FMU's Gordon took unusual path to baseball

FLORENCE — Robbie Wilson thinks there’s no substitute for hard work when it comes to recruiting.

But sometimes, he says, for whatever reason, fortune decides to smile on a certain team at a certain time.

And Wilson thinks that’s what happened when Francis Marion landed Martin Gordon, a part-time starter in the outfield, three seasons ago.

“A lot of times in recruiting, you get really lucky,” says Wilson, an assistant with the Patriots the last seven seasons. “You make a lot of phone calls. I was calling some junior college coaches in Arizona and one of them mentioned Martin.

“He was just one of those guys who was overlooked. We got him late. He liked us, we liked him. It just worked out. Sometimes, you get lucky.”

Gordon knows all about good fortune, although luck might have had little to do with his success. He’s the consummate example of how working to get better can pay off.

Don’t brush aside the fact that as a junior in 2009, he hit .394 in 41 games for the Patriots. And don’t discount the year Gordon is having this season, hitting .365, after missing nearly all of 2010 with a back injury. And for his 84-game career to date, he has made one error.

Not that big a deal, especially for a part-time player?

Well, to put it in perspective, consider where Gordon’s baseball career began.

When he was a kindergartener, his mom, Elrie, wasn’t taking him to t-ball practice. And he wasn’t playing in any coach-pitch or machine-pitch leagues when he was in elementary school.

At that time, he was living in his native South Africa, learning the finer points of cricket and enjoying soccer and rugby.

He didn’t swing a baseball bat until he was almost 15, after his family moved to the Phoenix, Ariz., area for a job his mother, a pharmacist, got in the states.

“I had no idea what baseball was,” Gordon said. “I saw it on TV when the Yankees and Diamondbacks were playing (in the 2001 World Series) because I knew I was moving to Arizona. And I just kind of watched it for a few minutes and said, ‘This is stupid. Why am I watching this?’”

He had no idea what the future had in store for him.

“I think he was just kind of naturally gifted,” Wilson said. “You hear stories like that every once in a while, where a kid doesn’t play until he’s 15 or 16 and he just picks it up pretty well. He’s just one of those rare guys.”

Gordon got it honest, though. His father, Mickey, and his mother both played field hockey, and his dad also played cricket.

After getting to the U.S., Gordon said he was a little depressed because there was no cricket to play. So his mom sent him to a baseball camp, which he didn’t like. His less aggressive cricket swing didn’t go over well, and catching the ball with a glove — it’s done barehanded in cricket, he said — took a lot of getting used to.

“When they were hitting fly balls to me, if the ball was over my head, I wanted to use my bare hand to catch it,” Gordon said. “They thought it was pretty funny.”

There were other bumps and bruises along the way.

After his first baseball camp experience, his instructors encouraged him to try out for his middle school team. He did, and was promptly cut.

“I had never been cut from a team in my life,” he said.

Even though his mom kept sending him to his camp instructors for extra hitting practice, Gordon just didn’t like the game, as much as he tried. But one day he picked up a tool of the trade that has been around as long as the game itself, a wood bat. He started swinging it.

“Swinging that wood bat made me enjoy baseball,” he said. “So I kept doing that. Eventually, I got to high school, tried out for that team, made it and I’m finally here.”

And looking back, his cricket skills helped. He said swinging a bat in cricket provides for even less margin of error in a player’s timing than in baseball.

Somewhere along the way, someone was evidently impressed with Gordon’s progress. After the 2009 season at FMU, he made the South African national team that played in that year’s World Baseball Classic. He went 0-for-4 in South Africa’s opening game, although he scored his team’s only run in an 8-1 loss to Cuba.

But he had his moment in the second game, getting a single off Mexico pitcher Rodrigo Lopez, who, at the time, was playing for the Phillies.

“(Playing in the WBC) was the ultimate big-league experience. I don’t think there’s a way I would ever trade that for anything else in the world,” Gordon said.

He got a taste of the big-league life when South Africa was playing a spring training game against the Angels. Gordon went to get his bag off his team’s bus, but was thwarted by an employee who was assigned to that task.

“I felt bad for the guy carrying my bag,” he said.

It might seem like a minor moment for some, but for Gordon, it’s something he will savor. He knows his chances of playing beyond college aren’t that good, so every memory counts. He takes nothing for granted, like April 10, when he hit his first — and so far, only — FMU home run, a three-run shot which won a 4-3 game at North Georgia. It happened on the same day countryman Charl Schwartzel won the Masters.

“That was a great day for me,” Gordon said.

He’s hoping for a few more great days.

He came to Francis Marion not just because the Patriots offered him a spot — Gordon likely would have caught on somewhere — but because FMU wins.

Francis Marion went to the Division II College World Series in 2006 and is making its sixth trip to a regional this week under coach Art Inabinet. The Patriots play Catawba in the Southeast regional at 3 p.m. today at Mount Olive College.

“That’s what attracted me the most,” Gordon said. “They always have at least a chance to play for the World Series. I saw coach Inabinet’s record, and I guess I’m just addicted to winning. That’s the main thing. I just love winning.”