Sedgwick’s Brylie Ware can hit any pitcher — almost

We’ve established that Brylie Ware can hit. You don’t question the credentials of a guy who batted .589 for Neosho County during the 2016 regular season with 29 homers and 122 RBIs.

All of those incredible numbers led the NJCAA ranks and Ware is headed to Oklahoma in the fall. Where, we presume, he will hit.

Maybe not .589, but certainly something good enough to keep his bat in the lineup.

Ware, a Sedgwick native whose baseball skills started being a top of discussion among Wichita baseball folk before he got to third grade, is playing third base for the NJCAA national team in the NBC World Series at Lawrence-Dumont Stadium.

And in his first two games, Ware was 3 for 7. The hits keep coming.

Yet there’s one pitcher, one left-hander who doesn’t throw particularly hard, who has Ware’s number

Ware describes him as a lefty with long hair from Allen County. His name is Jake Butterfield, who finished his freshman season with a 4-3 record and 6.16 ERA.

Ware was 0 for 7 against Butterfield, who is from Osage City, in two 2016 games.

“I don’t know what it was,” Ware said. “He’s a slow lefty who throws probably 82 but he’s always in the zone.”

And Ware, a right-handed hitter, couldn’t solve him.

He solved everyone else to the point where the pitchers facing him threw the ball and hoped Ware would hit it at somebody.

Not Butterfield, though.

“I’m the kind of pitcher who pounds the zone and hopes for contact,” Butterfield said. “I want to put the ball in the strike zone and make them him. My whole game is keeping guys off balance.”

And Ware felt like he was riding a Tilt-O-Whirl every time he faced Butterfield. He was too quick, too slow, but never right on time.

“I love facing guys like that, it makes the game fun,” Butterfield said. “(Ware) just knows how to hit. With most pitchers, it doesn’t really even seem to matter where they put the ball or even if they’ve made their pitch.”

Ware can’t remember when he wasn’t swinging a bat. He started playing at Westurban when he was 3, he said, and was probably slotted immediately into the cleanup spot, which likely made some of the 4-year-olds angry.

Ware credits Maize coach Rocky Helm, one of his coaches early on, and former Wichita State second baseman Billy Hall for teaching him the finer points of hitting.

But, really, nobody can teach .589. Ware has inordinate natural ability.

He did, though, make 16 errors at third base for Neosho and is working hard on becoming a complete player. So far in the NBC World Series, he’s made a couple of nifty plays and has a strong throwing arm.

Ware said he got an invitation to play for the NJCAA national team while he was piling up the offensive numbers at Neosho County, in Chanute.

“My coached asked me during the season if I wanted to be on this team and I told him I would check with my parents and make sure they didn’t have any plans,” Ware said.

Suffice it to say, whatever plans his parents might have had were scrapped. This is the biggest stage on which Ware has played and the NJCAA team will be in Thursday night’s quarterfinals at Lawrence-Dumont Stadium.

He was more than excited about facing the Kansas Stars’ Roger Clemens, one of the best pitchers in the history of baseball, in a Wednesday night pool-play game.

“That’s something I’ll remember for the rest of my life,” Ware said.

Ware said he’s working on the intricacies of hitting as he prepares to play in the Big 12.

“Refining my approach, where I hit the ball in the zone,” he said. “Making sure I get ahead of a fastball and wait back on a curve.”

It must be hard to think about becoming a better hitter after you’ve led junior-college baseball in the big three offensive categories, but it’s pretty much all Ware thinks about.

That and the next challenge, which is playing at Oklahoma.

“It’s definitely a dream come true to go there because I grew up an OU fan,” Ware said. “I’ve been to a lot of football games there and everything and it’s always been a dream of mine to put on that uniform.”

Yet Arkansas made a strong push, so strong the Ware said the deciding factor was that he had more family living closer to Norman than to Fayetteville.

Best of all, getting to OU will get Ware away from Allen County’s Butterfield. Maybe he’ll be able to hit again.

This story was originally published August 10, 2016 at 7:45 PM with the headline "Sedgwick’s Brylie Ware can hit any pitcher — almost."