PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — Matt Hockenberry was a star baseball player at Temple University and the last Owl to be selected in the Major League Draft before the school cut the program. These days, he is the pitching coach for the Phillies High Single-A minor league team, the Jersey Shore BlueClaws.
Hockenberry graduated from Southwestern High School in Adams County, out in south central Pennsylvania, and he said it was during those high school days that baseball really became his focus.
"My high school career, even though now it seems kind of like, not blurry, but you don't really remember the big games there, other than us going to the District III Finals and the first two rounds of states for the first time in school history," he said.
"That's when I really started to see that baseball was my calling card. I'm not 6-foot-8 like my brother Mark, so I realized basketball was going to be a little bit more of a challenge."
A right-handed pitcher during his playing days, Hockenberry was drafted by the Phillies in the ninth round in 2014 and enjoyed success in the minors, getting as high as Double-A before being released in 2017.
He said a couple months after he was let go, he was trying to figure out what was next when he got a call from Phillies director of pitching development Rafael Chaves.
"So when he called me, he didn't say anything about my career, he didn't say anything about getting released, he didn't say anything apologizing that it didn't work out," he recalled.
"He just said, 'Matty, I think I've got a really good opportunity for you and I want to know if you are interested in coaching?' So I said, 'Absolutely.'"
You can listen to the entire interview with Matt Hockenberry by checking out the latest episode, above, of the KYW Newsradio original podcast, "1-on-1 with Matt Leon." Subscribe on the RADIO.COM app or wherever you get your podcasts.
Follow Matt Leon on Twitter @MattLeon1060.
