Kennedy: Hunt living his pro baseball dream in Trois-Rivieres
Trois-Rivieres Aigles second baseman Ethan Hunt awaits a throw from the catcher in Frontier League baseball action.
April 29, 2022
By Patrick Kennedy
Canadian Baseball Network
The Oxford dictionary defines “dream,” in part, as “a cherished aspiration, an ambition.”
Either way, Ethan Hunt is living his dream.
This is a tale of a talented, likeable lad who has always wanted to play professional baseball. That dream has finally come true. The 24-year-old Hunt made his pro debut on August 16 with les Aigles de Trois Rivières of the independent Frontier League. He played a flawless second base and took his first-ever cuts at the plate as a paid batter. In his first at-bat – this after an 800-km, eight-hour drive from Welland to Trois Rivieres with a pitstop in this area to pick up the player’s father, Jim - the rookie legged out a double.
“I’m a little sore, but I’m having a ball,” the newly minted pro said one morning after going 3-for-4 in his fourth game with les Aigles.
It’s a story of desire and setback and unwavering perseverance, of love lost and rekindled.
“Playing pro ball has been E’s goal for a long time,” said proud papa Hunt, who aided the process years ago by converting a portion of an unused barn on the family’s Elginburg property into a batting cage. The rudimentary setup was assembled with hay bales, tarps, two-by-fours and netting, with a protective, double-stringed L-screen at one end. A narrow 40-foot throwing lane separates batter from pitching machine – usually the rubber left arm of the proprietor.
“Ethan started playing ball when he was five or six years old,” the father added. “But it wasn’t until 2011, on a drive home from watching the Little League World Series in Williamsport, Pa., that he told me he wanted to be a baseball player full-time.”
In the wake of that declaration, the young teenager quit triple-A hockey and concentrated on baseball.
“Ethan’s always put in the work,” his dad added. “I never had to remind him what it takes.”
Such unwavering commitment calls for a deep passion for the sport. Way back when “E” was knee-high to a fungo bat and not much heavier, he fell in love with baseball. It was only puppy love, but the youngster fell hard, smitten with the game from the get-go. Baseball? Well, not so much. Let’s just say the old gal’s been around the bases a few times when it comes to such summer flings. She deals with this kind of romance all the time, enticing hundreds of thousands of potential suitors each year, oftentimes enslaving them for life. Indeed, summer love is old hat for Senora Beisbol.
Hunt’s dream may have come true, but it’s not over.
“I definitely want to push ahead and see how far I can take my career,” noted the Regiopolis-Notre Dame grad who joins Matt Brash as the only Kingstonians currently playing professional baseball. These days one finds Brash, a right-handed pitcher, in the bullpen of the American League’s Seattle Mariners.
Admittedly, the independent Frontier League is several notches below. Competition-wise, it sits on or near the bottom rung of the pro ball ladder. A climb to the top rung is improbable but certainly not impossible. It wasn’t for ex-Toronto Blue Jay pitchers Tanner Roark and Steve Delabar and the dozens of other Frontier League alumni who’ve ascended to the big leagues. The 16-team circuit – the Canadian teams are Ottawa, Trois Rivieres and Quebec City - is made up of primarily of ex-college players and a sprinkling of grizzled pros playing out the string. Younger players such as Hunt take solace in the fact that the league is monitored and watched by scouts and those big-league birddogs are perpetually on the lookout for diamonds in the rough.
“Even though the Frontier League may be fairly low on the totem pole, I see it as a big steppingstone and a chance to move up,” Ethan Hunt pointed out.
To that end he has worked hard to earn a name for himself as the kind of multi-use utility player – baseball’s answer to the Swiss army knife – who today is regarded as a staple on every team at every level. Hunt’s standard reply when asked by a new coach what position he plays is: “I’m comfortable anywhere on the diamond, Skip.”
In college Ethan played infield, outfield, and he even pitched a little. On his most recent club, the Intercounty Baseball League’s Welland Jackfish, he manned third base. He is playing second base for les Aigles.
Hunt is coming off an historic senior year with the Oklahoma Panhandle State Aggies. Among the many single-season school records he established were average (.441), hits (75), RBIs (58), runs (58) and home runs (13). Named a second-team conference all-star, he was a constant threat for a scuffling Aggies team that managed just 14 wins in 50 outings in NAIA Div. 1 play.
“Ethan joined us two years ago as a walk-on,” Aggies manager Shawn Joy recalled over the phone from Goodwell, Okla., “but after two weeks we knew we had to change that walk-on status and give him some (scholarship) money.”
Hunt came to Oklahoma after a three-year stint at University of Charleston in West Virginia that did not end well. He slumped academically and, in the end, saw his partial athletic scholarship revoked.
“He had to spend the 2019 semester at home with us,” his dad recalled. “That wasn’t a happy time for E, but he also learned a lot about himself.”
For starters, he learned to understand and appreciate the meaning of the term “student-athlete.” Accordingly, he arrived in the Sooner State not so much a different player as a different student.
“We knew Ethan had struggled academically at the (NCAA D-2) University of Charleston before coming to Oklahoma,” said Joy. “But he owned it, never made any excuses, and came here with a fresh outlook and a commitment to change. There were absolutely no issues with his schooling, and all he did on the field was turn in the best statistical season in our school’s baseball history.”
Joy, a Frontier League alumnus himself, acted as Hunt’s conduit to the 30-year-old league.
“I kept some people updated on Ethan’s play every two weeks or so,” said the ex-Quebec Capitales pitcher. “On the final day before the league transaction deadline, Trois Rivieres signed him.”
As for Hunt’s foray into pro ball, so far so good. He hit safely in his first four games and was batting .444 (8-for-18) with three doubles in his first five outings for a Trois Rivieres team pitted in a four-way battle for the final playoff berth in the East Division.
In the meantime, the newcomer is adjusting to the so-called mental grind and the demands of pro ball.
“The pace of play is faster,” Hunt observed. “Balls are hit harder, players are stronger, faster. You must be ready on every single play because you’re expected to be ready. The long schedule (96 games) shouldn’t be a problem. I love being on a ball field for five, six hours a day, anyway.”
He laughed in recollecting that long-ago puppy-love for the sport, conceding that Cupid’s arrow never really hit the bullseye until the autumn of 2019, when Hunt was at home, out of school, out of baseball, and out of options.
“That’s when I really fell in love with baseball,” he said. “I took a good look in the mirror, and it’s true what they say – You really can’t appreciate something until you don’t have it anymore.”
Patrick Kennedy is a retired Whig-Standard reporter. He can be reached at pjckennedy35@gmail.com