BILLINGS — Lucas Hartman has been around baseball his entire life.
"From the second I was born I was holding a ball and a bat and a glove," the Billings Mustangs' pitcher told MTN Sports comfortably seated behind home plate at Dehler Park.
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As the team's closer, Hartman doesn't bat — which makes his father Joel's role as the Mustangs' hitting coach something of an irony. But Lucas said the dynamic works.
"It's better, I guess, that he's not the pitching coach because I feel like that would be weird because he's been teaching me all my life. He didn't teach me pitching — I took up pitching when I got a little older and he was a hitter," Lucas said.
The two actually coach the bases together at times. Joel serves as the Mustangs' third base coach, and Lucas has taken on first base duties during games. As for how Lucas would fare stepping into the batter's box himself, he's not making any bold predictions.
"I don't know, probably pretty bad. I want to say I could hit pretty well, but definitely not very well," Lucas said.
Before arriving in Billings, Lucas attended five schools in five years earning two degrees and finishing his senior year at the University of Virginia. Now he's focused on pitching — while enjoying the Mustangs' offensive firepower.
"Yeah, it's awesome. You see it every day, we're scoring like 15-20 runs like every single game. That's fun to watch," he said.
In one late-season game, the Mustangs scored 18 unanswered runs and finished with exactly 20 in a win over Glacier. Lucas hopes that production eventually leads to a long-shot opportunity for the pitching staff.
"I hope that one day, if we're winning by a lot all the pitchers can get to hit. We always joke about that, but it'll probably never happen," Lucas admitted with a smile.
Maybe Joel can fit all the pitchers into a batting cage — just in case.
