September 26, 2023

By Melissa Verge

Canadian Baseball Network

There’s not much Hayden Robbins can see of his first baseball game.

His eyesight only reaches about eight inches, approximately the length of the two adjacent sides of home plate. What he can see of the world is right in front of him, and still very much black and white.

But he can hear the sound of the baseball as it smacks into the catcher's mitt, the umpire as they call out a strike, the crack of the bat as it connects with the ball, skipping over the dirt and into the grass for a base hit.

Maybe those sounds strike a chord in six-day-old Robbins. Or maybe it’s a glimpse he caught of his baseball swag in between naps at the field - a red striped “daddy’s team shirt,” covering his tiny nine-pound body, brought to the diamond to watch his dad play. Sixteen years later and many baseball games since, the young athletes' life revolves around the sport. The multi-position player from Comox, B.C. gets out almost every day to practice his game.

Comox is beautiful, he can see the ocean from his front window, surrounded by water and mountains. But there’s a simple beauty to the fence, the dirt and the freshly cut grass of the ball diamond. His home away from home, his “second home” he calls it. You can find the Highland Secondary School student practicing at his school field with his brother regularly.

“I’m everyday either at the field, in the gym, putting in the best work I can,” Robbins said. “[I’m] always asking coaches for help, asking for pointers, stuff like that, just trying to make myself better everyday.”

He’s following in his fathers cleats with his passion for the sport, now playing for the Parksville Royals. He was called up to the senior team this season to fill in for their catcher who was injured. The 16-year-old was a big contributor even on a veteran roster, said Royals coach Frank Kaluzniak. He along with one other Grade 10 carried them to the finals with their high energy and enthusiasm for the sport.

The older players fed off of Robbins’ success on the field, encouraging them to push harder.

“You know just being able to come in and being that spark plug that we were missing, had like a really old team but just kind of missing a spark plug,” Kaluzniak said. “He kind of came in late and he got hot and the guys rallied around him, and then he became one of the leaders moving forward into the playoffs.”

Robbins likes to lead, and have some element of control on the diamond in an otherwise unpredictable game. Crouching behind home plate, the entire field visible before him is how he prefers to play. Catching is his passion, but another draw for Kaluzniak in selecting him for the roster was his versatility. Once their regular catcher came back from injury, he kept him on the team, as the young athlete has the ability to play almost anywhere on the field. He’s comfortable at shortstop and can also pitch. When he gets on the mound he can hit between 84-87 mph for them with his fastball, Kaluzniak said.

It was clear from a young age that he had a gift for baseball, his dad said. (Not quite as early as six days old) but well before he hit double digits, the talent and drive he had were obvious.

“He seemed to just take to it pretty naturally,” Joe Robbins said. “He was just six years old and he was catching and throwing and hitting and doing all the things.”

His mom, Erin, remembers teaching him to keep his eye on the ball early. As a two-year-old, he’d take it literally, and he would put the ball to his eye, so his eye was quite literally on the ball.

It was a run in that a nine-year-old Robbins had with former MLB player Taylor Green, who is also from Comox, B.C., that solidified his future aspirations. The two met at a camp that Robbins attended. It made his goals seem more realistic, he said, because he was from the same small town that he was.

“I knew once I met him that's going to be me, I'm going to do that,” Robbins said. “I'm going to achieve what he achieved.”

That’s his ultimate goal, but for now the 16-year-old is focusing on getting schools to take a good look at him and getting his name out there.

Coach Kaluzniak has no doubt that with the consistency he’s seen, his young athlete can move forward with the sport beyond high school. Hopefully he can go to a good junior college, or potentially get looked at for something better like a division 1 or the pro ranks, he said.

“As of right now he I think that his ceiling is really high, and there's a lot to like for a college coach,” he said.