STAPLETON, Ga. - It's a perfect summer evening, and Ty McTier is doing the unfathomable in his yard. It starts with a twirl of a baseball bat, the way an Indian brave would twirl a tomahawk.
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Ty McTier warms up before pitching at a tournament in Marietta, Ga. The 17-year-old from Stapleton has shocked baseball scouts with his skills on the diamond, but his actions off the field leave a deeper impression.
Kevin Martin/Staff
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Ty McTier wears a cross.
Kevin Martin/Staff
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He then starts launching baseballs on an orbit the way catapults once hurled stones at enemy castles.
Ty McTier Photos
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The 6-foot-4-inch youth stands at his neighbors' long country driveway. He's throwing a ball up in the air and smashing it, trying to reach his own driveway more than 550 feet away. A Chevrolet truck pulls up 425 feet from Ty. If the agent who insured the truck knew this was not just any 17-year-old swinging a bat, he'd probably raise the rate.
Ty crushes every lob, never missing. Roughly 75 percent of the 50 training swings carry a ball at least 400 feet in the air. That's a home run anywhere at Turner Field, the home of the Atlanta Braves. One effort lands parallel with the back tires of the truck.
This is a hitting display with a wooden bat maybe a quarter of the sluggers in major league baseball could mirror. And yet professional scouts say hitting isn't what Ty can do best at on a baseball field. His fastbalI has been clocked as fast as 94 mph.
Ty McTier is more than a baseball player. He is a youth whose every day is a testament to the power of human potential.
Ty hopes baseball can be his modern-day ministry. He wants baseball to bridge a gap to talk to the world about God.
Ty grew up in a home where visitors are greeted with offers of sweet tea or lemonade. On the way out, they hear "God bless you."
When Ty and his older brother, Jace, were growing up, the television got three channels. Video games were not allowed. They were sent outside to find their fun.
"People say growing up in the country away from public school I grew up sheltered," said Ty, an avid tree climber. "That's funny. I was outside in the yard until dark every day."
His family tree includes pilgrims who sailed on the Mayflower, signers of the Declaration of Independence and one of the founders of Vanderbilt University.
His mother, Lucy, is one of the most talented artists in the South. She met the late President Reagan years ago after painting a portrait of him atop a white stallion. It hangs in the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library.
Jace, painting his own trail, earned his first commission when he was 16.
"Everyone in my family is amazing," Ty said. "Me, I'm nothing special. I just work at the things I have an ability to do."
This isn't elitism. It's achievement.
"We tell our children that there's nothing wrong with digging a ditch," father David McTier said, "as long as you make sure you work that shovel so you're the best ditch digger around."
Ditch digging might be the only thing Ty hasn't tried. A roll call of his pursuits seems never-ending.
Todd Dickson coached Ty on a team made up of area home-school pupils. The CSRA Crusaders played against private schools in the Augusta area.
"The first thing to know about Ty is the boy is as strong as an ox," Mr. Dickson said. "His hobby is going into the swamp behind the family farm and cutting down trees and carrying them out. He's making a log cabin for himself."
The sight of those logs alone can sculpt biceps.
"This cabin he's building,'' Mr. Dickson continues, "he's building it all the old way. No electrical tools. He debarks, cures and holes the logs out all by himself. He's also an artist and also works with wood. He carves his own bows and arrows. Boy, is he unique, and everything is 'yes' and 'no, sir.' He's one of those people you hope to meet every 15 years of your life."
Ty went through 50 bows before he could pull one back and not snap it in half. In an hour, he can turn a tree into a bow for deer hunting on the family farm. It is expert work.
He also is an accomplished musician and songwriter. He has a CD of self-published works on which he also plays the piano. He taught himself a guitar "finger tap" technique from a Van Halen video.
"It took me all night, but I wasn't going to sleep until I could do it," he said.
Ty also has his own works on canvas. His first oil painting was done at age 6. Some of his works depict aircraft scenes from photographs of his grandfather's days in World War II. He's as comfortable in a conversation about European history or the medieval era as he is swinging a bat.
Ty enters the senior year of his home school education this fall. He scored an 1180 on his first SAT. He is a Renaissance youth from a town with an estimated population of 330.
His educational upbringing fosters his talents. Ty, like his brother Jace, has been home-schooled since the first grade.
Ty's mother cringes when she hears her husband say that Ty was a first-grade public school dropout.
"Hey, it's the truth, isn't it?" Mr. McTier says.
The truth is a lot to swallow when it comes to Ty.
Home school could have been anywhere, given Mrs. McTier's art talent. Jefferson County near Wrens was chosen because of family ties.
The fact the family is self-employed makes it work. Mr. McTier, who's in real estate, chose to home school his children.
"The first reason was for the boys' art talent. The second was educational," he said.
Ty makes every hour count.
"I wake up and do my devotional," he says. "I'm doing schoolwork until 12:30 in the afternoon."
Subjects don't rotate every hour. If a math lesson is enthralling, it can last two days. Learning is personal quest, not drudgery.
"I don't have to wait on a teacher to go at a pace for the whole class," Ty said. "I can accomplish more and do it faster. Then I can go outside when my lessons are done and do baseball or whatever."
Lately, "whatever" has been baseball before art or music. He spends four hours a day working on his game. His training is done with such passion that a Federal Express driver once interrupted a workout.
"She said she didn't know who I was or what team I played with and that it really didn't matter," Ty said. "She told me, 'As hard as you work, you are going to be famous one day,' and she asked for my autograph."
Mac and Tracy Bryan live next door to the McTiers. Mr. Bryan walked on to the Georgia football team and earned a letter as a Bulldog lineman. Mrs. Bryan is a former Atlanta Falcons cheerleader. They share more insight on the young man with teen-idol looks.
"It's sickening," Mr. Bryan said. "He's so good a kid. ... He has the most awesome work ethic you'd see from his age. He's a good Christian from a real Christian family. He's honest. He's hard-working. If somebody told me about him, I'd think they were blowing smoke my way, but that's Ty. Sickening."
Mr. Bryan, who saw prima donnas on the Georgia team, sees a youth with all the talent and heart in the world. Ty plays toy soldiers and talks baseball with their two children.
Last Thanksgiving, Ty saved the life of one of his neighbors, the Bryans said. At a home-school family picnic at Alexander H. Stephens Park in Crawfordville, young Will Bryan, now 8, was playing in a gorge. He tripped and fell, landing on a nest of yellow jackets. Will, who is allergic to the insects, was stung more than 20 times.
"Everybody said I looked like a marshmallow for two weeks," Will said.
Ty was there. He batted the yellow jackets away. He took off a shirt swarming with stingers and told a very scared boy to be calm.
"I'd never seen so many insects at one time in my life," Ty said. "It all happened so fast. I just tried to do what I thought was right."
Believing the gorge was too steep to carry Will out, Ty dragged him six feet to a creek.
"I took him to the stream and kept his head above water," Ty said. "I let him sit in the water for a while to get them all off. I got stung, but I wasn't allergic to them. It hurt, but I had to take it."
Ty had more than 10 stings of his own. He held Will's hand in the back seat as Mrs. Bryan drove to a medical center.
"I think a lot of kids Ty's age would have ran for help," Mr. Bryan said. "My son had over 20 stings. The only thing that saved him was his weight and Ty. If he'd gotten stung a few more times, it would have would have been too many. He would have died."
Ty never pitched a full game until he was 16. He never played more than 16 games in a season. He played only Dixie Youth baseball until 2003.
But Ty's natural gifts had progressed too far to be ignored. After much soul-searching, he tried out for a prestigious travel baseball team.
His tireless attitude earned him a spot on an elite Pendleton Baseball team, named for Terry Pendleton, the Braves' hitting coach and former MVP.
Scouts see a young man with the best frame for baseball of any schoolboy in Georgia. Ty's hands can grip five baseballs at a time. He already runs the 60-yard dash in above-average time for a major league player.
Ty throws six pitches. His fastball has nasty movement, cutting a swath over a foot-and-a-half away and down from hitters.
"With no stretching of the sort, I believe Ty has the capability to reach the major leagues," said Don Friend, the Pendleton team's coach, who doubles as a Braves scout.
"Ty is very much a natural, and his story is surreal," Mr. Friend said. "Here's a kid who has never played high school team ball. He's never played much baseball at all. And I think he could consistently throw in the mid-90s one day and reach back every once in a while for a little higher. He has that elasticity in his arm."
Very few players in the major leagues can throw like that.
Still, Ty is a project. Despite obvious natural talent, he was a lump of coal last fall. His arm, never pressed into regular service, is struggling to maintain 90 mph, which isn't unusual. His velocity this summer ranged from the mid-80s to the low 90s.
He has begun the process of becoming a diamond standout. Ty threw 80 mph when he began working with the Pendleton coaches.
His fastball was clocked at 91 mph last Christmas in a workout before Braves pitching coach Leo Mazzone.
It was an interesting day.
"Ty has always has good Christian men like coach Todd or Dad as his coach," brother Jace said. "Leo used real colorful language. Ty didn't step right on a follow-through, and Leo cussed him up and down. He was all over Ty."
He was soon all over Ty for a different reason.
"Leo had to walk around and watch Ty," Mrs. McTier said.
Mr. Mazzone nearly swallowed his tobacco. Ty was making a catcher nervous trying to track one fishtailing pitch after another. He left that catcher's hand throbbing.
"A couple of times Leo watched Ty throw and said, 'That's money in the bank,'" Mrs. McTier said.
Despite the stellar workout, Mr. Friend believes Ty's lack of exposure to high-level baseball competition requires more seasoning. A young man consistently hitting 90 on a radar gun will be drafted high, but Ty has consistency issues.
"He's a very bright, super intelligent kid, but his biggest growth is on the mental side," Mr. Friend said. "It's his baseball intelligence about the nuances of the game. He needs a year or two of college baseball to catch up. Then he can reach the top side of this amazing potential this kid has."
Ty once gave up baseball.
"I didn't want to pursue baseball at a high level because baseball was a waste of time. I just didn't think then that God would have any use for a baseball player," Ty said.
That has changed. His goal is to use baseball the way the Rev. Billy Graham used a TV camera.
"If I'm a country boy who plays baseball, not many people are going to listen to what Jesus means to me," Ty said. "But if I am a major leaguer, more people will listen to what I have to say about my best friend, Jesus. There won't be as many people turning a deaf ear to what I have to say."
Ty doesn't yet have a girlfriend but dreams of finding a "beautiful Christian woman" to settle down with one day.
On baseball trips, roommates sometimes act like teenage ballplayers. Think Bull Durham or Animal House.
"There were things they were doing I should not be participating in," Ty said. "So I'd go to the lobby and talk to the guest clerk for five hours. That's happened a few times."
Ty was upset by something he saw on ESPN recently.
"They talked of keeping religion out of sports," he said. "They said no one should express their views. I was mad. There are people who are in a position thanks to God-given talent not using it for God's glory. I firmly believe when God gives you something, he gives it to you for a reason."
He recalls a Bible passage about the desires instilled within the heart.
"I feel that I am somehow going to be used," he said. "I've always felt that way and just never talked about it. I feel I am here to reach thousands, maybe millions, and tell them about God. I think God is just helping me develop in baseball to use me like that."
Reach Jeff Sentell at (706) 823-3425 or jeff.sentell@augustachronicle.com.
