Donny Sands has imagined playing professional baseball all his life.
At age 2, he remembers swinging a bat and throwing a ball. A couple of years later, his father, Roger, started taking him to major-league parks.
It was a close-up look at those he idolized and a conversation with his dad that helped spark an imagination and tunnel-vision focus toward a lifelong passion with baseball.
“You know, when you’re little, it’s your dream to play professional baseball,” Sands said. “But he started taking me to the big league parks and telling me, ‘It’s possible,’ and to just watch these guys and remember, ‘They were little just like you were, too.’”
Since then, Sands has held on tight to that dream.
The 6-foot-2-inch Salpointe Catholic shortstop isn’t one of those superstitious baseball players; he’s never named one of his gloves.
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But on Monday night, possibly just hours before one of 30 professional teams would select him in the MLB first-year player draft, Sands stuck with his own little ritual.
He went into the garage with his mother, Alma, who pitched him tiny, individual pinto beans for about five minutes.
The way it works is, if he hits each one without missing any, the session ends. If he misses one, they restart the clock. The two have been doing it since the summer before his freshman year.
“It all started it Mexico,” Sands said. “My mother is from Mexico, and we didn’t have a lot of money. Every night I still hit them — my mom is pretty on me with that.”
Then before bed, less than two weeks away from Father’s Day, Sands thanked the man who lit his competitive fire. As he has for years, he prayed to his father, who died in 2012.
“It allows me to relax and to be confident in all the work we put in,” Sands said.
Sands has received feedback from the Arizona Diamondbacks, the Texas Rangers and the Toronto Blue Jays.
He most recently returned from a workout in Tampa, Florida, with the New York Yankees at Steinbrenner Field.
Scouts noticed Sands’ bat after he drove in 103 runs in two years at Empire.
Then they saw him flash the leather and close at Salpointe. But he left the Yankees’ workout with scouts raving about his mental approach to the game, his competitive streak and his relentless work ethic.
Wonder where he gets it from?
For Sands, the trek through personal hell to professional baseball has been a family journey. There have been plenty of days he’s wanted to take a day off from the weightlifting, skip taking ground balls or not take some hacks in the cage.
Sands, who was the batboy for the New Mexico Lobos when now-Ironwood Ridge softball coach Rich Alday was their coach, proclaims his mother to be the motivation for continuing.
“It hasn’t been easy, just me and my mom since my dad passed away,” Sands said. “Maybe if I’m tired today and haven’t worked as hard as I should, she comes into the back of my head, that I have to work harder for her, to support her.”
Sands has been told to be waiting by his phone for rounds 6 through 15, and believes the Yankees are the most likely to take him.
The chance to dress, field and play at the House that Jeter Built, “would be a dream come true,” he said. The former, longtime Yankees captain is his favorite player.
Whenever he does get that call, Sands won’t hesitate in delivering the news to his mother.
“She’s the first person that deserves to know.”
