HAMPTON — Returning to War Memorial Stadium for the first time in more than three decades earlier this month brought back a lot of memories for Desi Relaford. Not all of them were good.
“That was my first full season in professional baseball, and there were a lot of 0-for-4 nights with a couple of errors,” said Relaford, who played for the Class A Peninsula Pilots, a Seattle Mariners farm team, in 1992, the last season minor league baseball was played at War Memorial.
Fast forward 32 years and the experience has been quite different for his son, Jevin Relaford, who plays for the Peninsula Pilots of the college summer baseball Coastal Plain League. Like his dad, Jevin, 22, and a graduate student at Florida Southern University, mans shortstop at War Memorial.
“I’m having a blast,” Jevin said. “It’s pretty cool coming here to play where he used to play, and I love the Pilots’ emphasis on winning and on family.”
Father and son might soon have something in common from their experiences at War Memorial: league championship rings.
Jevin and the Pilots won both halves of the CPL’s East Division this summer. To win the league title, they must win two best-of-three series, the first of which begins at 7 p.m. Sunday with Game 1 against the Wilmington Sharks at War Memorial Stadium.
Jevin Relaford fields a ground ball during a Peninsula Pilots game at War Memorial Stadium in Hampton, Virginia, on July 5, 2024. Relaford plays during the regular season with Florida Southern College. (Billy Schuerman / The Virginian-Pilot)Desi Relaford not only helped send the minor league version of Peninsula Pilots baseball into history with a Carolina League title, he scored the winning run in the championship game in the top of the ninth inning at Lynchburg. It was a great ending to a season of painful growth.
Desi would go on to debut in the major leagues with the Philadelphia Phillies less than four years later, and play 11 years for seven teams. It was something he could hardly imagine that season in Hampton.
For starters, the field at War Memorial in 1992 shattered all of his illusions about the glamor of pro baseball.
“The first time I saw it, I was mortified,” he said. “It was hard, there were rocks everywhere and you could pick up clumps of sod from the infield.”
Just 18 and small for his age (5-foot-6, 150 pounds) Desi phoned his father often, sometimes in tears, lamenting his decision not to go to college rather than straight to the pros. He realizes now others probably saw him as better than he saw himself.
“I was the youngest player in the league, but somehow I made the (Carolina League) All-Star team, so I couldn’t have been too bad,” he said. “I just didn’t understand development, that I wasn’t going to be the same guy a year from then.”
Desi said one of the most important lessons he has imparted to his son is to “expect failure, but realize the most important thing is how you react to that failure and remain positive. Jevin is much better at that than I was.”
Jevin — who is batting .355 with 23 runs and 11 stolen bases through 19 games for the Pilots after going 6 for 9 in a doubleheader sweep Friday — has inherited much from his dad. That starts with his love of the game, which began with following him into the locker room of the Colorado Rockies and Texas Rangers as a little kid.
“I remember going into the clubhouse, the batting cage and the family room,” Jevin said. “All of that had a big impact on me because it gave me something to strive for.
“I’d seen it, so now there’s the expectation of getting there.”
At 5-foot-4, 145 pounds coming out of high school, Jevin faced an even bigger challenge than his father. So, although he’s an honor student who has solved a Rubik’s Cube without looking (“I just remembered the patterns”), he started his post-high school career in junior college.
He’s enjoyed a growth spurt the past four years, and his hitting has improved. He’s batted .295 in 100 games the past two seasons with Florida Southern, with 90 runs, five home runs, 50 RBIs and, most impressively, 31 of 33 stolen bases in 2024.
But, like his father, defense is his calling card. Not surprisingly, he’s learned much from his dad about it.
“We’re both defensive-oriented,” Jevin said. “He’s big about having a strong arm and attacking the ball because if you don’t attack the ball, it will attack you.
“He also talks about having soft hands because if you have soft hands, you can react quicker to bad hops.”
Pilots manager Hank Morgan saw Desi play for the ’92 Pilots and says he mimicked him in his career after meeting him at a Little League clinic. He said Desi had a slightly better arm, but that Jevin is more accurate.
“Jevin’s ball shows up in the center of the chest and he throws from all different arm angles,” Morgan said. “He’s a really fun defensive player to watch.
“He really fits into our style of play offensively because he hits well with two strikes, can bunt and he runs really well. If someone gives him a chance (in pro baseball), they’ll be getting a guy who’s dedicated to getting better every day.
“If he gets with the right organization, who knows, because he’s a really good ballplayer.”
Jevin will cross that bridge following the CPL playoffs and one more season at Florida Southern. Desi’s advice is it took him a couple of years to learn after turning pro.
“Just enjoy yourself,” Desi tells Jevin. “Hopefully, someone (professionally) gives him a shot.
“If not, we’ve always talked about just doing what you can and getting out of (baseball) what you can. If he’s gone in and put everything into it he could, and this is his ceiling, that’s OK.
“He has a degree in sports psychology, is going back this year and getting his master’s, so there are lots of positives.”
Marty O’Brien, mjobrien@dailypress.com
