. But at SIU, the players didn’t know him, he had a chance to be himself and finally manage his time.
His connection of Callahan led to him spending the summer of 2002 in the prestigious Cape Cod Baseball League, as the pitching coach for the Yarmouth–Dennis Red Sox under Scott Pickler, a summer he recalls as one of the best of his life. Neal and Pickler, currently the head coach at Cypress College, still stay in contact to this day and is someone Neal considers to be one of his greatest mentors.
After three years at SIU, Neal spent a year at the University of Cincinnati as an assistant, hired by Brian Cleary. While at Cincinnati, three and a half years after being let go by Smith at Miami, Neal received a call from his mentor, with a job offer to come back to Miami. But as the hitting coach. And for the first time in his life, he said no to Smith and turned down the position. A week later, Smith offered him the pitching coach position and the two were back together for the 2005 season.
With Neal as his pitching coach again, Smith’s Miami team made another NCAA regional and finished with 45 wins. Smith then took a job as the head coach at Indiana University and Neal came with him as his pitching coach and recruiting coordinator.
College World Series Architect
Ask Tracy Smith about Ty Neal’s eight-year tenure at Indiana and he’ll tell you that he was the architect of the 2013 team that the two took to the College World Series.
Between 2009 and 2013, Neal recruited seven future Major League Baseball players and saw 18 players drafted, including four in the first round. The first player to ever commit to Neal at Indiana was Josh Phegley, a five-year major league veteran, now a catcher for the Oakland Athletics. Three of his players played for Team USA. He mentored two Big Ten Conference Pitchers of the Year, the career wins leader, and the career saves leader.
At first, IU experienced struggles, but by 2009, in their fourth season under the new staff, the Hoosiers were Big Ten Tournament champions for the second time since 1949. That 2009 team featured three first round draft picks, three future big leaguers, and current ASU hitting coach Michael Earley, many of whom were recruited by Neal.
After three more years without a playoff appearance, Indiana won the Big Ten Championship once again and hosted a regional. The 2013 Hoosiers had a lineup with three future major league players and three top-five round draft picks, again many recruited by Neal, including current Chicago Cubs star Kyle Schwarber.
While Smith was the head coach, Neal put in countless hours behind the scenes, made the most of his opportunity and gave everything he had to put together a team that made it to Omaha.
“I think there’s so much that goes into, when he said, ‘The Architect,’” Neal admits. “I think there’s a bunch of layers there, I was his right hand man and that’s what I wanted to do.”
After 14 years as an assistant, his hard work and baseball instincts came to fruition. Near the end of the storybook season, he was named the head coach at the University of Cincinnati.
Culmination at Cincinnati
The job at Cincinnati was the culmination of years of hard work, the result of a series of connections and recommendations that led to Neal accepting the head coaching position before his season at Indiana had finished.
On Friday, May 16, 2013, shortly before Indiana played a game at Ohio State, Smith received a phone call from Eric Hyman, the athletic director who had hired him in 1996 at Miami. The following morning, Smith shared with Neal that Hyman had been asked by Whit Babcock, who at the time was the AD at the University of Cincinnati, now the AD at Virginia Tech, for recommendations for a baseball head coach.
Smith told Hyman he had the perfect guy: Ty Neal.
Neal, interested in the job, went through several phases of interviews before landing the position.
Shortly before Indiana hosted the Bloomington Regional in 2013, Babcock traveled to Indiana to talk with Neal. Before their dinner, the prospective head coach brought Babcock to Sembower Field, the home of the Hoosiers baseball team through the fall of 2012. The No. 11 team in the country at the time of the interview, they had spent the fall prior practicing at Sembower Field.
“That [2013] team was built on that field, recruiting and built on because we practiced there in the fall season on the old field, the new one wasn’t ready,” Neal recalls. “I think that gave me a little credibility of being able to recruit those guys and us win at that level on that ‘high school field.’”
His track record of recruiting had been well documented and one that impressed Babcock.
The day before IU played Florida State in the Tallahassee Regional, it was announced that he had been named the 27th head coach in the history of the program.
The Hoosiers went on to win the Super Regional and travel to Omaha for the College World Series. Following Indiana’s exit from Omaha, Neal then began his duties at Cincinnati with a wife seven months pregnant.
His recruiting efforts began immediately, even with a pregnant wife packing up their home. And the efforts paid off. At Cincinnati, he coached the talents of Ian Happ, a rising star on the Chicago Cubs, who Chicago selected with the ninth overall pick in the 2015 MLB Draft.
Immediately, Neal increased the strength of schedule, with it jumping from 185 in 2013 to 92 in 2014, his first year. The Rating Percentage Index (RPI) leapt as well, 69 spots in just one year, the Bearcats were ranked 163 by season’s end. In the four years Neal led the program at Cincinnati, the team’s RPI climbed 147 spots.
For Neal, the chance to finally steer the ship and apply all he had learned was one a long time coming.
“I loved every second of it,” he said. “The relationships and the opportunity as a head coach to kind of piece things together and acquire everything I had learned in the past from administrators, obviously playing and working under Tracy [Smith], things I learned from [Dan Callahan], things I even learned that one year at Cincinnati with Coach [Brian] Cleary.”
The mantra he had grown up with and carried with himself through college ball and into his coaching career continued to ring true at Cincinnati – make the most of every opportunity.
In 2016, he guided his pitching staff to the lowest team ERA the UC baseball program had seen in 42 years — 3.69. Not only that, but he led the Bearcats to the program’s highest winning percentage at Marge Schott Stadium history that year, finishing with a 18-7 mark in home games.
He continued to strive to make the program the best possible, increasing the strength of schedule, the RPI and the talent of the recruits coming in.
One recruit, in particular, stood out.
Nate Meyer, the son of legendary Ohio State football coach Urban Meyer was offered a scholarship by Neal in January 2017, during Nate’s junior year of high school. He immediately committed.
Through recruiting Nate, Neal got to know Urban, the two would talk coaching and engage in casual conversation from time to time, and still do to this day.
Continuing on to play college sports at the same school his dad did was one Nate was excited for. But his dad was also excited.
Having gotten to know Neal, Meyer was impressed with the culture he had created at Cincinnati and was sure it was one he wanted his son to play in.
For Neal, compliments like these from experienced coaches are something he holds close to remind himself that things will work out.
Checking in on Tracy
In 2013, the University of Cincinnati finished the season with an RPI of 232 out of roughly 300 schools across the country.
By the 2017 season, the Bearcats’ RPI was in the top 100 of the country. ASU’s, for the first time in recent memory, was out of the top 100.
Following the 2014 season at Indiana, Smith accepted the head coaching job at Arizona State. In 2017, Smith’s Sun Devils experienced the worst season in the history of the program while Neal’s Bearcats had the best record under his watch and upset at the time No. 1 Louisville.
All season long, Neal and Smith kept in touch. Smith watched Neal’s win over the country’s top team and Neal was there to support the man who helped shape his coaching career. The two shared phone calls regularly and kept in touch consistently.
“I looked at last year, it was my chance to pick up the phone and check in on him,” Neal said. “That’s when you want to get out of your own little world and realize you’ve got someone who’s been a major part of your life that’s important to you.”
Smith was spread thin, experiencing his first losing season as a head coach since 2007 without a pitching coach and generally a smaller staff than most collegiate programs have.
In 2018, things are much different. He now has a pitching coach in Mike Cather, he has a full-time hitting coach in Earley. And he added a new position to his staff, a quality control analyst. That’s Ty Neal.
Finding the right fit
Despite Cincinnati finishing with a .500 record in 2017, Neal left the helm of Bearcat baseball after four seasons for what he describes as philosophical differences. He had a few options for pitching coach positions around the country, including one he verbally accepted at Georgia State.
However, Georgia State wasn’t the right fit for Neal. For the coach of 18 years, a non-coaching role at ASU was the right fit.
“It’s back with Tracy Smith, again he was a second father figure for me,” Neal explained. “He was my first phone call because he was a guy in the profession that has been my mentor. If we can have one more guy in the dugout who knows him very well, to have one more guy in his corner and I can help him in some way while I’m here. To take this role, to turn down other coaching jobs to take this role because it is Arizona State University, because it is Tracy Smith. For me it was a no-brainer.”
The leap of faith to leave coaching for such a role came at a cost, however. Neal now lives in Phoenix with his role at ASU, but his family is still back in Ohio.
And it’s killing him.
While it’s taking a toll, his wife Christine has supported him through it all.
“Me having to do this, her supporting me moving away from the family for six months. It’s tough, but we’re making it work,” Neal said “My wife, supporting me unfortunately doing what I have to do stay in the game and trying to eventually provide for our family doing what I love to do. I’d at least be coaching right now if I would’ve taken those other jobs.”
Family Man
With his upbringing, Neal had to grow up quickly and in many ways, on his own.
“I grew up learning to make the most of every situation,” he said. “I think that’s what I am good at.”
When he left Miami with Smith to rebuild the program at Indiana, he was a single man whose first love and passion was baseball. It was what got him into college, helped him start his career and was his primary focus for a long time.
Shortly after moving to Bloomington, Neal met a woman named Christine. Christine’s mother introduced her to Ty, the two eventually went on a date and soon fell in love.
Following the 2006 season, Ty’s first at Indiana, after the company Christine worked at shut down, she took her three months of severance and spent the summer on the road with him, recruiting baseball players to play at Indiana.
While Christine was quickly becoming an important part of his life, baseball was still always there.
“I don’t care if we were eating a meal, if he got a phone call that a kid was pitching, we’re wrapping it up in foil, and we’re going,” she recalls. “When we had kids, he just would go and we’d sometimes go with him, but I got that. He didn’t want to miss a good player, he didn’t want to miss a good opportunity.”
His passion for the program he had not been with for long was evident, his goals when recruiting were to find the right players, quality players to help his program grow. And once those players were playing under them, he wanted them to succeed, as his wife says, “in the worst way possible.”
Whatever he did, Ty Neal did with passion and while that for a long time was just in baseball, however it soon translated to a family too.
With a large portion of his job taking place between February and August, Ty and Christine did their best to plan the births of their kids around his work, around baseball season.
In the fall of 2007, Ty and Christine welcomed their first born into the world, a son named Silas. Just a few years later, in 2009, Beckett James Neal entered their lives as well.
Silas is a biblical name, a leading member of Early Christianity. Ty, a baseball man and pitching guy, looked for a baseball name for their first born, inspired by Cy Young, the winningest pitcher in Major League Baseball history. The two compromised on Silas for the name of their first child, but the baseball connections didn’t stop there.
Young Ty Neal was an avid collector of baseball cards. He would collet pop bottles around West Elkton so that he could buy himself a candy bar, or pack of baseball cards. As a passionate collector of baseball cards, he was regular reader of the Beckett Baseball monthly price guide. Enter his middle son’s name: Beckett.
The family of four lived in Indiana together for several years, until the opportunity for Ty to lead a lead a program came about. And his wife was seven months pregnant.
While Ty and Christine had given birth to two boys, they were still hopeful of having a daughter. They were waiting on a woman.
In the summer of 2013, Christine gave birth to Paisley Grace Neal, stemming from the artist behind Brad Paisley’s ‘Waitin’ on a Woman.’
After growing their family to five, the Neals settled down just outside of Cincinnati, as Ty began to run the baseball program at UC. The first year was a challenging adjustment, as they were now away from the Smith family, whom they had grown close to, and for the first time, Ty was in charge of his own program and living out a dream.
Not only did Ty recruit Nate Meyer, but he was also the first coach to offer a baseball scholarship at Cincinnati to Riley Crean, the son of University of Georgia men’s basketball coach Tom Crean, formerly at Indiana.
To many, including Tom Crean, his experience as a parent has helped him as a coach and a recruiter.
“The fact that he is a parent puts him in a position where he knows how much the teaching and learning process and giving people things that are going to make them better is important,” Tom Crean said. “I think that’s probably where he’s grown tremendously as a coach, to be able to take his ideals and be able to take the way he teaches baseball and the way he sees improvement.”
His time at Cincinnati came to a close and he and his wife were soon presented with a unique challenge of choosing where to go next. The offer from Georgia State didn’t feel right, but the one at ASU did. However it came at a cost.
While Ty moved out west to Phoenix, Christine stayed in Ohio with their kids. After he had spent the summer at home with them, it was a tough adjustment, but being back with Smith was the best thing for him.
It was difficult at first, became easier as time went on and has become more difficult as the end of the season nears. He has only visited his family back home a handful of times since he moved to Arizona, and each visit becomes harder than the last.
“The kids have been OK,” his wife said. “They miss him and they obviously love him when he comes back, they’re so excited. And when he leaves it’s hard but we know there’s going to be an end to all of this. It’s just making us appreciate it even more.”
Living away from his family, as tough as it is, gives Neal more down time during the week. He spends his free time camping and climbing mountains in the area and driving for Lyft at night, with the same thing always on his mind.
“My wheels are turning to support my family,” he said. “How can I get better as an individual and as a coach, but also control as much as I can control to make sure I can get back in the game this summer.”
He took the job at Arizona State to put his family in the best position for their long-term future, so it allows him to provide for them, while doing what he loves to do – coach baseball.
Defining success
Not only is he away from his family at ASU, but the lifelong baseball coach is in an unfamiliar in a non-coaching role.
“I need to get back on the field,” Neal said. “I’m a baseball coach, I can’t wait for an opportunity to do that, I miss it … I’m a little limited with what I can do here, baseball-wise, but I can still have those life conversations.”
Those life conversations are a significant portion of his role at ASU. As someone who knows Smith well, he can take weight off Smith’s shoulders and help the players understand what it takes to win.
As a quality control analyst, he can’t offer any coaching or instruction. He can’t even throw batting practice, a shame as Smith claims his BP tosses from the left side are killer.
“It’s not my job to make these guys better, I don’t want to step out of my role and say, ‘I want to make you a better baseball player,’” he said. “A lot of times what makes these guys better baseball players is handling the failure of the game, so that’s where I want to try and help them of, I don’t want to talk about their swing with them, that’s Michael Earley’s job, or [Tracy Smith’s] job. Let’s talk about the failure.”
The 2018 season for ASU baseball has not gone as expected, record-wise. While several players have had a strong, consistent season, not all have, many have experienced failure.
Sophomore outfielder Hunter Bishop recorded three hits in his first nine games (29 at-bats) for a .103 batting average. In that stretch, he talked with Neal about the importance of accepting failure and defining his success.
“I make a nice play and I help the team win in that way, I define success,” Bishop said “It’s like not trying to hit a home run and win the game, put the team on my back every single game, it’s just defining success in the smaller moments and as that starts building up, then I can do it, what I think I can do.”
Since the end of that stretch, now that he talks with Neal, he’s hitting .280.
“He’s a really cool guy, special mentality. He gives you a unique perspective on what the thinks about,” Bishop said. “He’s not technically in a coaching position, so he’ll just hang out in the dugout and stuff like that during the games. He’s really laid back, he’s really calm. If you need someone to lean on and talk to, he’s always there. He’s a really, really good guy and I have special conversations with him.”
Anyone who interacts with Neal can see immediately see that he’s a people person, a good person to have life conversations with.
Earley, ASU’s current hitting coach, played under Smith and Neal from 2008 to 2010, before leaving Indiana for the Chicago White Sox organization via the MLB draft. While he was an outfielder at Indiana and Neal was the pitching coach, the two still interacted on a regular basis.
“You could go to him for advice on a lot of different things, he’s a good voice to have in your ear when you need it,” Earley said.
Now, the two are still close and Neal sees a lot of himself in Earley, who still goes to his now fellow coach when he has questions.
“He’s been there since Day One if I have any questions,” Earley said. “I go right to him, he always has a great answer for me.”
Earley isn’t the only coach at ASU who played under Earley, ASU’s recruiting coordinator, Ben Greenspan did as well in 2006 and 2007. While Neal isn’t a coach now, the two are still close
“Do we talk about baseball, do we talk about recruiting, do we talk about all of that stuff? Absolutely,” Greenspan said. “He’s been around the game for a long time, he’s recruited at a high level, he’s coached at a high level and we’d be fools not to use him as a resource and that’s why he’s here. He brings such a vast knowledge of the game and such great experience.”
Working to stay in the game
While Neal has made an impact on the maroon and gold, the team is happy to have him, he’s still unfulfilled.
Because he’s not coaching.
But he’s making the most of his circumstances and taking time to connect with former colleagues, as well as making new friends in the sport of college baseball.
In early April, he met for coffee with Andy Lopez, former head baseball coach at Pepperdine, Florida and Arizona. Neal and the 2018 American Baseball Coaches Association hall of fame inductee talked for multiple hours about everything from his tenure at Cincinnati to his position at Arizona State and more.
“I’m humbled, so impressed with his integrity, his loyalty, his passion, his transparency,” Lopez said. “I called my wife after I met with him and said, ‘I just met a young guy whose wife and children are in Ohio and he’s sitting out here driving Uber at night.’ Man I’m so humbled, this guy loves the game this much.”
It’s true, Ty Neal loves the game of baseball. And he loves his family. Likely, he loves family and baseball more than anyone you will meet.
“And all you need to do is look at him at his family,” Tom Crean said. “He wears his heart on his sleeve, very open. There’s a realness to that, that you feel with someone like him. And if you see him work, you know that he’s knowledgeable.”
He’s in the sport for his passion, not for the money and not for the attention.
“I loved watching Ty work [at Indiana],” Crean said. “He takes the ideals of baseball and what it means to coach and teach baseball … He sees the individualized approach that makes each player better.”
After leaving Cincinnati and through his time at ASU, he’s reached out to many coaches, including Crean and Lopez for advice.
Now, Lopez is using his vast connections to try and help Neal land on his feet.
While being away from his family and not being allowed to coach have eaten at him, he’s made the most of the opportunity to grow his connections in the baseball world.
All the while, he’s still working hard on a daily basis to make an impact on the program dubbed “MLB U.”
“What I’m seeing with this group, I’m seeing a lot of promise out of our young guys, out of our freshman class, especially our position players,” he said. “There’s a lot of passion and grit for the game. And obviously there’s talent there as well. And promise.”
His passion is distinctive and his authenticity is apparent in just a brief conversation with him.
“He is the most honest man I could ever meet, he really is,” his wife said. “He’s not a deceiver, he’s not going to lie. Lies don’t come out of his mouth. I don’t care how much of a consequence it would have, he just doesn’t. That’s just him and it’s a big deal for him. Passion is extreme, it’s extreme for him. It’s gotten him where he is in life, his loyalty has gotten him where he is in life.”
Neal’s passion for the game stretches beyond the diamond, beyond his living room and when he is around, often into the front lawn of his family’s Loveland, Ohio home and into the hearts of the entire neighborhood.
“When he’s home, every kid is at my house and he’s playing wiffle ball in our yard,” his wife said. “He has them all at our house, he’s just that guy.”
With passion, loyalty and a positive attitude that would make even the happiest of people impressed, the journey is far from over. The opportunity at ASU has been unique to anything he has done before, it’s allowed him to get his name out into the world of baseball on the West Coast, while regrouping and spending time with someone who he knows better than anyone, and knows him better than everyone but his wife, Tracy Smith.
And as tough as it been, both he and his wife know it will be well worth the tough times.
“I know in my gut that in five years we’re going to look back and this and say thank god that happened because we’re here now,” Christine said.
With the season winding down, his attention will soon focus to finding a coaching job that fits not only him, but his family too, while continuing to make the most of every opportunity thrown at him and at the same time, spreading his passion and love for baseball.
“He is a solid, solid, human being that is passionate for the game. A great family man and loyal. I feel very fortunate to say this, I consider him a friend,“ Lopez said. “Young people need people like Ty Neal in their lives.”
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