Row reflects on time in Columbia

It was the beginning of May and Row, who was in the middle of a solid season at Fullerton Junior College, was getting ready to pull the trigger and commit to a Big West school closer to home when he got a phone call.

"I got a call from Espo and he said, ‘When you getting to the field? I’m in your dugout,’” Row said. “I was like, ‘Uh, I guess I’ll come now.’”

That would be then South Carolina recruiting coordinator Sammy Esposito, who traveled all the way out to California to watch Row practice, play and ultimately offer a scholarship to.

Esposito’s cross-country trek started a chain of events that ended with Row packing up and going across the country to play baseball at South Carolina and turning in one of the best seasons a Gamecock has had in the last five years.

Row committed soon after being offered, not taking a visit—although Esposito did FaceTime him before a game to show him what game day was like—which means as he drove nearly 40 hours from his home in Southern California to Columbia, he was getting ready to see campus for the first time.

“I had absolutely no doubt while I was driving cross country,” he said. “The hardest part was when I got here, I was by myself and I didn’t know anybody because I had never taken a visit and there were no players from California. That was the hardest part being alone the first few days because no one was here for school. Once everyone got to school, the guys were awesome and really brought me into the loop.”

It was a culture shock for Row to as he got settled—hundreds of fans showed up to scrimmages as opposed to the 20 fans he’d see at games, he’s signing autographs and getting recognized in public—and he loved every minute of it.

But once his career started, his first year wasn’t as easy as getting acclimated to the fans and Columbia heat.

He’d battle a knee injury in the preseason and struggle to get into the lineup as a junior behind guys like LT Tolbert and Madison Stokes.

As the Gamecocks struggled to win SEC series, Row struggled to get playing time, finishing with just 17 starts his first year on campus despite hitting .290/.388/.464 when he did get his opportunities.

But it was hard for the guy who packed up his entire life to play baseball in the SEC seeing his opportunities shrink that first season.

“I put pressure on myself to do things that I’m not usually not used to doing on the baseball field. I wasn’t getting the little things done correctly and I was trying to become an Alex Destino trying to hit the ball 450 feet, a Carlos Cortes,” he said. “That’s not my game. Even though I was somewhat productive, I felt like I wasn’t myself. When you’re sitting on the bench, you’re trying to think every way to get in the game. I was doing things that weren’t me.”

Then in the summer before his junior season, Row had a decision to make.

The Gamecocks were going through a coaching change, ultimately hiring Mark Kingston, and Row needed to choose if he was going to stay and try and beat out Tolbert and Stokes for a spot or transfer for more playing time.

“I’ll never forget it, Coach (Jerry) Meyers called me because I kind of talked about it with him at the end of the season and he talked me in to coming back. He said he was going for the head job and wanted me there and believed in me. I’ll thank him for that forever because that led me to what happened my senior year.”

Row stuck around and hit the cover off the ball his first fall under the Gamecocks’ new regime, earning an opening day start but playing sparingly after that with those two entrenched guys—Stokes and Tolbert—still doing a lot of the heavy lifting in the middle infield.

He’d meet with the coaches and they’d explain to him why he wasn’t seeing everyday at-bats, telling him to wait for his opportunity.

“It’s funny, I actually told him I thought he was wrong,” Row said of those meetings. “He told me, ‘Well, you’ll get a chance to prove it because something always happens.’”

That came the second weekend of SEC play in 2018 when Madison Stokes left the Saturday game at Georgia with a hamstring injury.

“It took unfortunately one of my best friends on the team, Madison Stokes, he got hurt in the Georgia series,” Row said. “We got swept at Georgia. I had to go in on Saturday and played all Sunday and had some quality ABs and that midweek I had a great week. That led into doing what I do. I got back to playing the brand of baseball I knew how to play that worked with the system.”

He’d begin to see at-bats every day after that, playing his way into the starting second baseman role the final eight series of the year, and the rest is history.

Row led the team and finished seventh in the SEC with a .347 batting average, driving in 25 runs with seven homers.

He’d be a key piece of a Gamecock team that started the year 20-17 but finished 11-5 down the stretch and fell one win short of the College World Series.

For Row, walking off the field at Arkansas was a little more bittersweet for a middle infielder that hadn’t been drafted a few days before and didn’t know what the future held.

“One of the saddest moments I’ve ever seen is Hunter Taylor taking off the gear after what he did for this program and what he did the whole year. It put in perspective for me,” Row said. “It was the last time I might have ever played but there’s no group of guys or program I would have wanted to be at. It was sad we were done and not going to Omaha and my career was over, but I was content with it because I did everything I could.”

He’d have a few teams express interest and the Tampa Bay Rays were close to signing him to a minor league deal but Row didn’t pass a physical and, as the summer went on, he slowly came to a realization his playing days might be over.

But, out of that he found his new calling.

He called Kingston as the summer wound down, asking for a spot as a student assistant on his staff. Kingston and the rest of the coaches worked quickly to make sure Row had a spot in Columbia.

That led to his year back in the Founders Park dugout, assisting the coaches with practice, helping make scouting reports and doing whatever else they needed done.

He admits to being “thrown into the fire” that first year, but says it was a joy to be back around his old teammates and he learned a few valuable lessons as well.

“You have to stay even keel at all times,” he said. “These guys look up to you or these players look to you for guidance. You can’t just be going off on them or not coaching them because you think the season is done. You have to stay the course and be a guiding figure and do your best to get these kids better. That’s what you’re there to do: to make them better, prolong their careers and try to win as many games while doing it.”

Now, Row’s playing and coaching days in Columbia are over for now and he looks towards his new adventure and opportunities in coaching.

He spent this summer as an assistant in the Cape Cod League, working with the Yarmouth-Dennis Red Sox and will have a few opportunities, if he chooses to take them, this upcoming season.

As he gets ready to embark on his coaching journey, albeit a little sooner than he probably expected, and looks back on his time at South Carolina with fondness.

Outside of not having as many good taco places—you can take the boy out of Southern California but not Southern California out of the boy—he has no real regrets about shipping all the way across the world to play in the SEC.

“My only regret would not be coming out of high school,” he said.