Oct. 8, 2008

By Adam Lucas

Former Tar Heel ace Daniel Bard finds himself doing something very unusual these days: nothing.

The 2006 first-round pick of the Boston Red Sox is back in his hometown of Charlotte for his first extended break from the diamond since joining the Red Sox organization.

"It's a little weird trying to find things to do," Bard says. "I'm going fishing, I'm catching up with some friends, and I'm going to my brother Luke's high school football games."

He's also working out five or six days per week, because although he won't be formally playing in any fall leagues this offseason, this is an important upcoming winter for the powerful right-hander. On Sept. 25, the Red Sox named Bard their Minor League Pitcher of the Year.

To celebrate that honor, the team flew Bard and his parents to Boston, which is how he found himself preparing to walk onto the Fenway Park turf before a game against the Cleveland Indians. It was yet another special moment in a lifetime of baseball memories for his parents, who grew up in the Boston suburbs. "Do you know how surreal this is?" Kathy Bard, Daniel's mother, asked her son before he walked onto the field. "We're standing here and you're about to get an award from the Boston Red Sox."

It was well-deserved. Bard posted a combined 5-1 record with 107 strikeouts in 77.2 innings at Greenville (A) and Portland (AA) in 2007. Those outstanding statistics were the product of a trip to Hawaii for winter ball in 2007, where the Red Sox began Bard's conversion from starter to reliever.

As a starter, his professional debut had been rocky, walking 78 in just 75 innings in 2007. But as a reliever, with a slightly retooled arm slot and renewed confidence, he began to rocket up the Boston organization.

"I went into spring training this year with a whole different kind of confidence," Bard said. "I wanted to prove to myself and everyone else what I was capable of doing. I could feel myself improving as a pitcher as the season progressed."

The move to the bullpen also changed his approach on the mound, where Bard now pitches almost exclusively from the stretch. To limit opposing base-runners, he's using a reduced leg kick from the high kick he showed in Chapel Hill. Always capable of blowing his high-90s fastball past opposing hitters, he began to attack rather than nibbling on the corners, and he's throwing his breaking ball harder than he has in the past.

The outstanding results earned Bard a quick promotion from Greenville to Portland on May 17, and very nearly made him the latest Tar Heel to earn a spot in the major leagues.

"The Red Sox are pretty discreet about what they say because it's so unpredictable," Bard says. "I was slightly hurt in the last week of our season with a strained lat, and they told me there was a chance if I was healthy that I had been talked about as a September call-up. That was good to hear but it was also frustrating."

Although he didn't go to Boston to join the active roster, Bard still journeyed to Beantown for the on-field awards ceremony in the last week of the regular season.

"It was a pretty cool experience," he says. "It was nice to have all that hard work over the past year or two pay off that way. I was happy to finally show people what I can do and a good feeling to be rewarded with an honor like that."

Previous winners of the same Red Sox award include Jon Lester in 2005 and Clay Buchholz in 2006 and 2007. Both of those players have spent the majority of the last two seasons in the major leagues, and Lester started the clinching game of the 2007 World Series and the first game of this year's American League Division Series.

For now, though, Bard will wait until spring training to find out how his 2009 will unfold. His immediate plans are slightly closer to home: he's coming to Chapel Hill this weekend for the Notre Dame football game--and to examine the progress on Boshamer Stadium first-hand.

"I've been following all the pictures on the internet," he says. "I'm looking forward to seeing it for myself."

Adam Lucas is the publisher of Tar Heel Monthly. He is also the author or co-author of four books on Carolina basketball.