By Joseph Staszewski
Legendary Archbishop Molloy coach Jack Curran continually asked Thomas Hackimer to pitch, telling him it was his future in baseball.
The light-hitting senior refused to, because he didn’t want to leave shortstop for his senior season and he and his father worried about damaging his arm. As a walk-on at St. John’s he finally took a chance on throwing from the mound to home instead of across the diamond because it meant making the Red Storm roster as Curran predicted.
“I was open to it because it meant I’d get to play baseball and be on the field,” Hackimer said. “Pitching was my best chance.”
Three years later he became St. John’s shutdown closer and its all-time leader in saves. With his strong arm and submarine delivery the junior pitched to a 4-1 record with a 1.92 ERA and 55 strike outs in 51.2 innings to help SJU win the Big East regular season and tournament titles and reach an NCAA regional final.
The year was good enough to take Hackimer from being a kid who barely made the Red Storm’s roster to a 15th-round pick by the Mets in the Major League Baseball First-Year Player Draft last week.
“It took me a second,” Hackimer said of realizing he had been picked. “It was like ‘Oh. Oh. That’s me.’ I jumped up. I yelled to my dad and started calling my family and friends. It’s cool to be drafted. It’s even cooler to be taken by your hometown team.”
That honor didn’t come easy, but both Curran and the St. John’s coaching staff saw something in Hackimer that just needed to be developed. Bro. James Vagan, Curran’s longtime assistant, said the coach called Red Storm headman Ed Blankmeyer. Before Hackimer, who was on a full-academic scholarship, arrived he planted the seed of moving him to the mound, even if it was as a batting-practice pitcher to start.
“It’s a classic case of somebody who was a little bit of a late bloomer who really developed into an outstanding college player.” Vagan said. “The way he played in high school we would have never guessed he’d be drafted by a major league team three years later.”
Blankmeyer saw what Curran meant. Hackimer was athletic, had long arms and possessed the work ethic it would take to make the change work. The submarine delivery worked with his body type, put less stress on the arm is and harder to hit when done right.
“Guys don’t like to see that arm slot,” Blankmeyer said.
Hackimer made more than 30 appearances in each of his three seasons in Queens, but there was expected inconsistency his first two years. Things clicked for him in 2015. His command and confidence improved. Hackimer throws a fastball, slider and change and can hit up to the low 90’s on the radar gun.
“His first year, there were good days and there were bad days, but as you saw the progression in his work and how he developed and how he started to command his pitches, finally this year kind of reaped the benefits,” Blankmeyer said.
Despite his success, Hackimer still misses everything about shortstop. He will even sneak in a few groundballs now and then.
He remembers going back to Molloy as a freshman to talk to Curran, who laughed after hearing that Hackimer moved to the mound, like he had asked him to so many times.
“It’s pretty incredible to look back on how far I’ve come,” Hackimer said.
The door is open for him to go much further.
