Andrew Baker leaned forward with his hands on his knees. He oozed a confidence and swagger that would have made Muhammad Ali blush.
He’d taken a hefty lead off second base in the bottom of the sixth inning in what had slowly become a 10-1 drubbing of Siena in the third game of Florida’s 2018 season. Saints pitcher Danny Hobbs took a step off the rubber, turned and cocked his right arm toward Andrew, who took three quick strides back to the bag before abruptly stopping in his tracks.
Nobody was covering second base.
Hobbs never threw the ball. He only took a fleeting glance at Andrew before turning his attention back to his pitching routine. So when Andrew halted just before he reached the bag, Hobbs missed an opportunity to see the side of Andrew’s personality that makes so many of his teammates smile.
The energetic sophomore pumped his fists at his sides and made an exaggerated running motion toward the base before extending his arms into a mock slide. He then slyly glanced back at Hobbs, daring the pitcher to do something about his tomfoolery.
There’s no guarantee that Andrew will see the field tonight at 7 in UF’s SEC opener on the road against South Carolina. While he has been a reliable reserve, Florida’s depth chart places him firmly in the dugout most games.
But through it all, Andrew maintains his playful temperament. Understanding his humor is vital in getting to know him. Though his life was beset by a medical emergency that almost tore the seams of his family apart, his competitive spirit, jocularity and faith has kept him grounded and focused while also lifting him up.
***
For all his parents know, Andrew was literally born to play baseball. His mother, Patricia, remembers trying to take a family portrait when he was a toddler. The photographer gave Andrew a ball to hold as a prop. He placed it in Andrew’s right hand.
“Andrew just transitioned it over to his left,” Patricia said. “And me being the momma, I took it out and put it back in the right, because I only know how to deal with right-hand kids.”
But Andrew wouldn’t cooperate. He swapped it over to his left once more.
“My dad said, ‘This is going to be my left-handed baseball player,’” Patricia recalled.
Andrew, currently a pitcher and outfielder for the Gators, grew up in the suburbs of Haines City, Florida, just off the north shore of Little Lake Hamilton. The Baker family household sits on a quiet, winding backstreet in front of a vast expanse of open fields and orange groves.
Andrew and his older siblings, Antrice and Anthony II, would walk to Alta Vista Elementary School, a third of a mile north from where they lived. However, simply walking back home afterward was never an option in young Andrew’s mind.
“He’d race… anybody who wanted it,” Anthony II said. “He’s a natural competitor.”
The Bakers decided Andrew needed an outlet. He tried his hand at flag football first. The coaches played him at quarterback. Even with his age, Anthony II estimated Andrew could throw the football 25-30 yards downfield.
But Patricia wasn’t a fan of the activity. While Anthony II was starting to make a name for himself as a linebacker at Haines City High School, she didn’t want to linger on the prospect of her youngest boy growing up playing a full-contact sport.
“Football is not for my baby,” Antrice remembered her mother saying.
Anthony I, Andrew’s father, convinced Andrew to play a different sport. The pastor of 33 years and former Marine suggested he try the game his father had taught him while growing up: baseball.
When Andrew was 5 years old, he gave it a shot. He started playing for the Haines City Sharks, a local little league team.
He exceeded everybody’s expectations. Though his family knew Andrew had a cannon for an arm even at such a young age, folks were taken aback at how he could throw a laser from center field to the plate while sporting a Sunday church belt looped around the waistband of his uniform and a knockoff Walmart glove.
“We were totally clueless,” Antrice said. “We pretty much just threw Andrew out there and he was naturally,” she paused as if to ponder the absurdity of it all, “just good at it.”
***
Andrew remembers attending his father’s church, Faith Kingdom, almost every day growing up. As Andrew went to his dad’s services, Anthony I became aware of the intersection between baseball and faith, and how it could help his son.
“Don’t let any obstacles change your life,” Anthony I would tell Andrew. “It doesn’t matter if you think you should be playing and the coaches won’t allow you to play. Your steps are ordered by God.”
Though his family contested otherwise, a young Andrew was convinced he wasn’t performing well with the Sharks.
“I was just a little kid,” he said. “I wasn’t sure if I should keep playing.”
Andrew was a lively player. When he played catch with his older brother, he would ask for lobbed passes that he could dive for on the ground. He made spectacular catches in the outfield while crashing into walls, but would immediately pop back up.
Early in 2007, an opportunity presented itself to Andrew that would change his life forever.
His play in right field during a tournament in Tampa caught the eye of one woman. The
woman, Gigi, started talking to Anthony I and Patricia about “that lefty (the coach) put over in right field,” who could rifle a ball all the way in to home plate.
They chatted about young Andrew, and Gigi asked if he’d like to play for a new AAU team for youngsters with talent that would be coached by her husband. Anthony I asked for her husband’s name.
It was Chet Lemon.
Anthony I perked up. He immediately recognized the name.
“Are you serious?” he asked. She was.
Chet Lemon had been the starting center fielder for the 1984 World Series Champion Detroit Tigers. Now, he was coaching AAU ball in central Florida. And Andrew was going to play for him.
Both Patricia and Anthony I recalled the first conversations they had with Lemon before Andrew joined the team, which was named Chet Lemon’s Juice.
“Baseball is a game of failure,” Anthony I remembered Lemon saying. “You’re gonna have more failures than not.”
In a game where the most legendary players fail in seven at-bats out of 10, Andrew took his lumps. He would get down on himself after struggling at the plate. He cried sometimes.
But Lemon broke the game down into easy terms for Andrew.
“He taught me everything about baseball,” Andrew said. “He taught me how to hit correctly, have the right swing path, how to pitch, how to throw the ball.”
Lemon’s lessons often strayed into real-world analogies and how they apply to baseball.
“Try being a doctor and say, ‘Let me do surgery on you because I succeed 30 percent of the time,’” Lemon said. “You’re gonna strike out sometimes, but I don’t wanna see no tears.”
***
While Andrew began his serious path in sports, Anthony II was wrapping his up.
In November 2007, the Baker family attended the second high school football game of Anthony II’s senior season. Anthony II walked from midfield at George Jenkins High in Lakeland, Florida, to the sideline after the coin toss and noticed flashing lights in the distance.
He saw his mother on a stretcher being carted into the back of an ambulance. Patricia had suffered a brain aneurysm.
The incident put Patricia’s life on hold. She was unable to continue her work for the Polk County Sheriff’s Office as she spent weeks in the hospital and another year or so recovering at home.
It had a profound impact on 9-year-old Andrew.
“To see your mom down like that, that’s tough on anyone,” Andrew said. “At a young age like that, that killed me. That crushed my heart.”
Andrew couldn’t see his mom very often while she was at the hospital because of his school schedule. The once-charming boy retreated into himself.
“He didn’t really understand why nobody was laughing anymore,” Anthony II said.
Antrice and Anthony II decided to take responsibility for Andrew while their father joined Patricia as she recovered in hospital. They would take him to school, make meals for him and lay out his clothes for the day in the morning.
“We tried to make it normal for him,” Antrice said. “It wasn’t easy for us to deal with it, but I think we learned to cope with it a little better.”
***
Baseball became Andrew’s coping mechanism. Anthony I decided to help his son work on his craft at home. The next year, he pulled the cars out of the family’s garage and built a makeshift batting cage there to help Andrew with his swing. By Andrew’s own admission, it wasn’t so much an actual batting cage as it was just a large net.
“I would put holes in the garage roof 24/7,” Andrew said. “I would just mess up the garage completely.”
His father would lob balls to Andrew indoors if it was raining outside. He’d take whacks at five-gallon bucket after five-gallon bucket of baseballs. He’d film his swing so he could analyze and adjust it.
His perseverance paid off. When he enrolled at Ridge Community High School, he immediately made the varsity squad as a freshman and started on a regular basis. His batting average increased every year in high school, from .377 in the 2012-13 season to .421 four years later.
Now in his second year at Florida, Andrew doesn’t see much playing time. It’s hard to break through when starting center fielder Nick Horvath is hitting .345 through the team’s first 19 games.
Still, Andrew has his faith. He credits his family, especially his father the pastor.
“You don’t have to wish bad on another guy who’s playing your position,” Anthony I said. “You don’t have to pout, you don’t have to fuss about it. Just trust God.”
Andrew hasn’t fussed at UF. He hasn’t pouted. Where a younger version of himself might’ve cried at a lack of playing time, he now bounces up and down on the balls of his feet on the top step of the dugout, dead center among his teammates, arms hanging over the railing.
When he’s not hyping up teammates with high-fives or by cracking jokes, perhaps he’s thinking on his faith.
After all, the Baker family recites Bible verses nearly every time they travel together.
“Our No. 1 scripture we read before we leave anywhere in the car is Proverbs 3:5-6,” he said. “We say that every time we pray.”
Trust in the Lord with all your heart. Lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways submit to Him. And He will make your paths straight.
Follow Morgan McMullen on Twitter @MorganMcMuffin and contact him at mmcmullen@alligator.org.
Outfielder/pitcher Andrew Baker has developed a reputation as being one of the funnier players on the Florida roster. But it was the young lefty's faith and family helped guide him through his low points.
