Like the rest of us, Johnny Rizer will get his phone out when he has a minute and will scroll. You know, just to see what’s going on.
Unlike the rest of us, he’ll suddenly see himself. The image of him climbing the wall at Lupton Stadium to steal a home run against Texas continues to pop on his Twitter timeline and Instagram feed.
“I still get a couple of notifications here and there, people liking it,” the TCU center fielder said. “I’ll sit there on my phone and I’m just like, ‘Wow, I can’t believe I did that.’”
Nobody could, and yet everybody could. The senior from Cypress turned in a blink and sprinted for the wall in a bid to track down a missile off the bat of Longhorns DH Zach Zubia in the fourth inning last Friday night. Glancing at the wall twice, running full speed, the player his teammates call the best athlete on the team reached the warning track, stuck his left foot in the padding and reached above the yellow line.
His wrist turned, the webbing of his glove faced skyward, and the ball landed in it. Clutching it, he fell to the track, braced himself with his glove hand and popped up, firing the ball back to the infield. The play kept the game scoreless (TCU would win 3-2 with a ninth-inning rally) and put jaws on the ground. ESPN would end up replaying the catch and naming it the Play of the Day.
“Instant chills went down my body because you hear the whole crowd going crazy,” shortstop Adam Oviedo said.
“I thought, no way he catches that,” catcher Alex Isola said.
Pitcher Nick Lodolo, the beneficiary, laughed inside. “When he went up and then casually came down, I’m like, no way he caught that. And then he flipped the ball up. I’m like, you’re acting that calm after you did that?”
Sure. Just another play in the baseball life of Johnny Rizer. You never know what you’re going to see.
Two years ago, he just wanted to make any play. Rizer almost didn’t have a baseball life when he left Louisiana-Lafayette after batting only 14 times and hitting .000. Yep, no hits and hardly used, starting once in 21 games.
Obviously, things didn’t click with the Ragin’ Cajuns. So it was off to Blinn College to restart his hopes.
“If I didn’t do well there, I probably would have had to call it quits,” Rizer said. “But, made it work. And ended up here.”
“Here” is TCU, where his baseball education continues. Last season, he won the job in center field and made spectacular plays — “He changes games,” coach Jim Schlossnagle said — but also head-scratching plays.
He’d get picked off. He’d lose track of situations. He’d get himself out at the plate.
Schlossnagle loves his center fielder. And his center fielder drives him crazy.
“I think he thinks I’m a great kid, but I’m kind of stubborn, hard-headed sometimes,” Rizer said. “I make some silly mistakes. Last year, I would miss signs and stuff. This year, he feels I can be a great player, but sometimes I’m too easy of an out with runners in scoring position. I’ll roll over a curveball instead of just taking it and waiting for a fastball.”
In the same game where he made his catch, Rizer demonstrated his sharpened plate skills. He singled on a 1-2 pitch to drive in the tying run in the ninth inning.
Yet, rounding first base, he almost got caught in a rundown when the cutoff man threw behind him to first base. He made it safely to second when the Longhorns held the ball to hold a runner at third.
“Great at-bat,” Schlossnagle said. “Stayed on the ball and finally got one he could handle. And then he almost ran us out of the inning.”
Oops.
“Yeah, he drives you crazy,” Schlossnagle said. “His baseball intellect has improved. Still not where it needs to be. He’s still learning. We have a simple, but pretty intricate structure in how we run the bases and play. Guys coming here, they’re not used to that. It takes them a while to learn that. And guys today don’t watch full baseball games anymore. They watch the highlights of games. They don’t really pay attention to the nuances of things, what the defense is doing, what the count is, what the pitcher’s able to do, what he’s not able to do. Those are all the things that we feel like, in our program, if they’ll pay attention and be willing to learn, it can separate them in professional baseball.”
Rizer knows the game. He loves it. Played it since he was 7 years old — “Never did T-ball, went straight to coach-pitch, learned from there,” he said.
He has big-league dreams just like everyone, and his senior season is putting him in a position to keep trying for them. Going into this weekend’s Big 12 series against Oklahoma State, Rizer is second on the team in hitting at .350 and tied for the team lead with 11 two-out hits.
He’s one away from matching his doubles, homers and stolen bases totals from a year ago, when a rib muscle tear in the second game kept him out a month and hampered his start.
Can you blame him if he, for the first time in his life, wanted to bat flip?
The deed happened March 17 against Eastern Michigan, in the second inning of a game the Horned Frogs would go on to win 12-1.
Schlossnagle saw it and flipped himself, sending Rizer back to the batter’s box to retrieve his own bat.
Remembering, Rizer smiled a “my bad” smile.
“Yeah, that’s another thing,” he said. “I did bat-flip. But I wasn’t trying to make it that bad. I was just trying to do a little flip. I guess testosterone took over, and it just went way farther than I imagined. First time I’ve done something like that.”
Rizer is not selfish. If he was, his teammates wouldn’t have his back and Schlossnagle wouldn’t continue to play him. In fact, Schlossnagle had been trying to get infielder Bobby Goodloe some time in center field to get Rizer off his feet a little. Not so much anymore.
“I don’t think I can move him,” Schlossnagle said. “Goodloe may have to learn a corner outfield spot.”
In center field, Rizer can keep doing his thing. Against UT Rio Grande Valley on Tuesday, he did again. He turned left, then right, to chase down a ball near the track. You never know what you’ll see next.
“I don’t know how many times coach has told us, the kid could be an All-American,” first baseman Jake Guenther said. “To us, it looks easy, the ridiculous catches he’s making. The way he gets to balls and his athleticism, it’s through the roof. And he’s one of the most humble, soft-spoken guys you’ll ever meet.”
Agreed, Schlossnagle said.
“He’s not a flighty kid,” the coach said. “He’s conscientious. He’s got a great heart.”
Guenther has to admit. The bat flip was so out of character, it made him laugh.
“I’ve never seen someone bat-flip into fair territory,” Guenther said.
It was a Johnny Rizer thing. You never know what you’ll see next from him on a baseball field.
Watch your Twitter and Instagram.
