In West Jefferson, Ohio, football is king.
So says Yankees reliever Caleb Ferguson, who is from the Madison County village that roughly 4,000 people call home. His dad had the chance to play the sport in college. His brother actually did at the Division II level. Ferguson himself grew up a wide receiver.
“We were definitely a football household,” Ferguson told the Daily News. “I come from a football town. Everything is football.”
Not Ferguson, though.
He quit the gridiron as a freshman at West Jefferson High so that he could focus on baseball. When he tried to reboot his football career as a junior because he wanted to spend more time around friends, he quickly realized his baseball schedule wouldn’t allow for it. That served as a useful lesson ahead of a major league career that is now in its sixth season.
“I had a guy tell me if I focus on baseball, I’d get drafted out of high school,” Ferguson said. “I told him he was crazy.
“Here we are.”
That someone was T.J. Hill, a 63rd-round draft pick of the Tampa Bay Devil Rays in 1996. A native of London, Ohio, the right-handed Hill had his career derailed by an ulnar nerve transposition and never made it past A-ball. He decided to start teaching lessons after that, and a friend of his dad happened to be the athletic director at Ferguson’s high school.
Hill first connected with Ferguson as the latter wrapped up eighth grade. Ferguson had played for his school’s B Team that year, and his father, Pat, had concerns about his son’s chances at the next level.
“His dad was like, ‘We just want him to make the high school team,’” Hill said during a phone call with The News.
But when Hill laid eyes on Ferguson, he met a kid with a long, lanky frame and lots of whip action on his left arm. Almost immediately, Hill told Ferguson and his dad that major league teams would take a chance on a southpaw if he could get his velocity up to 90 mph by his senior year.
“I could just tell,” Hill said. “I know what it looks like. I’ve played.”
That assurance convinced Ferguson to take baseball seriously. In his hometown, athletic careers often have their limits, and he knew football wouldn’t make him a professional athlete.
“Where I come from, nobody really ever has a ton of success in sports outside of high school. It’s just a very, very small town and it’s really hard to get noticed,” Ferguson said. “You see a lot of people go have success at Division III schools. And that’s a huge accomplishment. Think about the amount of people that don’t get to play college sports.
“But for me, I was like, ‘Man, I don’t want to go play Division III football. It’s not what I want to do. That’s not my dream.’ So I stuck with [baseball], and yeah, that guy was right.”
Ferguson also credited Dan DeLucia, another Ohioan and the Red Sox’s current Triple-A pitching coach, for his career. But while DeLucia “fine-tuned” Ferguson, “T.J. pretty much built me.”
Ferguson threw in the low 70s when he met Hill, so the instructor formed a plan to add five mph to the pitcher’s fastball each year of high school. Their work paid off sooner than expected.
After playing for the 8th grade B Team, Ferguson ended up pitching for West Jefferson’s varsity team as a freshman. He reached Hill’s 90-mph goal as a junior.
Then Ferguson blew out his elbow. He required Tommy John surgery as a senior.
By that point, Hill had moved to Georgia. Still, he kept in touch with Ferguson and his parents. He told them that Tommy John patients still get drafted.
Pat said the family wouldn’t hold its breath, though, and Ferguson had a full ride to West Virginia to fall back on. Or so he thought.
Instead, the Mountaineers wanted to pull his scholarship after the surgery. Ferguson, already getting looks from pro scouts, was advised to rehab at a community college.
“It just didn’t sit right with me,” he said.
Disappointed in West Virginia, Ferguson decided that he wanted autonomy over his career. So when the Dodgers used a 38th-round pick on a small-town kid with a bum elbow in 2014, Ferguson leapt at the opportunity with the same confidence that Hill had shown him four years earlier.
“School’s always gonna be there,” Ferguson said. “I just needed a chance. I didn’t need to prove to myself that I needed to be a first-rounder to play in this league.
“Yeah, you’re a 38th-rounder, but you’re in the same room as everybody else. That’s all you need.”
Ferguson made it sound like an obvious choice, but he had no idea what pro ball had in store. Heck, he had never even flown before, so his parents joined him on his first trip to the Dodgers’ complex in Arizona.
There, Ferguson spent most of his draft year and 2015 rehabbing. There, he made little money as he watched others play in games. He began to doubt the path he had chosen, and he considered quitting.
His father kept pushing him.
“It was really hard,” Ferguson said. “To this day, I can still recall a conversation with my dad about not wanting to do it anymore. And my dad just kept telling me that everything comes to an end at some point, and when you feel like that end is here for you, then the end’s here for you. But every day he would say, ‘Give it one more day.’
“Thank God for that.”
In retrospect, Ferguson is glad his career began with rehab. It taught him to take care of his business like a pro at a young age, which helped him develop as a person before he ever could as a pitcher.
“Sometimes,” Ferguson said, “when you’re trying to develop all of that at once, it just gets to be so much that you forget to go compete.”
Ferguson made his professional appearance toward the end of 2015. In 2018, the Dodgers called him up at age 21.
A starter back then, Ferguson surrendered four earned runs over 1.2 innings to the Pirates in Pittsburgh. It wasn’t the best debut, but Ferguson’s family and friends, including Hill, were there to see it.
Ferguson has since become a dependable reliever, though he missed all of 2021 thanks to a second Tommy John procedure. The 27-year-old recorded a 3.43 ERA over five seasons with the Dodgers, and he’s started his Yankees career with a 1.80 mark over five innings following an offseason trade.
“I went from high class to the highest of class. When you look around and you see the history and the franchise and everything about it, it’s top notch,” Ferguson said of his transition to pinstripes. “To be a part of something like this, it’s special, especially when you get to sit back and take it all in for a couple days.”
Ferguson is looking forward to the next few games, which will come in his home state.
The Yankees begin a three-game set with the Cleveland Guardians on Friday. While Ferguson rooted for the Reds and grew up closer to Cincinnati, the series will allow him to see family and celebrate his son’s first birthday.
A party is planned for Saturday morning, and he’s hoping relatives will attend one of the games before driving roughly two hours back home.
“It’s good timing,” Ferguson said. “My wife’s in charge of everything. I just know I have to be there.”
Hill did not have plans to see Ferguson pitch in a Yankees uniform for the first time in Cleveland. However, the instructor continues to monitor his former pupil, as the two are bonded by their Ohio roots, late-round selections and injuries.
“It’s awesome. It’s fun to watch,” Hill said of Ferguson’s career, adding that his 12-year-old son has an example to follow. “It’s really awesome for him to see him on TV.”
