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IL1 Indianapolis Indians

Hayes as Good as Gold

June 27, 2019 - International League (IL1)
Indianapolis Indians News Release


Ke'Bryan Hayes is the man with the golden glove, his bobbled grounders and wayward throws coming as often as lunar eclipses. So where to begin the story about the Indians third baseman, who in his first 400 minor league games, committed only 29 errors?

Oct. 26, 1996, it's the top of the ninth inning of Game 6 of the World Series, the Atlanta Braves with two on and two out, trailing 3-2 on the scoreboard, and in the Series. In Staten Island, a teenage Yankee fan named Brian Esposito is hoping for someone - anyone -- to get the final out, because he wants to go to Manhattan for the championship ticker tape parade.

The count is full when the Braves' Mark Lemke pops up a foul near Atlanta's dugout. A defensive replacement at third base named Charlie Hayes tries to chase it down, but tumbles into the dugout and breaks a finger. He stays in the game, and Lemke pops up the next pitch to nearly the same place, but this time in play. Hayes, with nine good fingers, makes the catch. Joe Torre would later say it was his favorite moment ever in Yankee Stadium. Brian Esposito couldn't be happier.

Charlie Hayes' wife Gelinda is pregnant and can't be there to watch that last out. She will give birth in January to their third son. The baby's aunt works at the hospital and loves the first name of an earlier newborn and suggests it for her new nephew. Gelinda, meanwhile, is a big fan of a certain Lakers star. The world welcomes Ke'Bryan Kobe Hayes.

Two decades later, Esposito is manager of the Indianapolis Indians, and Charlie Hayes' son is his third baseman - a 22-year-old vacuum cleaner who is one of the Pirates' top prospects. The wheel keeps going 'round in the universe of baseball.

Ke'Bryan has already won two Gold Gloves in the minors. This season, he leads all minor league third basemen with a .986 fielding percentage. Since he made two errors in his first 54 games with the Indians, his chances for another seem promising. He admits to anger when he makes any. "I always say making an error is more embarrassing than striking out."

Hayes can go back to his earliest memories, listening to the father whose solid glove helped earn 14 years in the big leagues, and one World Series-ending catch. "My dad was always hard on me defensively," he said. "He was a pretty good defensive player, so he wanted me to be as well."

Ask Charlie Hayes about that, and he recites the mantras he offered his son.

"I always stressed to him, you can get three hits out of 10 and you can be a Hall of Famer, but if you catch three balls out of 10, you ain't going to get to hit."

"Coach says run 10 sprints, you run 11. At the end of 162-game season, you've ran 162 more than anyone else."

"When you pick up a baseball, it's going to teach you one of two things, a bad habit or a good habit. Which one do you want?"

He once told little Ke'Bryan about how, in the minor leagues, the guy who made most errors in infield practice would have to carry a cast iron in his suitcase to the next city.

"He saw how passionate I was about doing things the right way," Charlie said. "I remember playing catch in the yard. He wouldn't throw the ball properly, I would let it go by, he would chase to get it, and when he turned around to throw it to me, I would be in the house. It made me have to sleep on the couch a lot of nights, but I think I got my point across."

Now his youngest son is an uber-focused and fluid fielder, with a chess grandmaster's sense of anticipation of the next move. Hayes is invariably in the right place at the right time, one line ahead in the script.

"One thing Gary Green, our infield coordinator, has always preached to me is you've got to be extraordinary at the ordinary things," he said. "You've got to make the routine plays. I've always taken pride in being focused. That way, I'm never caught off guard.

He likes making great plays at third as much as the next Brooks Robinson wannabe. But something else he values more. "A game where I get six or seven ground balls and I'm able to get every single one of them, I think that's more important than making that one great play."

Esposito: "He's a player that takes great pride in how he goes about his business playing defense, separates it really well from his offense to his defense. He can have a tough at-bat but goes out in the field and makes plays. If he's not going to get his, he's going to take it away from somebody else so they don't get theirs."

Gelinda remembers when Ke'Bryan was maybe 15 months old, tagging around with older brother Tyree, who was a pitcher: "I think that's a lot of reason he played so much, following Tyree around. That's his idol. Everybody actually thinks it was his dad. Ke'Bryan doesn't have a clue [about Charlie's career]. He never got the chance to see his dad play.

"So many photos I have, he had a bat in his hand. Anybody from the local area, they always remember Ke'Bryan with a bat in his hands. We have videos of him as a toddler, when we would be throwing the ball to him, how he could track the ball to the bat."

There was a recent story that mentioned Ke'Bryan would hit 200-plus pitches a day from his father, 360 days a year.

"Probably wasn't 360 days, but I hit . . . a lot," he said. "When I was young, I used to have blisters on my hands because I didn't use batting gloves."

Ever get tired of it?

"Never."

With Tyree a pitcher and his younger brother - by eight years -- a hitter, the eternal conflict of baseball was on fiery display in their backyard.

"We'd make up a situation, bottom of the ninth, and battle against each other," Ke'Bryan said. "We used to fight back there all the time. We'd be out there all day in Texas, a hundred degrees in the backyard, yelling and arguing at each other. I'd get a good hit off him and he'd hit me the next at-bat."

Gelinda: "I would hear him out there crying and screaming and I would run out in the backyard. Ke'Bryan started competing against Tyree and Tyree didn't like that. I'd get mad at Charlie because he wouldn't go out and get Tyree."

Charlie: "I really didn't call it fighting. I called it brotherly love. I figured it was making him tougher."

Make no mistake who would have the last word on things, and it wasn't the ex-Yankee.

"She's probably the most competitive person in our house," Charlie said of his wife. "Everything was a competition and she made it like that. I've been blessed. We've got a baseball family, and she's the leader of it."

Tyree would be drafted as a pitcher and spend six years in the minors, before injuries took a toll. Not everyone gets the dream. But the two backyard combatants are still close. "His goal," Gelinda said of Ke'Bryan, "was to one day hit off Tyree."

Charlie understood a player should never stop working to get better, because baseball can turn mean in a single moment. Like the one in 1990, when Philadelphia's Terry Mulholland missed a perfect game because of a seventh inning throwing error - by Charlie Hayes. He wanted to make sure his sons understood that, too. He pushed Tyree, and now admits maybe too much. "I think I learned to stay out of the way, and that's basically what I did with Ke'Bryan." He did coach him on traveling teams, and at a baseball academy he founded in Texas, which Tyree now directs.

"One thing my dad always told me, if you're not getting hits, you've got to do something else to impact the game, so you've got to take away hits," Ke'Bryan said.

Living the game, breathing the game, Ke'Bryan Hayes ended up a first-round draft choice of the Pirates in 2015. But the journey was not easy as the son of a major leaguer.

Pressure?

"From day one," said Gelinda. "I think that's why my oldest son, Charles Jr., didn't play. He said he got tired of hearing, `your dad is Charlie Hayes, you should be able to do this.'"

Charlie: "Each kid handles it different. Ke'Bryan could care less." But then, Ke'Bryan was only four when his father played his final game. He's seen the clips of the '96 Series enough, though, occasionally kidding his dad about falling into that dugout.

Ke'Bryan: "There's expectations that go with it, but at the end of the day, I treated him as dad, so I didn't really think about it at all. Still to this day, sometimes I forget that he played. I just play the game that I love and try to make a name for myself."

That includes wearing No. 24. Charlie wore seven different numbers in the big leagues, but never No. 24. "I guess that's his way of separating and being his own person, and there's nothing wrong with that," he said.

One thing about being a big leaguer's son, Ke'Bryan met a lot of big names. Which brings us to the time he was 12, going to a Yankees-Astros game in Houston. The shortstop to Charlie Hayes' left in 1996 was Derek Jeter, so the two were friends, joined at the championship ring. Charlie thought it'd be a great surprise for his son to have Jeter call him before the game. Ke'Bryan can take it from there.

"I had two of my buddies from my travel league team with me and we had gotten there early, around BP. We were just walking around on the concourse. He had called me once and I didn't answer; it was a random number. The same number called me again and I answered it, but it was so loud, I couldn't hear anything, so I hung up."

Yep, Ke'Bryan Hayes hung up on Derek Jeter.

"The next day I got to go down in the clubhouse and we had a laugh about it."

Now Ke'Bryan Hayes is close to the big leagues, where his father spent so much of his life, and the brother he idolized so badly wanted to go. The hitting still needs an upgrade, and he's working hard on that. He brightens at the mention of Feb. 24 in spring training. He homered twice for the Pirates against Miami, including a walk-off grand slam.

"He's not doing as well as he wants to do, but stay the course, trust the process, enjoy, and stay positive," said Charlie, now coaching in the Phillies organization, but still paying attention from afar. "That's why you don't see me around a whole lot. I trust him. I know he's going to do the things you have to do to become a major leaguer."

"I'm a wreck every night. I watch every at-bat. I'm swinging at fences from the couch."

And when the day comes the Pirates call his son?

"I'll probably cry my eyes out. I've seen that kid with tears, I've seen that kid take off his batting gloves and have blood in them. I've seen that kid be relentless when it comes to taking grounders."

Gelinda: "He's told me, please don't cry. I tell him I won't be able to help it. I know what he's gone through."

Ke'Bryan: "I'm sure they'll cry. When I hit a home run, my dad cries."

But he won't mind, remembering those hot days in the backyard, and the blistered hands, and a gazillion grounders.

"This is what I've been waiting for my whole life."

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