Sister's motivation moving Mason McCoy toward majors

By Roch Kubatko

Orioles

March 02, 2020, 3:36am

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SARASOTA, Fla. - The pushing started at a young age. Brother and sister inspiring each other to be better in sports. In games played at the family table. Pretty much anything that determined a victor and a loser.

Trash talking was optional but pretty much a constant. Verbal jousting also qualified as a sport.

Bending the rules was an exercise. Breaking them, as Madison McCoy accuses Mason McCoy of doing, was a ploy that illustrated, better than anything she can cite, just how badly he wanted to win.

Mason is less likely to treat them as merely a suggestion now that he's a minor league shortstop in the Orioles system and cracking organizational top prospect lists. Madison prods and protects within the same anecdotes.

Typical sibling behavior, except it's done between two shortstops, one who's barreling toward the majors and the other who's playing Division I softball and racking up more impressive power numbers.

Someone has to finish first in that competition, as well.

The Orioles selected Mason in the sixth round of the 2017 First-Year Player Draft out of the University of Iowa and last month invited him to spring training, where he got noticed at short with a sensational diving stop and throw in the first home game before the team reassigned him on Sunday. Madison, her parents and younger brother Micah were watching it unfold on MASN. Maddix, who turns three later this month, will be told the stories later.

"I was super-nervous at first," Mason said. "I got in there a little earlier than I thought I was going to and I was just trying to take some deep breaths and relax. And after a couple innings, my first at-bat I got through, I was more relaxed and then was just waiting for a play. I got a routine ground ball and that kind of calmed the jitters a little bit. And then I got a play that I made a good play on, had a good jump.

"It was crazy. And then my phone, you know how it is. My phone blew up afterward. My mom and my dad and everybody were texting non-stop and getting pictures and stuff. So it was definitely a cool experience."

Reliever Richard Bleier was the primary beneficiary and hung near the mound to thank McCoy as he jogged off the field. The dugout erupted.

"Oh they were pumped, they were pumped," McCoy said. "I got a lot of high fives, a lot of fist bumps. Made me feel a little bit good, too. Being the new guy, you don't really know a ton of people, so something like that happens, you get the big team welcome and the team overwhelming you, it makes it a little bit easier. I like it."

"That was my first impression of him," Bleier said. "We haven't really done, like, a whole lot of team defense-type stuff, just because you get here and then the games start. But yeah, as a first impression I'd say he's trending in the right direction. And I know he made a few nice plays after that, too. He's a really good defender, good athletic kid who looks like he's got a nice future ahead of him."

Madison, who played at Illinois Central College, same as Mason, before transferring to Bowling Green, concedes that he's superior with the glove. He counters that "Madi" possesses "a little bit more power."

"She has a lot more home runs," he said. "A lot more home runs. Like 10-20, probably, a year. A lot of power in there. She's a very, very good player.

"She's had a couple monster years, so she's trying to enjoy the ride."

Again, just like her brother.

Just like how they played on the same soccer travel teams and how she'd practice with him while they were on separate baseball and basketball teams. How they both return to Illinois Central for workouts.

Each one pushing.

Have they always been extremely competitive? They can agree on this point.

"Always," he said. "It's been like that since I can even remember. Always talking trash. She was a pitcher, used to throw really, really hard and then she became a shortstop. She always said like, 'Man, I can strike you out, I can strike you out.' We never actually tried it because it made me nervous. I hit a line drive back at her or something, then I'm the bad guy.

"We never got to get into it on the field as much, but yeah, there's definitely a lot of trash talking going on."

"Oh yeah," Madison says. "When we were little, I feel like instantly it was about sports. We tried to be better than one another. Mason also helped me get where I am today, believe it or not. I don't know if he would take credit for it, but he showed me how to compete with high-level people throughout my life, so when I got to college and I got the good competition, it didn't faze me because I've been around him my whole life.

"Our relationship definitely has always been competitive when it comes down to sports. Even like board games. There would be fights over board games. My mom even says to this day, 'We don't play board games anymore.' Yeah, it was interesting."

The distance between Mason and Madison has brought out other qualities in their personalities. They've become advisors for each other. Comforting voices that are used as sounding boards.

"I feel like now that we're both out of the house, it's not so much the competitiveness, but he'll check in with me and he'll look at stats and stuff and he's like, 'Hey, what happened in this game?' And then I'll kind of, like, go over it," Madison said. "I send him videos a lot, actually, so he can break down my swing for me just because he has more knowledge of the game than I do. So he helps me with that kind of stuff and he'll send random messages like, 'Hey, keep swinging the bat. We play a game of failures, so it goes both ways.'

"We play different sides of the game, though. He's more the defensive player. He's very good and smooth defensively. Not taking anything away from his bat, but I'm totally built different than him. I'm more of the hitter, the power type, so he always was like, 'OK, you stop giving me so much credit. You hit so-and-so bombs this year.' So we both have our flaws and the good things that come with us and we hold each other accountable."

So Mason really avoided hitting against her out of concern for her safety? Not a fear of striking out?

"That's what I thought he was going to do, but he had it in his head that that was not going to happen," she says.

"I talk a big game that I would always strike him out on three pitches. 'You can hit a baseball but you can't hit a softball.' And he would never try because he said he'd either be afraid to hit me or hit a bomb and just ruin my confidence."

Funny how the sweetness seeps through these anecdotes.

The first strokes that formed the competitive streak in Madison were applied by her brother.

"Honestly, just being around him," she says. "He was just born naturally competitive. He always wanted to win and he would do anything he could to win, even if it had to do with you looking away and he would cheat. He would move something and he would win or he would be ahead.

"But he was constantly moving. Like it was either Wiffle ball in the back yard, or we had a hoop in our back yard. We had a batting cage at one point, so he was always, always moving and I think if he didn't set the stage high for me - and we also have two little brothers - I don't think we would all be as athletic and active as we are now. But he set that bar so freaking high that we tried to all live up to it."

Mason will celebrate his 25th birthday at the end of the month, making him three years older than Madison. He's winning the age race. Or losing, depending how you view it. He reached the Double-A level after batting .379/.416/.509 in 27 games with Single-A Frederick. The International League beckons, which puts him another step closer to the majors.

Which must make at least a few teams wish they had drafted him after his junior year. He was prepared for it, had to rise above the crushing disappointment, and is thriving.

What else would a competitor do when challenged?

And how else would a sister react who's prodded him to be better and instinctively wanted to protect him from getting hurt again?

"We're super-excited for him, but it's one of those things where we try not to make it a big deal because you never know what will happen, so we don't want to get our hopes up," she says.

"I know that happened to him his junior year. He kind of got himself convinced that he was going to be in the draft and it didn't go his way, so we've kind of learned to celebrate the small things. I definitely try to boost his self-esteem as much as possible on Twitter and Instagram. But yeah, we're excited to see where it takes him.

"He definitely deserves a chance, just because of how much he's worked and everyone who's underestimated him his whole life. Saying he's not built for it, he wasn't big enough, he doesn't play the game like major league players do. He's definitely proven a lot of people wrong."

Orioles prospect Mason McCoy and sister Madison, a Division I softball shortstop, have long enjoyed a friendly sports rivalry.

Madison McCoy's success as a softball player has spurred brother Mason in his quest to reach the majors. She says he's better in the field; he says she's got more power at the plate.