Choosing the riches of a good education
This is a different kind of rags-toriches story.
Brian Ragira, whose nickname is Rags, is the cleanup hitter in a loaded Stanford lineup. In an NCAA regional win over Pepperdine on Saturday, he clouted a 400-foot home run to dead center field at Stanford’s Sunken Diamond.
“The thing that I’m most impressed with,” All-America pitcher Mark Appel said, “is his opposite field power. He’s hit five homers, and three or four of them were either to dead center or the opposite field. He’s got a pure swing.”
Ragira, a 6-foot-2 sophomore first baseman, is one of the weapons the Cardinal (41-16) hope to unleash on
fifth-ranked Florida State (46-15) in the NCAA tournament’s Tallahassee super regional starting Friday at 4 p.m.
He’s hitting .324 and leads the team in hits with 79, to go with his 50 RBIs. In another year he may well be in position to make serious signing-bonus money in the major-league draft.
“He’ll be a potential first-round pick next year because he’s got power,” Stanford coach Mark Marquess said. “He’s got a lot of power.” According to Marquess, Ragira is what prospects “should look like.”
A former outfielder and pitcher at James Martin High School in Arlington, Texas, Ragira was torn when the hometown Rangers drafted him in the 30th round in 2010. He and his parents, Elijah and Abigael, wanted him to get a Stanford education.
“It was going to have to be lifechanging money,” Ragira said.
That didn’t happen, but it might next year when he’s eligible again.
He’s been on the scouts’ radar for years. He played on the U.S. national team’s under-18 squad in 2009, winning the gold medal at the Pan American Games in Venezuela. That team included the top three picks of the 2010 draft, outfielder Bryce Harper, pitcher Jameson Taillon and shortstop Manny Machado, along with current Cardinal pitcher A.J. Vanegas.
Ragira’s parents emigrated from Kenya to attend college in the United States. His father had been a standout runner and soccer player, his mother a top runner. Brian was a promising soccer player as a youngster, but his father told him, “We live in America. Nobody wants to watch soccer.”
His father works in real estate, and his mother is a flight attendant for American Airlines. Their son, whose full name is Brian Aosa Mogaka Ragira, may major in English, which would be a rarity for a Stanford baseball player.
“Literature is something I’ve always enjoyed,” he said. “I write quite a bit, prose or verse.” Perhaps a novel someday? “Sure.”
Briefly: Marquess said he was still confident in left-hander Brett Mooneyham and will start him Saturday despite his last two outings being rocky. “Usually with Mooneyham, you can tell early,” he said. “If he’s on, he can give us six or seven innings and be dominant. If he’s off, we can usually tell that and go to the ’pen.” … Three other Pac-12 teams are still alive: Arizona, Oregon and UCLA, all of which will host a super regional. … With 50 NCAA tournament appearances, Florida State trails only Texas, which has made 55. … Like several Stanford players before him, including current infielders Kenny and Danny Diekroeger, Stanford recruit Freddy Avis attended Menlo School in Atherton. The hardthrowing right-hander was drafted by the Nationals in the 25th round but will be the seventh Menlo School player to play at Stanford in coach Craig Schoof’s 25 years at the school. “If he was signable, the rumor was he would have gone anywhere from the last half of the first round to the third round,” Schoof said.