“For me it really started with the 1990 Reds. Those were the guys I grew up watching and idolizing — Barry Larkin, Chris Sabo, Paul O’Neill and especially Eric Davis. He was my favorite player. I was borderline obsessed with him and tried to emulate any and every aspect of him in what I did on the field.
“I was a huge Reds fan — right up to the day I was drafted.”
This weekend may have been the first time Stammen ever pitched at GABP, but the Washington Nationals reliever couldn’t be more familiar with the Reds or the cities of Cincinnati and Dayton and the northern reaches of the Miami Valley.
He grew up in North Star, the Darke County crossroads of some 200 people. Since he was 14 and even during his offseasons as a minor-league ballplayer, he worked at his dad’s hardware and implement store there.
He attended Versailles High School and then the University of Dayton — where he became just the fifth Flyer to make the big leagues — and now he’s bought a home in Cincinnati, where he lives after the baseball season.
That keeps him close to Dayton and this past winter he worked out three times a week at the Frericks Center on the UD campus with assistant baseball coach Todd Linklater. He also shares season tickets to UD basketball games with his dad and uncle.
“They’re really good seats in the back row of the 100 level, right across from the home bench,” he said. “I probably went to 10 or 12 games this year. I was really happy with what I saw with Archie Miller — how his team played at the beginning of the year and then seeing how some guys developed and improved at the end. That was fun to watch.”
UD in his blood
Coming out of Versailles High, where he played three sports and won Academic All-Ohio honors in 2002, Stammen drew little interest from college baseball programs.
“I was going to go to UD whether I’d play baseball there or not — that’s where my heart was,” he said. “My mom went to school there and so did a lot of my cousins. My grandpa was a real big Dayton fan, too. When the Flyers were on the radio or TV, we always caught the game.
“UD recruited me real late and then it was like, ‘We’ll put you on the team, but we can’t give you any money. But I had a good senior year and summer and other schools talked to me a little, so UD offered me a little bit of (scholarship) money. For me it was a chance to play at the next level and had my career ended there, I probably would have been pretty satisfied.”
When he first came to UD, Stammen didn’t have major-league aspirations. Then again, only three former Flyers — Stammen, current Oakland pitcher Jerry Blevins and former Twins, Red Sox and Pilots pitcher Garry Roggenburk — have made the big leagues in the past half century.
But after 60 pitching appearances for UD in three seasons, Stammen got noticed and was drafted in the 12th round — the 354th pick overall by Washington in 2005.
Over the next four seasons, he toiled in the Nats’ farm system — starting 80 of the 100 games he pitched in for teams like the Vermont Expos, Savannah Sand Gnats, Potomac Nationals, Harrisburg Senators, Columbus Clippers and Syracuse Chiefs — until he finally got called up in May 2009.
Whether it was arthroscopic surgery for an elbow problem that first year or bonus-baby prospects leap-frogging him afterward, Stammen yo-yoed back and forth between Triple-A Syracuse and the big league club until this season.
He survived the roller-coaster ride in part, he said, because of lessons he learned growing up in North Star.
“Since I signed pro, I knew I hadn’t been given anything along the way, that I had paid my dues and earned everything,” he said. “That blue-collar attitude — that workmanlike style — is the way people do it up in God’s country where I’m from. And I knew if I kept working my butt off, things would come to fruition.”
Moved into the bullpen for good a year ago, the 28-year-old right-hander has been a superb long reliever for the Nationals this season. Relying especially on a sinker and slider that produce lots of grounds balls, he’s appeared in 13 games, pitched 19 innings and has a 2-0 record and 1.42 earned-run average.
He’s struck out 20 batters this year, nine of them Reds. In two April games in Washington, he struck out the entire Cincinnati side. Friday night he finally took the mound at GABP and pitched 2 1/3 innings, giving up two hits and a lone run while striking out three in the 7-3 Washington victory.
“I was a starter when we came in here a couple of other years, but my turn in the rotation came either right before we got to Cincinnati or right after we left,” he said. “I knew I’d probably pitch this time and it would be something to remember, but I couldn’t focus on that.
“You need to pay attention in this ballpark. I mean, you just watch batting practice and every ball that’s hit seems to go out. And the Reds have some great hitters. Joey Votto is one of the best hitters in the big leagues and with Jay Bruce, if you make one mistake that sucker could be out of the stadium. Brandon Phillips is great, too, and they’ve got the young guys like Cozart and Stubbs and Frazier. And Ludwick was a home run hitter for St. Louis.
“This is a team where one good swing from a lot of guys puts the ball out of the park.”
That was exactly the case Sunday as Votto hit three home runs — including a walk-off grand slam in the ninth — to give Cincinnati a 9-6 victory and avoid a three-game sweep.
While the start of the game was delayed for three hours, 36 minutes because of rain, Stammen did find some sunshine beforehand.
Special weekend
He gave his mom, Connie, who was at GABP with his dad, Jeff, and several other family members and friends, a big Mother’s Day smooch.
As weekends go — especially with Friday’s night’s coming-home party on the mound — it was about all Stammen could ask for: “Now that I can look back on it, I gotta say it was one of those dreams come true. It was as special as it gets.”
For a Nationals player coming back around here only one thing might rival it.
Every December Stammen said he returns to help with an athletics fundraiser for the Diamond Club at Versailles High:
“We have a night where we cook a meal and everybody buys a $50 ticket. They put on a little question-and-answer session and I talk about the season and tell some stories and some jokes and pound a couple of Bud Lights. Usually I’ll bring a couple of guests along, too.”
Two seasons ago he brought two teammates — Tyler Clippard from Florida and John Lannan from New York — to North Star.
“They said it was like nothing they had ever seen before,” Stammen said with a laugh. “They really enjoyed themselves and they fit right in. For the first time in their lives they drove tractors and shot guns.
“They had a blast. ... A real blast.”
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