SAN ANTONIO — Most stories nowadays about up-and-coming athletes sound as if they’re Greek epics or 17th century fables. The workout routines and rags-to-riches claims seem almost too good to be true.
The following stories about Missions outfielder Hunter Renfroe are factual and have been confirmed on multiple accounts. But they could just as easily have been written by someone like Homer — the perfect name for an author writing about a five-tool baseball player and skilled outdoorsman.
As a boy, Renfroe stood in the driveway of his childhood home in Crystal Springs, Mississippi (population 4,970), and hit gravel rocks with a wooden broomstick.
At age 7, he killed his first deer, and at 9 he killed a full-grown eight-point buck. After taking down one particular deer as a 16-year-old, Renfroe carried it over his shoulder up an incredibly steep hill.
“It would have taken four good men to carry that deer up that hill,” said Mike Wroten, father of Renfroe’s childhood best friend, Chase. “But it took just one good boy.
Renfroe’s southern drawl leaves no doubt where he’s from — a place with not much to do other than hunt during the winter and play ball in the summer.
“That’s just the way of life for us,” said Todd Renfroe, Hunter’s father. “That’s pretty much all we did.”
Now Hunter Renfroe is one of the top prospects in baseball. Last Sunday, the San Diego Padres’ farmhand went 1 for 2 with a single in the All-Star Futures Game in Minneapolis.
For the Missions, Renfroe was batting .227 with three home runs and 10 RBIs in 19 games heading into Sunday’s contest at Midland. With Class A Lake Elsinore of the California League earlier this year, he hit .295 with 16 homers and 52 RBIs in 69 games.
Renfroe’s approach at the plate — “Just see the ball and hit it,” he says — parallels his simple demeanor off the field, and his skills as an outdoorsman have carried over to the diamond.
As a kid, he caught lizards, snakes and squirrels — barehanded, of course. From the time he was about 6, he carried a machete wherever he went. He chopped down trees with a vengeance.
“That’s probably why he’s so good at hitting, because he used to swing that machete all day, hacking trees down,” said friend and former youth club teammate Austin Hartzog. “He loved to hack with that machete. That’s probably where he got his power.”
Hunting trips
For the good part of 12 years, Hunter and Todd Renfroe, Chase and Mike Wroten, and Hartzog and his father George spent every weekend during the winter hunting — whether in Barlow, Mississippi, or Port Gibson or along the Pearl River.
Along the way, Hunter always carried his machete.
One night the group noticed an old telephone pole lying near their campsite, and they bet Hunter he couldn’t chop it in half. It took Hunter about four hours to prove them wrong.
But Hunter did more than chop. Hartzog said Renfroe was born to hunt and “would shoot anything he could.”
One time, Renfroe killed a six-point deer about a mile into the woods. The group couldn’t drive a vehicle close enough to retrieve it, so they had to drag it the entire mile.
“His dad was bitchin’ the whole way,” George Hartzog said.
Then there was the aforementioned time in Barlow, when Renfroe killed a deer at the bottom of a large hill. He went down to claim his prize, while the others followed behind at a distance.
“We looked down, and Hunter has the deer over his shoulder and was walking up this mountain-like hill,” Mike Wroten said.
Home base
Most mornings during the school year, Renfroe would be dropped off at the Wroten’s house, and Elizabeth Wroten would drive he and Chase to school. Before and after school, they would play on the Wroten’s 30-acre pasture.
“Chase and Hunter were always outside,” Elizabeth said. “They very seldom stayed inside.”
The boys and their friends caught lizards and snakes and fished in the nearby pond. Renfroe would chop down trees with his machete so the boys could build forts.
One afternoon when the boys were trolling, friend DeShaun Dixon had a wad of worms hanging on the side of the boat.
“He actually caught a fish just dragging the line in the water,” Hunter Renfroe said. “I thought that was the funniest thing in the world.”
Another time, Hunter and Chase asked Mike Wroten if they could build a pond in the backyard.
“I figured they were going to take a shovel and dig a little hole,” Mike Wroten said. “I figured they were going to stay back there about 15 minutes.”
The boys stayed out there for hours, and eventually the hole reached 8 feet deep.
“Mr. Wroten went and cut the grass back there one day, and he texted me cussing me out about how he stuck his tractor in a gigantic hole,” said Renfroe, who starred at Mississippi State before being taken by the Padres in the first round of the 2013 MLB draft. “… I reminded him that he told us we could.”
The game
When the boys’ club baseball team, the Mississippi Bandits, traveled to Louisiana, Texas, Florida, Colorado, Alabama or Tennessee, the Renfroes and Hartzogs rented campers and parked them at campsites near the ball fields.
The boys would chase bugs and run around in the woods. Hunter especially would have to be “corralled” to get ready for games.
But in 15 years, there’s one game that everyone talks about in Renfroe’s baseball career.
The boys were 9 and playing in St. Louis at the United States Specialty Sports Association national championship tournament.
The Bandits needed four straight victories to reach the title game after being bumped into the losers’ bracket. In one morning, the Bandits won those four games, with Renfroe behind the plate for each one.
But in the championship game, Renfroe was called upon to pitch — for the first time in his career.
“I always could throw hard, but I was a catcher,” Renfroe said.
Said Austin Hartzog: “He was exhausted. He could barely even catch, much less pitch. Hunter was upset. He was tired, didn’t want to play and definitely didn’t want to pitch.”
Some say his first pitch cracked the batter’s helmet. Others say it sailed over the catcher and struck the metal backstop.
“It sounded like a gun going off,” Hunter said.
Said Hartzog: “He threw hard, but we didn’t know where it was going.”
The intimidation factor worked. Players backed off the plate, and the Bandits won. Hunter scored the winning run with two outs in the final inning.
The mission
Renfroe said his goal with the Missions is to hit the ball hard and not worry about striking out.
He will do nothing differently from when he was hitting rocks with a broom as a kid. He will try to emulate former major-leaguers such as Chipper Jones and Tony Gwynn, and hope to produce like Mark McGwire and Barry Bonds.
While Renfroe says he just wants to keep improving, some projections have him reaching the major leagues by the end of next year.
Wherever he winds up, he will always stay true to his roots.
“I just talked to him about 10 minutes ago,” Todd Renfroe said. “He’s fishing right now. They found some. … He said they would call it a river. We would call it a creek. They’ve caught two catfish already.”
jhyber@express-news.net
Twitter: @JoshHyber
Josh Hyber, Sports Writer 