ClevelandState is now without a baseball team. They actually retired the team in 2011, after they realized they were nothing without their star pitcher. Needless to say, that star pitcher is now at Chardon High School.
New this year, Brian Long has been hired and has revamped the physical education department. Already he has been running Tap Out and p90x workouts in his classes. He has also implemented college intramural games such as broomball and pickle ball. Long looks at it as a way to prepare kids for their future lives of non serious competition between dorms. But enough of this; let us look at his stellar career and where he has come from.
Brian Long was born April 20, 1981 to a loving father and mother. His father was a water polo star at ArizonaState, where he garnered All American honors as a red shirt freshman. His mother, Darlene, was a softball scorekeeping legend for the Minnesota Gophers. This is where Brian got his love for the game. At a young age, he was enamored by the beautiful game of softball. How fast the pace was and how good the players were made him realize his dream. Brian came to the conclusion that he wanted to be a pitcher.
Originally, Brian continually tried out for the local softball teams. He was always cut from them, but never understood why. Finally, his mother sat him down and told him, “Son, softball is for grown women. You need to shift your focus to baseball.”
Brian was stunned. He had never thrown a baseball, and was scared to. It was his senior year of high school and he was not sure what to do. Eventually, after high school, he enrolled at Cleveland State University to become a Viking. His plan was to tryout for the baseball team and hopefully earn a spot. Amazingly, Long had a tremendous tryout. I contacted the head coach at the time, Kevin Jones. Jones said this about Brian’s tryout. “The kid was a blue chip athlete. He flew under the radar coming to us, and I knew he was going to be something special. Right there on the spot, I offered him a 7 year full ride scholarship to play.”
Brian lived up to his coaches’ expectation. After an off-season skiing incident left his left arm unable to throw with, he had to switch pitching arms. But, in an amazing recovery, he came back throwing harder, and in his sophomore season led the country with 21 wins in the 61 games that the Vikings played. Long continued to put up stellar numbers at Cleveland state, and earned a multi million dollar contract after his 4th out of 7 years at CSU. He recalls this memory, “Yeah, the Pittsburgh Pirates slapped down a 13 year, 25 million dollar deal. As much as I liked it, I didn’t want to leave college. I liked the ease of the college game, and wanted to stay at the top.”
After that contract offer, Long never got another. He finished a record breaking career at Cleveland State, setting every pitching record possible. 117-9 was his career record. Those 9 losses came because his right arm was too good for the opponents, so he pitched with his left. He led the nation every year in strikeouts, ERA, and WHIP.
Because he was so good at Cleveland state, Coach Jones was at a loss once he was gone. Long made such an impact on the program, that instead of retiring Long’s number, Jones decided to retire the entire program. ClevelandState now has no baseball program due to the success of the best pitcher in baseball history.
After this career, he wanted to go make an impact on kids, so he married his college sweetheart and got a job teaching at CHS. I asked him if he ever regretted this decision, and his response was, “Absolutely not. I’ve always wanted to do more for someone than myself. When I got an offer to teach at Chardon, it made me realize that I could make this longtime dream come true, so I took it.”
Currently, his kids have a blast in his class. Mr. Long is instilling a great sense of competitiveness, and changing the youth, one gym class as a time.