Some athletes come out of high school and into college being offered everything in the world. Whatever they want, the coach will provide.
Kyle Paul, on the other hand, was only given brutally honest assessment. He wasn’t extactly given a road map from Hamilton Township to Maryland by Towson University baseball coach Mike Gottlieb.
Paul graduated from Steinert in 2010 and had his heart set on attending Towson. He loved the campus, got accepted and earned an academic scholarship, so that was no problem.
He also had a strong desire to play baseball for the Tigers.
Problem.
Then-Spartans pitching coach Bryan Rogers, who played at Towson, asked Gottlieb to take a look at Paul his senior year. Gottlieb made the trip for one game, resulting in the following email exchange that Paul has kept.
Gottlieb: “Kyle, Here’s what I saw. You topped out at 78 mph. Your change is OK but your curve is too slow and loopy. On Monday I did not see Division I stuff. Right now I can’t tell you that you’d make the team. If playing in college is important to you I’d suggest that you look elsewhere. If you came to Towson I’d give you a long look but like I said we’re looking for better.
“I’m sorry to be blunt but I think you need to hear honesty from me to help make your college choice. Feel free to get back to me if you’d like.”
Paul’s response: “I appreciate your honesty. Without it, I wouldn’t know what to work on. I’ll be on the team next year.”
Gottlieb’s response: “Kyle, please keep in mind that we’re limited to a 35 man roster limit. It’s possible we could be at that number going into the fall before practice starts. This means that you could have no chance simply because I gave my word to 35 other kids; some returning and some we recruited.”
Paul did not return the last email. His next response came on the field the following fall, when he showed up determined to make the team. Fast forward four years, to this past May.
“At Senior Day,” Paul said, “when he handed me my plaque, he whispered in my ear, ‘I’m so glad you didn’t listen to me.’”
And that says it all. Paul was incredibly determined, Gottlieb was impressively fair and patient, and the rest is history. The left-hander pitched all four years and went from what Gottlieb called “the purest of walk-ons” to earning a Division I athletic scholarship by his junior year.
His stats were nothing eye-popping, but over the past two seasons Paul turned in some excellent performances, including a complete game shutout over Delaware in the final game of his career.
“My numbers were average, I know,” he said. “I guess over the past two years you could summarize it by saying I was good when I needed to be.”
“We gave him an opportunity, but he earned his playing time,” Gottlieb said. “He earned our respect, and we have a lot of it for him. He’s a good kid, a great student. Maturity-wise he’s head and shoulders above the vast majority of our kids, which is maybe why he did so well on the field and in the classroom.”
Paul amassed a career record of 13-2 with three saves at Steinert, striking out 90 with just 28 walks in 107 innings while forging a 1.64 ERA.
Pretty nice stats, but obviously not good enough to sell Gottlieb.
“At no time did I encourage him to come here,” the coach said. “But I think he made some adjustments. When he got here, he showed he was better than the day I saw him. And every year after that he got a little better. If he could get a fifth year of college pitching, he would be even better next year.”
But when Paul showed up at his first tryout, it wasn’t like lights started flashing and the angels began to sing.
“He had to grow on me,” Gottlieb said. “His fastball was very straight coming out of high school. When you throw 80 miles an hour that usually doesn’t get it done. He came here at 80 and at the end topped out at 85. He made some mechanical adjustments to improve his fastball. He made himself a decent lefthander.”
True to his word, Paul used Gottlieb’s email assessment as a critique, and he and Rogers went to work.
“In high school we throw two-seam (fastballs) onside and four seams offside, and my four-seamer was the one that was straight,” Paul said. “He saw that at the game he was at. But I cut the four-seamer out all together because the two-seamer would run a little more.
“After that, me and Rog worked on a slider. I kept my change-up, and I started working out a little more to be able to throw a little harder.”
Whatever he did worked well enough to earn him a roster spot. As a freshman he went 1-0 with a 3.27 ERA in 11 innings of relief. He made five straight appearances without allowing a run.
As a sophomore, Paul started the season as a reliever but moved into the starting rotation due to an injury. He made eight starts and 20 appearances, going 2-5 with a 6.48 ERA.
It was back to the bullpen as a junior as Paul made two starts and 18 relief appearances. He showed a marked improvement, going 3-4 with a 3.19 ERA. He came up huge in the Colonial Athletic Association Tournament, earning two wins and a save in helping Towson to the title and an NCAA berth. He also pitched in the Tigers’ 7-2 win over Florida Atlantic in the NCAA regional tournament.
“That felt really good,” Paul said. “After we won the tournament [Gottlieb] said we couldn’t have done it without me.”
This season Paul went 2-3 with a 4.57 ERA in 22 appearances. His stats were a little deceiving as the majority of his outings were solid, but a few bad ones blew up the ERA.
His only start of the year was on the second to last day of the season against Delaware, when Gottlieb rewarded him for four years of duty. Paul fired a five-hitter with one walk and seven strikeouts in a 7-0 victory. In that game, he turned to a newly acquired curveball that he learned from teammate Paul Beers, who got him to grip the ball differently.
“That game was crazy,” Paul said. “Delaware is known for really stroking the ball. I hadn’t started a game all year, and I was hoping to go five or six good innings.
“In the sixth inning my catcher, Zach Fisher, came over. We had been going with the fastball and change-up because they had been working so good, and I hadn’t thrown the curve. Fish said if I start throwing the curve I might get a shutout. I said ‘Don’t tell me that now, it’s only fifth inning!’”
In the seventh, Gottlieb told his hurler, “Don’t be looking over your shoulder because I’m not pulling you.”
Paul took the shutout into the ninth when Delaware got a man on second. Gottlieb and pitching coach Scott Roane talked it over in the dugout and agreed that Paul should go for the shutout and not give in and give the Blue Hens anything good to hit.
Roane went out to relay the message.
“He said ‘I want a shutout,’” Paul recalled with a laugh. “I said ‘No kidding, so do I. Now get out of here, you’re messing up my mojo.’”
Paul allowed a two-out walk to put two runners on, but got a pop-up to end his career in grand style.
A few weeks later Paul earned his degree in accounting with a 3.59 grade point average. He has since been talking to recruiters and was doing some substitute teaching in Hamilton since returning home. His plan is to save money by living at home for a while with parents Eric and Joan, who Gottlieb also had praise for.
“When he was in high school, his parents came by for a visit and met with me so I could explain the program to them,” Gottlieb said. “I never spoke to them again until this year. I’m sure they were there at the games but they never said a word. Some parents like to let you know they’re there. Kyle’s parents were the perfect parents.”
After his rough first encounter with Gottlieb, Paul came to like and respect him as “a player’s coach who cares a lot about the players” and who stressed academics as much, if not more, than baseball.
“He gave us more study halls than the school gave us,” Paul said. “Not a lot of guys get drafted out of Towson, so he knows how important academics are. He’s a really good guy.”
As for Gottlieb, he could not have been prouder of the kid he told to go away.
“One thing you can’t tell in high school is how competitive a guy is,” Gottlieb said. “He is a pretty competitive guy. He’s soft spoken, he’s not physically imposing, but he competes. He has some fire in him.
“I’ve had guys with a lot more talent that were a whole lot less competitive. He comes pretty close to getting as much out of his body and his ability as you can possibly get.”
And as an athlete, there is not a much bigger compliment to receive. And it’s well deserved.
In the end, Paul gave it all he had, beat the odds, and carved out four years that he can look back on with justifiable pride.
Hamilton native Kyle Paul finished a four-year career with Towson University’s baseball team this spring.,
