Longtime pro pitcher Mike DeMark enters Marietta College Athletic Hall of Fame

Mike DeMark occasionally pitched during his playing days at Penn-Trafford, but his knuckleball wasn’t enough to become a regular part of the Warriors rotation. Not that DeMark minded. He preferred hitting, and his abilities in the batter’s box got him to perennial Division III power Marietta.

But after a year, Marietta threw DeMark a curveball.

The coaches wanted the former knuckleballer to try pitching. DeMark hesitated. He didn’t want to give up hitting, but he didn’t want to spend another year playing junior varsity or calling it quits.

“I just didn’t have pitching on my mind,” DeMark said. “The coaches told me, ‘It’s pitching, or we might not have a spot for you on the roster.’ I wasn’t sure, but then I thought I liked being part of the team. Those guys were why I was there, and I really just wanted to be a part of it.”

It turned into a Hall of Fame decision.

DeMark’s remarkable baseball story has not reached its conclusion, but one of its crowning achievements came Saturday when he was inducted into the 36th class of the Marietta College Athletic Hall of Fame.

He’s enshrined alongside other Marietta baseball greats such as former Pittsburgh Pirates pitcher Kent Tekulve, former Pirates manager Jim Tracy, former teammate and New York Yankees pitcher Matt DeSalvo and longtime Washington Wild Things standout Chris Sidick.

“To be included with the likes of those guys, it’s not somewhere I ever thought I’d be,” said the 35-year-old DeMark. “I’ve gotten a lot of calls from my teammates, and it’s great to be able to share the moment with them. They are a big part of why I have this honor.”

DeMark’s scholastic pitching statistics were unremarkable, but the former second baseman was an instant success at Marietta.

His first start came in Florida, and DeMark pitched nine innings, allowed one hit and struck out 15. He started again a couple of days later with similar success.

“We came back from the trip, and I think I was leading the nation in strikeouts,” DeMark said. “I was thinking this pitching thing was pretty cool.”

DeMark, who credits watching film and studying DeSalvo for much of his early success, was one of the top pitchers in Division III in 2004 and ’05. He earned first-team All-Ohio Athletic Conference honors both years and compiled a conference-leading 22 wins and 177 strikeouts during that span. He was a second-team All-American in ’04 and the OAC Kent Tekulve Pitcher of the Year in ’05.

“He was pretty much a guaranteed ‘W’ for us,” Marietta coach Brian Brewer said. “He was really good. He had a plus arm, a plus fastball and a plus slider. He was good as a starter and a late-inning guy.”

DeMark was the latter when Marietta won the Division III championship in 2006. He secured the final three outs of a 7-2 win against Wheaton, one of six national championships won by the Pioneers.

“That was the coolest thing,” DeMark said. “To end my college career with all the boys piled up on me. That’s why we ran the hills and lifted in the morning and did all that work. For everything I’ve done in baseball, nothing will top that.”

And DeMark has accomplished plenty in the sport.

He reached Triple-A with the San Diego Padres and Arizona Diamondbacks, pitched in the Oakland A’s organization, was a dominant reliever in independent leagues, made the 2009 Texas League All-Star game that included Josh Donaldson, Lance Lynn, Mark Trumbo and several other MLB players and pitched for Italy in the 2017 World Baseball Classic. DeMark has played baseball in five countries and is fielding calls for the upcoming season.

“I look back on my career, and I’ve played with pretty talented guys and shared the dugout with them,” DeMark said. “I met my idols Greg Maddux and Trevor Hoffman. Those are awesome stories I will take with me the rest of my life.”

Mike Kovak is a Tribune-Review
staff writer. You can contact
Mike at mkovak@tribweb.com
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