PRAIRIE GROVE -- Devotion to the family farm almost caused Logan Gragg to miss out on stellar baseball career that made him St. Louis' pick in the eighth round.
Prairie Grove baseball coach Mitch Cameron recalls Gragg telling his coach he wasn't sure he even wanted to play baseball coming into high school.
Cameron picked up on Gragg's potential before he entered the Tiger program as a freshman and did his best to persuade Gragg to continue with the sport.
"Just to watch him throw you could tell he was going to be good," Cameron said. "He was tall and lanky and you could tell he was going to be able to throw 90 m.p.h. I don't know how much interest he had in the game."
Cameron seized the moment utilizing his influence to steer Gragg back toward baseball and into a career that would take him to junior college powerhouse Connors State and onto a tradition-rich Oklahoma State program, then eventually onto the radar of Major League Baseball's St. Louis Cardinals.
Cameron got in Gragg's ear, telling the teenager, "You're going to have an opportunity to play college baseball so you should at least go try it."
"The rest is history. He was able to go to Connors State and have a good career there and bounce back from Tommy John surgery," Cameron said. "Logan was just a good ol' boy from the farm. His mom and dad raised him right. They're a great family. My hat's off to them for instilling that work ethic in him."
As a Prairie Grove junior Gragg went 6-2 with a 2.36 ERA and 54 strikeouts in 50 and 1/3 innings in nine starts. He also hit .362 with 9 doubles and 37 RBIs.
"With his build (6-5, 180 in high school), lankiness and ability to throw strikes you could tell he was going to be able to play college baseball," Cameron said.
Cameron left Prairie Grove after Gragg's junior season to become head coach at Rogers Heritage, but by then, Gragg had settled on baseball. Under 2016 Tiger head coach Chris Mileham he achieved a 1.02 ERA through 48 innings.
"When your ERA is 1-point-something, I can probably call anyone and they'll come take a look," Mileham said, recalling he arranged to have Crowder College, of Neosho, Mo. come and look at some of the Tiger pitchers.
The Roughriders offered Gragg a baseball scholarship and he had an option between Crowder and Connors State in Warner, Okla.
"Logan thought Connors State was a better fit. Obviously it was. He had a tremendous amount of success there," Mileham said.
Sunday evening Mileham, who admits to being a baseball junkie, watched the Super Regional game between Oklahoma State and Texas Tech hoping to catch a glimpse of Gragg. He was elated when the camera shifted to a view of Gragg in the Cowboys dugout.
Mileham would have preferred a chance to see Gragg sent in to close out the game, but Oklahoma State fell behind 8-6 in the ninth inning. The Cowboys got two runners aboard with two outs in their last at-bat, but couldn't score and were eliminated.
Still, that couldn't diminish the joy Mileham feels knowing Gragg will soon be presented with an offer from a historic Major League Baseball franchise.
"It's a home run every time," Mileham said. "I celebrate every time a boy gets an opportunity to fulfill a boyhood dream to play baseball at the next level."
Sports on 06/12/2019