Like nearly every other town in America, Draper has its own Little League. The games are played in Draper Park, where mothers push strollers through the outfield, oblivious, and horses stare at the proceedings from an adjacent pasture, and, by midsummer, the infield is baked harder than asphalt.
This is where Chad Hermansen played baseball as a boy. Like a lot of other kids, he played because his friends did and because it was fun. Like a lot of other kids, he dreamed of playing in the majors. Unlike a lot of kids, he made it.Hermansen will start in center field for the Pittsburgh Pirates on opening day. The kid from Draper Little League will roam the same outfield where Stargell, Parker and Clemente once played. The experts always said Hermansen was one of those can't-miss kids, and here he is, a young phenom so big that two states claim him.
He spent the first 10 years of his life in Sandy, a long throw from Alta High. He learned the alphabet at Altara Elementary; he learned to hit the cutoff man at Draper Park. If Hermansen lives up to his billing, they can point to old diamonds in the park and say this is where it all began, and every kid who steps to the plate has another reason to believe he can make it from here, too.
Hermansen's first tee-ball game was in the park. Even then they say he not only hit the ball hard, he hit it where he wanted it to go. He played four summers here, and the cars that parked on the grass in the outfield were always in peril that one of his drives would find their windshield.
Hermansen was a terror on the plate or on the mound. As a pitcher, he threw hard and wild. One day, pitching in a cold, wet rain, he was even wilder than usual. He hit four or five batters, and the parents in the stands were yelling at him. While he's forgotten a lot of things that happened in that park, that memory has remained with him.
"I felt so bad, I almost cried," he said this week from his condo in Florida, where the Pirates are just breaking spring training.
Hermansen moved to Henderson, Nev., when he was 10 and he became a superstar. The Pirates made him the 10th pick overall of the 1995 draft at the age of 17 and sent him to the minor leagues. Late last spring he got called up to the majors for the first time. He produced his first hit in St. Louis, which earned him congratulations from Mark McGwire at first base. After collecting several hits against the Cubs, including a homer, Mark Grace asked him, "Hey, kid, is it really that easy?"
Of course the answer is no. He strikes out too much, and his fielding is erratic, which is why the Pirates have tried him at first positions in the minors. He is still a star in the making.
The Pirates have high hopes that Hermansen is the center fielder for whom they have searched for years. One newspaper called Hermansen the Pirates' "most watched outfield prospect since Barry Bonds." Another reporter wrote that Hermansen's ascension to the majors is "a day Pirate fans have discussed and awaited for years."
Hermansen's performance in the minors was tantalizing -- 60 home runs and 175 RBIs in two Triple A seasons. "We need to find out what Chad Hermansen is," says Manager Gene Lamont. Paul Tinnel, the Pirates' director of player personnel, calls Hermansen "The Herminator."
Hermansen is big (6-foot-2, 185 pounds), fast and strong, which is how they remember him in Draper Park. "When he was a boy, it was amazing how much more mature he was, both in the way he handled himself and the way he hit the ball," says Dave Johnson. "He stroked the ball so well. He was a head above everybody else. He was special. He just looked like a ballplayer."
Johnson was Hermansen's neighbor and coached him during his Draper Little League days. Their kids played whiffle ball together in the back yard and traded baseball cards and dreamed aloud about playing in the bigs. These days, the guys from the old neighborhood, now in their 20s, like to tease Hermansen that they once threw out a future major leaguer in Draper Park.
"I hope Chad is successful because he'd be good for baseball because of what kind of person he is," says Johnson.
Hermansen and Johnson have become friends over the years and stay in regular contact, exchanging e-mails and phone calls. Hermansen, who lived in Provo the last two off-seasons while his wife attended BYU, visits the Johnson house when he's in town and sends his old coach signed batting helmets, bats, hats and baseball cards -- his own. When Hermansen played a game against the Salt Lake Buzz two years ago, Johnson helped raise $1,600 to buy tickets for nearly every player in the Draper Little League to attend.
"I'll always remember where I come from," says Hermansen. "I love Utah. That's where I got started playing baseball."
Around Draper they remember him, too.