TOWSON, Md. – On May 18, 2019,
Gavin Weyman pitched his final Towson start, a victory on Senior Day over Northeastern. Less than two months later, he was back on a mound in Michigan, winning his professional debut.
The Bridgewater, Mass. native was Towson's Saturday starter in 2019, earning the team-best 3.24 ERA in 77.1 innings, striking out 56 and having the Tigers' lone complete game of the year. After his strong final season, he looked to get to the professional ranks, heading to Pennsylvania for his audition.
"Coach [Miles] Miller told me of the Frontier League invite-only tryout in Washington, Pennsylvania," said Weyman. "I went and threw very well; they liked me, but not enough to sign me. They wanted to see me play somewhere else to see how I competed. They knew Justin Orenduff of the United Shore Professional Baseball League (USPBL), they called him about me, and the next week I was playing."
The USPBL is an independent baseball league in Michigan, one of several associations playing professional baseball not affiliated with Major League Baseball (MLB). Founded in 2016, the USPBL has four teams and plays its games at Jimmy John's Field in Utica.
Weyman's first day with his new team in Utica, July 11
th, 2019, saw him take the hill in relief for the Birmingham-Bloomfield Beavers, then the league two-time reigning champion. He won the game in relief to take a victory in his professional debut.
"I was thrown right into it, which I kind of liked to get it out of the way," said Weyman. "After that, I was comfortable. My first conversation with the catcher was out on the mound after my warm-up pitches. It was awesome, it was everything I'd worked for. I was kind of nervous, but after you throw a couple of pitches, you've been doing this your whole life, it's nothing that new."
Pitching the remainder of the month, Weyman finished 3-1 with a 4.34 ERA in four appearances, including a seven-inning start with just one unearned run in a victory over the Eastside Diamond Hoppers. He is the first professional pitcher to have played under the current Towson coaching staff.
While in Utica, Weyman at first lived in an apartment with a couple of other players, then went to live with a host family, a standard situation for several younger players in the league. The league plays some games in front of fans and vendors, while others are "non-public games," where the stats count but they are not open to fans. Pitchers could go twice a week depending on the game schedule, which often has public games towards the weekend and non-public games earlier in the week. The USPBL has been very successful with this model: 62 of the 75 public games in 2019 were sold out, plus the league saw its first player, Randy Dobnak, reach the major leagues are playing in the USPBL.
Considering he got his professional career going not long after finishing at Towson, he wanted to keep everything the same.
"I'm just trying to do what I do best," said Weyman. "Going from Towson to Michigan in the same year, I tried to keep that same routine that I did in college, I didn't want to do anything new and change things up; what I was doing worked at Towson, I didn't want to switch and have it affect my playing."
Weyman was supposed to return to the league for a full season this year, but the COVID-19 outbreak has pushed back until at least the end of May. He had been working out at a sports performance complex in Hudson when news broke out of sports cancellation.
He is still keeping in shape, working out at home and throwing at nearby fields in Bridgewater, currently staying with his parents and three younger brothers. Hopefully, he'll get his chance to return to the field soon.
