Brendan Tinsman never wanted to be anything but a catcher.
“Catching fits me perfectly,” said Tinsman, who recently graduated from Cape Elizabeth High. “It’s the most involved position in baseball. You’re in on every play. If I was in the outfield, I think I’d be bored.
“Catching keeps you in the game. There’s never a dull moment.”
In four years with the Capers, Tinsman became one of the state’s most-feared baseball players as a power hitter and strong-armed catcher.
“He was a man among boys in many cases,” said Wells Coach Todd Day.
Tinsman is our selection as the Maine Sunday Telegram’s Baseball Player of the Year. Tinsman, who will play next at Wake Forest, also was named the Gatorade Maine player of the year and winner of the John Winkin Award, given to Maine’s outstanding senior player.
As a senior, Tinsman batted .510 with three home runs, 12 RBI, 21 runs and 13 stolen bases. He made only one error and threw out 10 baserunners. For his career, Tinsman hit .413 with 14 home runs.
“I would say, by far, he is the best player in the state,” said Cape Elizabeth Coach Andrew Wood. “He has the body of a 24-year-old; he’s probably going to be drafted some day. You can put him at any position and he’d be successful. … He’s a stallion.”
Tinsman, 6-foot-2, 215 pounds, gave up soccer and basketball when he got to high school to concentrate on baseball. With his own batting cage in a barn at his home, he has practiced hitting and catching daily.
“I haven’t gone a day without playing (baseball) since Little League,” he said. “I just fell in love with the sport as a young kid. I don’t know why. It’s not the fastest-paced game.”
Tinsman became the starting catcher as a freshman. “That’s a big thing, not many people can do that,” said Wood. “And not only was he able to do it defensively, but offensively as well.”
It helped, he said, having his own batting cage. He and his father, Patrick, spent many hours working on his hitting and catching. “We had a pitching machine that I hit hundreds of balls off a day,” he said. “It was like having a coach throwing batting practice all the time. Then I would work with my dad and set up the machine so I could work on receiving (pitches). It helped tremendously.”
Tinsman verbally committed to Wake Forest when he was a freshman.
He spent his summers traveling the nation, to California and North Carolina, to play baseball on travel teams.
Wood said he watched Tinsman mature over the years.
“He was a great teammate and leader,” said Wood. “He made everyone on the team better. He’s just a professional young man, the way he plays baseball.”
Tinsman left for Wake Forest on July 7 to take summer classes and begin training. He hopes, he said, “to get in the lineup and play every day, contribute and do whatever they need me to do.”
And he leaves high school with some very good memories, including a trip to the Class B South final in 2015.
“What I’m going to remember most is my teammates and how much fun we had every year,” he said. “We never went as far as we wanted to but we had a lot of fun.”
Mike Lowe can be contacted at 791-6422 or:
mlowe@pressherald.com
Twitter: MikeLowePPH
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