The fastball velocity that elevated Slocum’s arsenal in high school was no longer the heat of hotshots, and he found himself adjusting to life in the bullpen, working with a coaching staff that sought to tinker with his pitches. “To be successful in upper-level baseball, you have to live it in your body,” Slocum said. with weight training, and the collegiate team would often practice until late after classes. Baseball workouts would start his day at 6 a.m. Slocum was the first in his family to attend college, and felt naïve at first on campus. “‘But you can throw a baseball hard, so you might as well try that.'” “I felt like, ‘music isn’t getting you anywhere,'” Slocum said. A coach apologized for the tough campaign after Slocum got “racked” during a May outing in Lake Elsinore, but with his collegiate plans already declared, Slocum’s priorities had fallen elsewhere, even if playing in a band didn’t feel like a long-term commitment. He started playing in bands when he was 15 or 16 - and earned some stern talking-to’s from coaches when musical endeavors made him miss baseball obligations.ĭuring his senior year of high school, Slocum committed to pitch at Santa Clara University, started a band, and subsequently had a terrible farewell season for the Wildcats.
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The Squire guitar collecting dust for both a few years of Slocum’s youth and the past couple of paragraphs comes back in focus during his early teenage years, when he learned how to play from a brother’s friend who knew how to shred. “I wasn’t afraid to go up and in,” Slocum said.
As a self-described “big dude with a long stride,” the California native was equal parts “mean power pitcher” and “middling bully.” Slocum’s heater velocity bolstered his presence on the mound with a come-and-get-it arrogance. When it came to the rest of his repertoire, Slocum added: “I worked quite hard on a changeup, but I could never figure out a curveball unless it was a knucklecurve.” But when he rose from summer league ball to a rotation spot for the Paloma Valley Wildcats, Slocum’s bread-and-butter weapon was a low-to-mid 90s fastball - “in high school, that’s enough,” he said. He followed in his dad’s footsteps as a pitcher, prone to control issues and self-admittedly “kind of a head case as a kid” when he stepped onto the mound. “You’re eight, just being a kid.”įor Slocum, being a kid meant playing baseball. “I kind of just forgot about the guitar for a while,” Slocum said. That life-changing Squire, though, sat in his room, mostly unplayed, until Slocum was about 12. Music was always a core component of the Slocum household: Bruce Springsteen and Bad Company soundtracked early-morning chores, and even though Slocum half-jokes that they felt a degree of buyers’ remorse, his parents purchased instruments for him and his siblings. “There was no provocation, but it changed my life.” “He was like, ‘you can learn this thing if you want,'” Slocum said in an interview.
The young pitcher - “a big gangly kid who couldn’t control his body” is how Slocum recalls his physique on the mound - just played in a summer league game, and when he gets back to his dad’s car, he spots a Squire guitar in the backseat that hadn’t been there before. The Spin Rate is a weekly look at the stories behind the bands and artists who share a love for the sport, and the songs that draw inspiration from the annals of baseball lore.ĭylan Slocum is eight or nine years old when his future paths first converge. From walk-up songs to seventh-inning stretches, music and baseball are inextricably interwoven.
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