Bauserman ready to be a leader

Associated Press

COLUMBUS

It’s been a long, strange trip for Joe Bauserman, from baseball phenom to Buckeyes quarterback.

A prized baseball and football star in Virginia and Florida high schools, he spent three years in the Pittsburgh Pirates organization as a pitcher. When that path seemed to fade, he walked on at Ohio State to play football. Now, he finds himself as the starting quarterback for the nation’s No. 15 team, the focal point of 105,000 fans each Saturday.

A hardy outdoorsman — his college major is Fisheries & Wildlife — the 25-year-old Bauserman isn’t overwhelmed by how long it took him to become an overnight sensation. He doesn’t have regrets and he accepts what comes his way.

“If I would have stuck it [baseball] out, who knows what would have happened?” he said. “I might have made it. I might have had shoulder problems, I might not. Whatever.”

Quiet and unassuming, he’s the elder statesman of an Ohio State program that has been pounded by NCAA allegations, violations and sanctions over the past 10 months. The controversy helped force three-year starting quarterback Terrelle Pryor to the NFL, opening a huge vacancy that Bauserman has helped to fill.

Bauserman, along with freshman backup Braxton Miller, were both superlative in a season-opening 42-0 victory over Akron. The Buckeyes take on Toledo this week, then difficult games against Miami, Colorado, Michigan State and Nebraska loom.

Many think the talented Miller will gradually take over the job. But not everyone.

“I’ve seen that young man and I just think he’s a winner,” Toledo coach Tim Beckman said of Bauserman. “He fits with what Ohio State wants to do.”

During his three years at Lincoln High in Tallahassee, Fla., Bauserman had been pursued to play football at every Top 25 program in the country. Instead, he signed with the Pirates after being taken in the fourth round of the 2004 draft as a pitcher. He had a fastball in the low 90s, a sharp breaking curve and one publication said he had the best changeup in the Pirates’ farm system.

“We were both drafted the same year and he’s just one of those guys I gravitated toward, our personalities were a lot alike,” said Pirates second baseman Neil Walker, Bauserman’s road roommate while playing in the Gulf Coast League.

Bauserman was 2-2 with a 2.79 ERA in nine games that rookie season. He followed it up the next year with a 6-2 mark at Class A Williamsport and a 2.84 ERA. The following summer, at Class A Hickory in the Sally League, his numbers fell to 6-8 with a 4.01 ERA.

Pirates center fielder Andrew McCutchen played with him in what would be his final season.

“He was already kind of on his way out,” he said. “He had a good arm, you knew that just by watching him. He was into football, I guess he just thought that was the way to go.”

He had reached a crossroads.

“The whole quitting-baseball thing was kind of a combination of getting hurt a little bit and then just getting an education,” he said. “I wanted to get back and get my education.”

So he wrote to Ohio State, among other schools, about switching gears, about switching to football.

Jim Tressel, then the Ohio State coach, offered him a chance to walk on. Bauserman knew he would be: a) paying his own way and, b) stuck behind several top recruits. After he redshirted his freshman year, the Buckeyes recruited Terrelle Pryor out of Jeannette, Pa., acclaimed as the No. 1 college quarterback prospect in the country.