At first, Corey Ray Sr. saw the steep hill at Robichaux Park near his family’s South Side home as a way to help keep his son, Corey, in line.
“I’d challenge him like, ‘If I beat you in a race up, you have to do what I say,’ ” Corey Sr. recalled Thursday. “And then he started to get older … and faster.”
Once Corey started winning, the rewards turned into pizza and video games. Eventually, father stopped going altogether, figuring his work was done once running the hill became a habit for his self-disciplined son.
Some days, he left to run before the sun rose. Some nights, he went after the sun set. Most days, the family knew where they could find Corey, escaping Chicago’s streets on a 40-foot incline in the Washington Heights neighborhood.
“He wouldn’t make me go but he’d always say if you want to be good, it’s something you have to do,” said Ray, a star center fielder at Louisville. “That drove me. I believed if I worked hard enough on the hill, I would be better. It was a struggle. I didn’t always want to go … but I felt it was something I needed to do.”
The climb continues for Ray, who begins the biggest week of his baseball life Friday when 47-12 Louisville, the No. 2 overall seed, opens the NCAA tournament against Western Michigan — six days before next Thursday’s major-league baseball amateur draft. Baseball America projected Ray, a left-handed hitter with power and speed, to go third overall to the Braves.
The White Sox, drafting 10th, know Ray well from his days in their Amateur City Elite youth baseball program, but the 6-foot, 200-pound prospect who grew up a five-minute drive from U.S. Cellular Field figures to be gone by then. If Ray is, he will become Chicago’s first baseball player to go in the top 10 since the Phillies drafted Jeff Jackson fourth in 1989.
“I’m staying focused on winning a national championship so whoever takes me, takes me,” said Ray, the Louisville slugger who hit .320 in 59 games with 15 home runs, 58 RBIs and 39 stolen bases. “I owe it to these guys as my brothers to give it all I have so we can reach our goal. I am going to enjoy this.”
That was the advice offered by Mets outfielder Curtis Granderson, the Thornton Fractional South graduate whose $5 million donation was integral to building the baseball stadium at his college alma mater, Illinois-Chicago. Granderson developed a rapport with Ray working out the last two offseasons and recently reached out to the family.
“It’s great to see, especially considering his background,” Granderson told the New York Daily News. “His team still has a chance to win a national championship, so I said focus on that. Let the next things happen when they’re ready to happen.”
Whatever happens, and wherever baseball leads Ray, he will feel a responsibility to his hometown community. The way his mentor, Granderson, always felt. The way his parents, Corey and Kathy, always stressed in a household more structured than many in the city.
“My parents are very big on discipline and respect and hard work and a lot of people from where I grew up didn’t have both parents looking out for them like I did, so that made a difference,” Ray said.
It says everything about the way Corey was raised that his dad chuckled when asked if he viewed draft day as a potential payoff for all the sacrifices — knowing last year’s third overall pick, Brendan Rodgers, received a $5.5 million signing bonus.
“The reward is great when your kid is not a statistic,” Corey Sr. said.
When people on campus ask Ray what it was like growing up in Chicago amid its bloody violence, he speaks with empathy. And he speaks from experience, stressing that he escaped unscathed.
“I just explain it’s a tough life and some people do what they have to do because it’s all they’re familiar with,” Ray said. “But I do say if you want to get out of the South Side of Chicago, it’s possible. Look at me. Being drafted would give me a great opportunity to give back, an outlet to help inner-city baseball. Chicago needs more ambassadors. I just want to help one person, like somebody helped me.”
Like somebody helped Ray at Jackie Robinson West Little League, where his baseball dream began. Like they helped Ray balance academics and athletics in the ACE program. Like they helped Ray at Simeon Career Academy, where the four-year starter fittingly hit a 430-foot home run in his last at-bat as a senior.
“We prided ourselves in not being known just as a basketball school,” Ray said. “I got tired of going places and people asking what school I went to, and I’d say Simeon and they would go, ‘Oh, they have a good basketball program. … Isn’t that where Jabari Parker and Derrick Rose went?’ We wanted it to be, ‘Oh, wow, what a great baseball program.’ ”
Oh, wow, what a great representative of Chicago baseball Corey Ray grew up to be.
Twitter @DavidHaugh
