Jordan Walker, Home Run Derby champ, began his journey in Decatur
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It’s 2020. The LakePoint Sports complex in Cartersville.
Decatur High’s Jordan Walker is up to bat … and he just whiffed on an opening fastball.
The sweet, innocent child on the mound thinks he’s got something sorted and, two pitches later, returns to that initial offering. Just above the belt, just like before.
Slightly different result.
“Jordan proceeded to hit it about three-quarters of the way up the light pole,” then-Decatur coach Robby Gilbert told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution on Tuesday. “And you sit there and go all right, that’s just different. Not every kid has that ability.
“You may fool him once, but he’s gonna make an adjustment and he’s gonna make you pay.”
Walker — now a 24-year-old St. Louis Cardinal — became a legend Monday night in Philadelphia, finishing off hometown he-man Kyle Schwarber with six straight dingers to win MLB’s Home Run Derby.
He was already in the middle of a breakout big league season (a fact to which Braves fans can attest; six of Walker’s league-leading 74 RBIs came in recent contests against Atlanta).
But the lore begins in Decatur.
Gilbert, currently coaching over at Gwinnett County’s Brookwood High, said Walker played in his early high school years. His junior season, though, is when that lanky frame finally filled out.
The resulting stat line, off the top of Gilbert’s head: .487 average, 18 home runs and “60-something” RBIs.
“I tell people all the time, he just wants to be one of the guys,” Gilbert said. “Even throughout his career in high school and all the notoriety he was getting, he was always his teammates’ biggest cheerleader. He wanted them to have as much success as he was having and he never put himself above anybody else.”
Loved helping coach up the young guys, too.
COVID-19 cut Walker’s senior campaign short, but he’d done enough (see: LakePoint light pole) for the Cardinals to make him a first-round draft pick.
Now, some six years later, here he is: calm, cool and backward-capped, sending new satellites into the Pennsylvania stratosphere while his family (“great people”) and a former coach soak it all in.
“There were boos every time he hit a home run or took a pitch, and then every time he popped up or got out there was a bunch of cheers,” Gilbert said. “So for his composure in that moment, it just speaks volumes about him and how he was able to slow it down.”
Surreal? Absolutely.
Surprising? Nah.
Not to Gilbert.
This — all of it — was “just a matter of time.”