Coming Into Focus

Look into Josh Satin's eyes as he squints into the afternoon sun at Evans Diamond. Beneath those dark, bushy brows there's a silent intensity, a gaze that has seen everything under the sun, it seems, but a Major League contract.

It's a weary gaze sometimes. He's had to endure a lot over the past several years. As a freshman, he had a season for the record books, then fell off the face of the planet in his sophomore and junior seasons, going undrafted in 2007.

He's seen his high school classmate and best friend, Brennan Boesch, get drafted in the third round in 2006 by the Detroit Tigers, as he sat by and watched. A few weeks ago, he and the rest of the Bears baseball team saw the Cal flag atop Edwards Stadium flying at half-staff, in memory of close friend, fellow Dodgers fan and former infielder Cyrus Allizadeh, a loss that Satin and the rest of the team took particularly hard.

Yet in his fifth season-one that Satin never planned to play-the senior second baseman is finally seeing clearly, and what he sees is the best year of his baseball life.

"I feel really rewarded right now, when all the hard work is paying off," says Satin. "It's hard to explain how much I had to do to get back to where I wanted to be for this season. The work I had to put in was so much. All I did was eat, work out, hit and think about the season coming up. After the struggles that I've been through, it's really rewarding right now, and we're only halfway done. It's not even close to complete."

It's been a rough road for the second baseman from Harvard-Westlake High, who came to Cal as part of a highly-touted recruiting class centered around him and Boesch. The long-hitting outfielder and the four-year varsity shortstop were supposed to bring glory and postseason baseball back to Berkeley.

Just two years removed from a South Regional appearance in Baton Rouge, La., the plan that Satin and Boesch set out for the Bears baseball program was to get to a Regional in their sophomore year, the College World Series the next and then both ride into the sunset to star in the professional ranks.

Things didn't quite work out they way they had planned. They never made the postseason in the three years that they played together, along with future Seattle Mariners pitcher Brandon Morrow, St. Louis Cardinals farmhand Allen Craig and Milwaukee Brewers prospect Chris Errecart.

"It's sad that that group of guys wasn't able to do as much for the Cal program as we should have," says Satin.

Satin himself had a rocky start, redshirting the 2004 season due to a shoulder injury. He came into his own in 2005, earning All-American and first-team All-Pac-10 honors with a .348 average, 40 RBI and five home runs as the Bears finished a hair's breadth away from making that coveted Regional, becoming the first Pac-10 team to have a conference record over .500 and not get the call.

Things seemed on track, and Satin decided to have surgery on his shoulder in the offseason to repair lingering discomfort for the playoff run that was supposed to lay ahead.

"I remember thinking, 'God, I hope I'm not different when I get back,' and people kept telling me, 'You've always hit, it's not a big deal,'" says Satin. "I just wanted to make sure I could throw, make sure to get my shoulder in shape. In fall ball, I hit a little, I didn't do great. I got some hits, but I wasn't driving the ball. And I was like, 'When the season starts, I'll hit.' It just never came."

Satin hit an anemic .222, with 20 RBI and two home runs in 2006. Midway through the season, he began to feel a pain in his right wrist. He kept pushing through it.

"I realized it (hurt) about halfway through the season," says Satin. "I was doing so poorly, and I really wanted to do better. I didn't want to just end the season like that. We had such good talent that year that I didn't want to give up on the season."

It was not until very late in the season that the stress fracture he had played with became unbearable, and Satin decided to finish out the last week of the year on the bench. The team finished 26-29, well out of the contention for a NCAA Tournament berth.

"I didn't know what to do and it just got worse and worse and I was stressing even more and more and it kept getting worse," says Satin. "I'd never struggled before in my entire life, and I was miserable."

After an All-Star MVP summer in the Cape Cod League, a healthy Satin started 2007 on a hot streak. Against UC Irvine in the opening series, Satin went 5-for-13 (.384) with six RBI, two doubles and a home run.

But sometime during that first homestand, Satin lost his swing. He struggled and pressed harder and harder as the season wore on, hitting a middling .287 with only four home runs.

"It was partly because I didn't know why I was hitting well that first weekend," says Satin. "I just knew I was hitting well. And then, when something changed, I didn't know how to fix it."

Satin got a hit in each of the last five games of the season as the Bears made one final-yet futile-push for the tournament. Figuring that he had played his last game ever at Evans Diamond, Satin waited for the Major League Draft, and for a call that never came.

More than 1,500 players saw their names scroll across computer screens, but none of them read Josh Satin. He told his parents he was going for a drive. He had to clear his head.

"I didn't want to really be around my parents and everyone saying, 'Aw, it's OK, you deserve better, they screwed you,' when in reality, they didn't," says Satin. "I understand the fact that I'm a middle infielder who's not all that fast, I don't know if I'm going to be a middle infielder at the next level, and I have to hit a ton and I really didn't hit a ton … I just thought that I built up some sort of a track record that would have helped me as far as my first year. It was hard for me. There were weeks where I didn't know what I wanted to do."

A career so meticulously planned was now falling apart. Satin was already done with school-he graduated that spring-and he didn't think the Bears would even want him back.

"Ever since my first year, I never felt that I had to prove myself to the team. Everyone on the team knew what I had done and what I could do," says Satin. "Nobody on this (2008) team had ever seen me play well. Ever. As far as everyone was concerned, I was terrible. Why would they want me back? Why would they be happy that I came back? I wanted to prove to them, more than anything, that they should be happy that I'm coming back and I'm going to be a huge contributor to this team."

With his back against a wall and the game he loved slipping away, Satin held on fiercely, more desperately than he had before, fighting for that last teaspoon of hope, spring sunshine, clay, grass and leather. He rededicated himself to his craft, spending the fall working out, hitting and researching, stealing bits and pieces of other swings that he could cobble into his own and becoming a fanatic student of the game.

"I revamped my swing-I had never really worked on my swing before. My entire life, never worked on my swing," says Satin. "I just decided that I was going to find out about my swing, what I do well and what I need to go back to when I'm struggling, and I did that."

Cleansed, in a sense, by the disappointment and struggle, the baseball gods finally allowed Satin to see through the haze, and find his true swing. Think Bagger Vance with an aluminum bat. After the hardships and the let-downs, Satin finally was able to have a full season of fall practice, something that hadn't happened in his previous four years because of various ailments.

With only one class three days a week, Satin had time to study the game. With the help of a nutritionist, he put on 25 pounds of muscle. He had his health, buttressed by a strict diet and workout regimen that saw him preparing food for himself for really the first time in his life.

"It was honestly worse than a job," says Satin. "I ate six times a day, had to prepare my own day with meals, and do everything around meals. I didn't go out very much because I would have to miss a meal to go out."

Satin worked every day for a week over winter break in Los Angeles batting cages with teammate David Cooper. He spent his days looking at video of himself and other players, picking out what he liked and what worked. He fashioned a swing that had a chance to be his swing-the swing.

In the first three games of 2008, Satin went 5-for-13 with three runs, four RBI and two home runs, eerily similar to his numbers against UC Irvine. But the difference was that this time, Satin kept going.

Satin is now hitting a team-leading .435, has set the school record for longest hitting streak at 27 games, is second on the team with 12 home runs (his career total through 2007 was 11), second in RBI (37) and second in slugging percentage (.779). He is among the conference leaders in nearly all major offensive categories.

Projecting Satin's present numbers through a full season, he is on pace to hit 20 home runs and tally 62 RBI, which would both be career highs-by a lot. Satin's previous season-high in home runs was five, in RBI, 41. Talk about a career year.

"Not getting drafted last year was the biggest blessing that anyone has given to me," says Satin. "I don't know where I'll get drafted this year, but I'll definitely get drafted somewhere. I don't know if whoever drafts me sees me as a major leaguer, but I'll bet they see me as a better prospect than I was last year … I'm more prepared, more confident, not to mention the fact that we're in a pretty unbelievable season right now."

For the first time since Satin was a raw recruit, the Cal baseball team finally has a realistic chance to reach the postseason. At 24-9-2, the No. 8 Bears are even in the conversation to take the conference title, a feat not seen since 1980-before Satin was even born, and when coach David Esquer was still in high school.

"This could be one of those things you remember for the rest of your life," says Satin. "It's definitely rewarding to see team recognition. To me, that's more satisfying than individual recognition. It's kind of crazy to think about that, but when people write and talk about our team being elite, it's so rewarding."

Tags: JOSH SATIN