Lightly recruited Trenton Moses developed into a star in Southeast Missouri State baseball team's lineup

Lisa Decker was following the family tradition of suiting up on Saturdays at Houck Stadium.

She had graduated in the class of 1979 from Jackson High School just months earlier and was a flute player in the Southeast Missouri State marching band that fall. Her three older brothers -- Richard, Larry and Steve -- all had played football for the then-Indians.

Lisa and Bob Moses met while playing in the band as students at Southeast Missouri State. Their older son, Trenton, center, stars for the university's baseball team. (ADAM VOGLER)

Bob Moses was a recent graduate of Cleveland High School in St. Louis, and he suited up on Saturdays and played to the cheers at Houck.

He was not the quarterback for coach Jim Lohr, or the star running back. Not even a backup.

He was a trombone player.

Moses was a freshman music major who had rolled his eyes when the band director of the Golden Eagles told the group at the preseason camp that some of the students in the room would end up married to each other.

Moses was clueless to the fact that he would become data to support future speeches.

The trombonist and flutist began dating two years later and married in 1984.

The pair also had played in the pep band at basketball games and were fans of all things Southeast.

They were holding true to form Feb. 8, 1989. Lisa was due to have the couple's first child any day, but that didn't keep them away from the Show Me Center. The University of Missouri-St. Louis was paying a visit to the Show Me Center.

"It was the biggest game of the year," Bob recalls.

It was a game they never saw.

They instead were in store for one of the biggest nights of their lives.

"We went and sat down and had to leave to go to the hospital to have Trent," Lisa said.

Trenton didn't arrive until the early morning hours Feb. 9. He was a 7 pounds, 8 ounce boy who measured 21 inches.

Little did they know, but the halftime entertainment had just delivered a main act.

---

It's Friday night and the Moses' marching days are far behind, but time has marched on to the tune of 23 years.

Bob is a band director at Advance High School, and Lisa teaches at the Southeast Missouri Hospital College of Nursing and Health Sciences.

The Moses are sticking to their Southeast theme. They are sitting in folding chairs atop the hill down the right-field line at Capaha Field with other members of their family, and the Redhawks are taking on Murray State in the opener of a three-game series. The Moses are being entertained by Trenton, who has followed the family tradition.

But their offspring is not playing a keyboard to lead cheers at Southeast.

It's the fifth inning, and a 6-foot-4, 230-pound Trenton Moses waits on-deck to bat.

He's taking brisk, powerful swings as Jason Blum takes his turn at the plate with teammate Kenton Parmley in scoring position at second base. The Thoroughbreds retired Blum on a fly out to center field.

But before the right-handed swinging Moses can settle into the box, Thoroughbreds catcher Jacob Rhodes trots toward the mound and meets pitcher Tyler Beers halfway. Moses, the leading home run hitter in NCAA Division I baseball this season, nearly had blasted his 19th home run off Beers two inning earlier. The only thing that prevented the ball from leaving the park was the top layer of yellow paint on the center-field wall.

The brief conversation includes lots of head nodding, and Rhodes returns behind the plate. He promptly sticks out his right arm. The Thoroughbreds aren't messing with the reigning OVC player of the year who leads the country with an .810 slugging percentage. The Thoroughbreds intentionally walk the Redhawks' No. 3 hitter, choosing to contribute to his nation-leading on-base percentage instead of his slugging percentage. The Racers implemented the strategy again in the seventh inning and three times in the series.

"I'd be doing the same," Southeast coach Mark Hogan said. "I don't think that's Einstein. Those are baseball moves that are obvious. If I could take the bat out of Moses' hands and some calculated potential damage, I would do it every time."

SIU Edwardsville issued Moses his ninth intentional pass in the Redhawks' 11-4 victory Friday.

They also elected to pitch to him and got punished with a mammoth three-run blast to center field in the fifth inning that ran his season home run total to 19 -- two more than his combined total for the previous three years.

The rest of his numbers are career highs: .426 batting average, 59 RBIs and .549 on-base percentage.

Moses has reached base in 75 consecutive games, and he saw his 22-game hitting streak end after going 0 for 2 in Saturday's 24-7 loss.

And he's not done. The monster season helped revive the slow-starting Redhawks, who qualified for the OVC tournament for an 18th consecutive season in their final regular-season series.

The Redhawks are 21-34 overall and 12-15 in OVC play even with the senior's contribution.

Where would they be without him?

"Forty losses and no chance to be in the tournament," Hogan said without much hesitation.

Moses had a chance to become the first player to win the triple crown in the OVC in 30 years, and the third player to win multiple OVC player of the year awards. He came one run batted in short of the triple crown.

He's among 60 players on the Golden Spikes Award Watch list. The award goes to the top amateur baseball player in the country. He's also a semifinalist for the Dick Howser Award, which goes to the nation's top collegeiate player.

All this after he earned All-American honors after his junior year and preseason All-American accolades before this season.

Southeast Missouri State third baseman Trenton Moses hands his batting helmet off before taking the field after being stranded on base during Friday's game.

"He's putting together two, back-to-back, of the best years in my career here," said Hogan, who is in his 18th year at Southeast. "And he's a marked man this year from day one. He became a marked man last year after the first third of the season. But we had a lot of artillery around him last year."

High words of praise for a lightly recruited player who grew up about 30 miles from Southeast.

"We always felt he was a great baseball player," Lisa said. "It's unbelievable that it's happening, but believable. I think we always thought it was possible. And I think he always thought it was possible."

---

Trenton Moses has picked on more than pitchers during his playing days.

"He hated T-ball," Bob said. "We had to make him play T-ball because he didn't want to do it. He was one of those kids that would sit down in the outfield and pick up clovers. He just didn't really care about it."

Trenton remembers those early days but disagrees on one point -- his version contained dandelions.

"I was terrible," Trenton said. "The next year, for some reason, I was good. I don't know what happened."

Trenton's disinterest was a phase, unlike his father who quit playing baseball when was he 9 or 10.

Trenton was becoming a bit of a talent in the sport by that age, and Bob gives his wife most of the credit. Lisa was a catcher on the first girls softball team at Jackson High School when she was a senior.

"His mother taught him the most about playing ball," Bob said. "That's the honest to God truth. She was the one that had the more influence on him because I never even played ball."

The situation took a somewhat comical twist when Bob became the girls softball coach at Advance by default.

"I started coaching softball because they were going to cancel the program because nobody would coach it," Bob said. "And some of the girls were like, 'Would you do it?' And I was like ... 'Sure.'"

Bob later would coach the Advance baseball team during Trenton's four years of high school under similar conditions and two more years for his youngest son Ryan, but it never was a natural fit for him.

"I'm a band guy," Bob said.

But he set about to help the girls and figure out the finer points of the game. That is with help from Trenton, who was about 9 at the time.

"He would actually practice with the softball team, and he actually taught them a lot because he studied the game and would watch the game on TV," Bob said. "He always was interested, always throwing, always out in the front yard. And he knew more about it when he was 9 or 10 than I did. So I brought him down with the softball team to teach them how to do things."

Lisa said Trenton was a student of the game who absorbed the information from whatever the source and tried his best to execute it.

"He learned that stuff and must have mimicked, probably, pretty much," Lisa said.

The softball practices and the education of Bob and the girls became a family affair.

"I would make sure that Trenton would go to practice with Bob and would come down and watch," Lisa said. "I remember him having Trent go and having him show how to turn a double play at second base."

Bob coached softball for seven years, and the coaching situation replayed itself in baseball when nobody was available when Trenton arrived at Advance High School for his freshman season.

"You can't find anybody in Advance that wants to do it," Trenton said about the coaching position.

Trenton also was an all-conference and all-region basketball player in high school. He said he had no real preference for either sport at the time.

But one thing was certain about baseball.

"He could always hit," Bob said. "And he would like to hit."

Trenton, a three-time all-state player, including first team as a junior and senior, hit five home runs his sophomore year and didn't strike out once in 60 at-bats his junior year.

Southeast senior first baseman Kody Campbell played for rival Oran High School and was a year behind Moses in high school. Campbell also was a teammate on American Legion and other summer teams and was most impressed by Moses as a pitcher, although Trenton also played third and first base.

"I've known him my whole life, and he's always been a stud," Campbell said.

Trenton batted over .500 in each of his last two years of high school, including .564 with a .671 on-base percentage his senior year. He also struck out 46 batters and had a 1.67 ERA in 29 1/3 innings.

---

Trenton found himself hard-pressed to find a college to play baseball at despite his resume.

"I didn't hardly get recruited at all," Trenton said. "It was Mineral Area [College] and SEMO. We tried talking to just regional schools, Division I, but there really wasn't much interest there."

Advance had some good high school teams during Trenton's time there, but the baseball program did not have much of a history.

"Nobody never heard of a little kid from Advance," Trenton said. "I thought playing Legion ball would help a little bit, but I got to go where I wanted to go. I wanted to come to SEMO all along. I guess it would have been nice to get some other looks. It just makes you feel a little better."

Hogan became aware of Trenton as a sophomore, and Moses signed with the Redhawks in May of his senior season.

In the signing announcement in the Southeast Missourian, Hogan described Moses as a big, strong high school boy with potential as both a pitcher and hitter. A player with a high ceiling.

"It's going to be interesting to see how it pans out with him, whether on the mound or at the plate," Hogan said at the time.

Moses, who admits he was soft physically, was a raw player in need of training and instruction.

"I'm not going to lie," Moses said. "I didn't touch a weight until I came here. I did a little bit, but you look back on it and it's like, 'No, I didn't really touch any weights.'

"I remember my first weight lifting day my freshman year. I thought I was going to die. I couldn't even walk the next day. People were making fun of me."

It quickly became apparent that Moses would not pitch for the Redhawks, and senior Matt Wagner, among the team's top hitters, was at first. Third base or redshirting were the two most apparent possibilities, and the former worked out.

"I took advantage of some early injuries, and I hit the ball really well the first year," Moses said. "I just took advantage of opportunities."

He batted .264, hit four home runs and collected 24 RBIs. His freshman contributions did not got unnoticed with his selection to the OVC all-freshman team.

He turned in similar numbers as a sophomore -- .264, two home runs and 24 RBIs.

"The thing I remember the first two years is he got a lot of big hits for us," Hogan said. "He always showed a special quality for moments in the games, but I didn't have any vision that he would dominate for 200 at-bats the way he has against top-level pitching."

The domination part came after Moses' career took the second of two sharp turns.

---

His plight plummeted with a season-ending shoulder injury in the fourth game of what was supposed to be his junior season. A torn labrum in his right shoulder, incurred when he dived back into first base on a pickoff play, required surgery. He turned into a spectator along with then-junior transfer Taylor Heon, who tore up a knee two days later in his sixth game at Southeast. Both players were lost in a costly three-game sweep of IPFW.

Moses and Heon both were granted medical redshirts that year, but they could not suit up and watched home games from the bleachers.

"It was frustrating," Heon said. "And when the team is away, we're stuck here, and we've got nothing to do. And all we want to do is keep playing baseball."

It helped that the two players had each other to lean on, which led to a tight bond.

"It was not fun watching," Moses said. "It was really hard because you're seeing your team compete and you're sitting up in the stands and you could be out there helping them. It's not an easy thing to do, but then again, you learn. I learned a lot from watching some of the hitters. I learned a lot from watching Michael Adamson hit."

Adamson, currently a student assistant coach with the Redhawks, was among a group of veteran Redhawks that included Jim Klocke, Casey Jones as well as talented younger players like current senior shortstop Kenton Parmley.

"We had a lot of good hitters on that club, and he got to see how they were working them," Hogan said. "I think he became a very smart hitter by having to watch.

"A lot of guys get hurt and take a redshirt year and they don't use it to get better mentally. They just kind of think it's a waste. They kind of miss the point. Kudos to him for taking that approach."

Moses took note of the approaches batters took, pitch selections in counts and situational hitting.

"You learn a lot, mature a little bit and get smarter," Moses said.

He also used the time to rehab and strengthen a shoulder that maybe was less than 100 percent in his previous time at Southeast.

"It just didn't feel right my first couple of years," Moses said. "I realize looking back on things, the way I threw ... maybe I was compensating for something that had happened. I had a lower arm slot. I feel like I can hardly throw like that anymore."

Moses rehabbed with Matt Holder at Mid America Rehab and intensified his upper body workouts like never before.

"All we did was just shoulder strength," Moses said. "I guess I got stronger overall as a result of that. I still work out every other day."

He returned to fall practices with the mindset that he had to win his job back at third base despite his background as a two-year starter.

"My number one goal was to come back and prove to everybody that I could play," Moses said.

---

Moses wasn't 100 percent healthy heading into the fall of 2010, but he quickly regained his form, and then some.

"I had a great fall," Moses said. "Probably the best fall since I've been here."

Parmley laughs when he talks about the Moses that got a new lease on his junior season. He compared it to a movie about a youngster who surprisingly became a phenom in the major leagues after arm surgery.

"'The Rookie of the Year' is the only thing I can say about it," Parmley said. "I mean he goes down with an injury. I mean he was all right before, but after that injury when he came back his junior year he has been nothing short of spectacular. I can honestly compare it to 'Rookie of the Year.'"

Except the script for Moses called for an agonizingly slow start.

He went hitless in his first 14 official at-bats and didn't get his first hit until the Redhawks' eighth game of the season his junior year.

"I tried to keep an even keel about it," said Moses, who recalled feeling comfortable at the plate and hitting some balls hard during the stretch. "I tried not to get too low about it. I tried to stay upbeat and keep bringing it every day."

A triple to center field against Central Arkansas ended the drought and opened the flood gates.

He was in full flames with an 11-for-14 series against North Dakota less than two weeks later. He later collected the Louisville Slugger national player of the week award for a three-game stretch in which he batted .778 with four home runs and 11 RBIs.

His season totals easily surpassed his two-year combined figures heading into the year. He belted 11 home runs to nearly double his previous career total of six. His 53 RBIs topped his two-year total of 48. His slugging percentage jumped to .672 after a previous best of .390 his freshman year. He also batted .395 -- his previous best was .264 -- and had an on-base percentage of .502.

"Once I got into a groove, it kept going, and it just snowballed," Moses said. "I never would have expected that at all to be honest with you."

Heon was more amazed than surprised.

"He has the size to do it," Heon said. "He's always had the ability. He just needed that one thing to click, and I think from watching 50 games or whatever, he was able to figure it out. It's been fun to watch him."

---

New NCAA bat regulations that implemented a smaller sweet spot made the breakthrough season all the more remarkable. The added sour space was not a problem for Moses, who usually doesn't use that part of the bat to the amazement of hitting coach Chris Cafalone.

"I've coached for 21 years. I have never seen somebody who consistently just barrels up the baseball as much as he does," Cafalone said. "If he makes an out, it's a hard out. I mean, that's something special in a hitter."

Cafalone said Moses' strength and more consistent solid contact were the biggest differences for Moses after the injury.

"When he barrels up the baseball consistently all the time, pitchers just kind of shake their head like, 'How do we get this guy out?'" Cafalone said.

Moses' quick, powerful swings has no prejudice. They find their mark on fastballs, changeups and balls with late movement.

"His ability to center the ball up on the sweet part of the bat, it's uncanny," Hogan said. "He has quick hands, and his big body, that base, allows him to get on the plate. He's quick. I always called him the big cat. I talk to scouts and I say this guy is a big cat."

Moses uses that quick movement at third base to snag nearly anything hit in his direction.

"He moves around there like he's my size," said Heon, a 5-8 second baseman listed at 175 pounds.

Hogan said Moses' first step is exceptional.

"He's a cat," Hogan said. "He's made plays to his left, plays to his right, coming in. Pretty complete package. And kind of a self-made man from where we started."

---

The one good thing about Moses' injury is that he's been the cornerstone of a team that really needed him.

"As much as it sucked to have him sit out, because we lost one of our better players, I think in the long run it helped him and helped us become a better team because without him, we wouldn't even have a chance right now," Campbell said. "I mean, he's only one-ninth of the team, but he's a pretty big part of our lineup. He's a great part of our defense."

Hogan said the respect among his players runs deep, and Moses epitomizes that respect.

"All the kids love him," Hogan said. "He has as much conversation with a guy that's redshirted as he does with Kenton Parmley. And that's quite a compliment. A lot of seniors have trouble doing that."

Parmley takes note of that attribute.

"Some people when you're at the caliber of level that he's at, people will start to get a little full of themselves," Parmley said. "I mean, he is just a great guy. I cannot stress that enough. He means a lot to this team. He gets us ready to play. He's been a pleasure to play with."

Hogan said he'd be surprised if Moses isn't playing professionally next month, and it's something Moses would like to do.

"It's become something off the chart from where we started," Hogan said. "And that's just a testament to all the hard work he's done. His mom and dad couldn't do it for him, and I couldn't either. At the end, he's the guy that has to get between the lines and pull it off. All the praise in the world for all the effort he's given us. It's just been amazing."

But the book is not yet complete on the Redhawks' season, or their star player.

"It's still kind of surreal for us because we're still so busy in it every day," Campbell said. "I think later on when he's older and we're older, everybody can look back. ... It's going to be really, really, really impressive to look back and see the kind of numbers he put up because he's one of the best players in the country. Guys like that don't come along very often."

Having it all unfold on the stage where he was raised has made the ride even better for Moses.

Southeast Missouri State's Trenton Moses is walked intentionally by Illinois State during a game earlier this season. Moses walked 40 times, which was second most in the Ohio Valley Conference. (Fred Lynch)

"It's amazing," he said. "I get to play in front of my friends and family every day. It's close to home if I need to go home. My brother comes up all the time, and we hang out. We've gotten a lot closer since I've moved out."

Ryan Moses recently completed his senior season at Advance and will play baseball at Shawnee Community College next year.

And for the record, Trenton, who has wedding plans for this summer, did play the trumpet for seven years at Advance.

"He was a good trumpet player," Bob said. "And Ryan's a really good trombone player. But that's not their passion."