Even with all that Marcel Champagnie has done for the 2008 ASU baseball team, coaches still pronounce his name like the liquor, and not as his family heritage stipulates.
The junior, “Shamp-Uh-Knee,” is hitting .375 and playing everyday at shortstop, feats that would seem to make nailing down his surname a nonissue. Champagnie just got tired of correcting people.
From asuwebdevil.com
Shy but well-spoken, the Canada native says “right?” to finish most lines of communication.
“It’s always been a nickname, right?” he said. “Champagne is just easier.”
He is also terse concerning his success on the field.
“I just expected to come out and play hard everyday, and success will do the talking,” he said. “Good things will happen to good people.”
Since he was 5 years old filling his days with broadcasts of Toronto Blue Jays games, Champagnie has been trying to reach baseball’s pinnacle.
“I had a feeling that maybe [baseball] could take me far,” he said.
Far would be away from the small town of Bolton, 45 minutes north of Toronto, where his Jamaican parents emigrated and where Champagnie grew up.
“It’s quiet; it’s peaceful,” he said. “And everybody knows everybody.”
There are about as many people in Champagnie’s tight-knit hometown as there are students at ASU’s Tempe campus. Most people back in Bolton follow his career via the Internet.
Though simple logic might point to the elements of Canada hindering his hope to play baseball, Champagnie quickly said otherwise. The diamond is ripe from mid-April to late-August.
“It’s just like playing backyard baseball,” he said. “Every day was fun there and every day is fun here.”
But becoming a Sun Devil was merely an afterthought for Champagnie, who admitted ignorance to the scope of college baseball. Word of his talent got out somehow as the Minnesota Twins selected him in the 34th round of the 2006 MLB Draft.
“[It] didn’t really cross my mind,” he said. “It was ‘how hard can I work to get to the next level next year?'”
A small-town coach scooped him up to help him get there.
Two assistants from tiny Kaskaskia College in Centralia, Ill., saw Champagnie at an indoor showcase for prospects who, for example, were hidden in Canada.
Champagnie soon received an invitation for a workout and coach Brad Tuttle was happy with who arrived.
Tuttle said, “He was raw, but he had a lot of tools,” a term scouts use to say that a high-ceiling player has undeveloped skills.
Tuttle was riding shotgun on Kaskaskia’s team bus Tuesday, probably hoping Champagnie was still at his side and ready to play the doubleheader on the team’s schedule. Champagnie batted .428 in 95 games during the 2006 and 2007 seasons for the Blue Devils.
Still, Tuttle said that Champagnie’s future in baseball was no sure thing, mostly because potential is immaterial until one acts on it. But now, the coach has changed his tune, since his former shortstop has done just that.
“The sky is the limit for him,” Tuttle said. “He’s obviously proven that he can go into a bigger pond than what we have here. He’s probably turned a lot of scouts’ heads.”
Signing a professional contract two years ago wasn’t much of a decision but choosing a university after leaving Illinois certainly was. Champagnie said he visited ASU and immediately liked the laid-back approach of the coaching staff and people around the school’s baseball program.
As the Sun Devils’ offseason wore on in the fall, coach Pat Murphy once told Champagnie that he should consider looking for another school because playing time was going to be sparse. Champagnie’s early individual work paid off and Murphy eventually turned back to him.
“I think he’s over achieved from what I thought he could do,” Murphy said. “He’s a kid that is getting himself adjusted.”
Part of that transformation is having more people than ever before to watch him swing the bat, and yell his name once they see what he can do with it.
Of course, they’ve been using his nickname.
Murphy, who is one of the many guilty in that regard, also wonders how his new shortstop has hit with so much regularity.
“How does Marcel hit?” Murphy asked the media after one of Champagnie’s three-hit games. “I don’t understand it. It’s the ugliest hack I’ve ever seen in my life. The kid just gets hits.”
Champagnie defends his swing like a Canadian hockey player does his dental records. And suddenly he no longer tacks on the unsure qualifier at the completion of his statements.
“There are a lot of guys in [the MLB] that have ugly hacks,” he said. “It is what it is. That’s my swing, and I’m sticking to it.”
The only questioned area of Champagnie’s game has been his defense at the most difficult infield position. He has 11 errors in 34 games, which is second-worst in the Pac-10 Conference. Tuttle said that he saw Champagnie play on television recently, and witnessed the mistake only gifted athletes can make.
“What I saw was a guy who made an unbelievable play that a lot of people can’t [do],” Tuttle said. “But he didn’t make the throw as accurate as he should have.”
If Champagnie can get his tosses on line and keep his mitt under the ball, his new team may be able to accomplish what it wasn’t able to do in 2007 — win the College World Series outright.
“It’s not just getting there,” Champagnie said. “It’s taking it to that next level,” something Champagnie, who you can just call Marcel, has been doing his whole life.
by Andrew Pentis
published on Wednesday, April 16, 2008
