BOGART, Ga. — Almost everyone who’s important in the life of Bubba Chandler crowded into the North Oconee High School football field house Sunday night.
Friends. Teammates. Grandparents. Coaches. Relatives from out of state. Even the preacher from the church where the Chandlers worship was there. Forty tables had been set up. Food from a popular local Mexican restaurant was served. Probably 150 people wandered in and out of the room throughout the night.
They gathered for what the family billed as a combination graduation/Major League Draft party. Given the timing and what was at stake, there’s little doubt which event dominated Chandler’s thoughts. After all, Baseball America and MLB Pipeline had ranked him as the No. 20 and No. 21 draft prospect, respectively.
“We didn’t send out any invitations, we just told everybody we’re having a watch party, but you need to know he may not get drafted (in the first round) that night,” his mother Bobbi Chandler recalled. “A lot of people were like, ‘y’all know something,’ and we were like, ‘No we don’t. Things can change and evolve minute to minute.’”
Unlike many other top draft prospects, the 6-foot-3, 200-pound Chandler had significant options. He had spent the previous three weeks at Clemson University working out with the football team, which had offered him a scholarship following his junior season at North Oconee. The quarterback rented an apartment off campus and had quickly taken to his potential new teammates and coach Dabo Swinney. Clemson also was giving the right-handed pitcher/shortstop a chance to split time with the school’s baseball team.
The unique opportunity enabled Chandler to feel comfortable setting his bonus-pool asking price at $3 million for any major-league franchise hoping to draft and sign him. The recent landmark Supreme Court ruling that lets college athletes earn money on their name and likeness only added to his leverage.
Baseball was his first choice, but the financial security he craved did not materialize Sunday night. The only applause in the field house came for Kumar Rocker, another North Oconee alum and former Chandler teammate who went to the Mets at No. 10 overall out of Vanderbilt.
The Pirates selected catcher Henry Davis with the first pick. The Angels, Orioles, Blue Jays, Marlins and Reds — the other teams showing interest in Chandler — also went in different directions.
The night ended with Chandler still on the board and a roomful of family and friends in need of being hugged and thanked for showing up.
“He invited all his friends, they ate all the food and then Bubba had to tell everybody to go home,” his father Reuben said. “It was a little heartbreaking to see your kid’s disappointment, but again I think that stoked his fire. They pricked the bear.”
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NORTH OCONEE ATHLETICS
Bubba Chandler drove in 35 runs and hit eight home runs in his senior year at North Oconee High
The football whizzed past the face of a startled Tyler Aurandt at high speed. The Titans’ football coach turned around and spotted a grinning Chandler standing 50 yards away.
It was the summer of 2019 and it was typical high-school hijinks courtesy of Roy Reuben Chandler IV. Not that anyone calls him by the name on his birth certificate. It’s been “Bubba” from almost the day he was born. His older sisters, Jordan and Cody, hung that nickname on him, and he wears it like a tailored suit. Bobbi’s mother used to call him “Little Reuben” until one day when the child put that moniker to rest.
“You call me ‘Bubba,’” the toddler told his grandmother.
Chandler can be a bit headstrong. He doesn’t like anyone telling him what he can’t do. He thrives on challenges and competition whether it’s on the field, the golf course or in the great outdoors where he hunts deer and duck.
Which brings us back to the long-distance throw in the direction of Aurandt. Chandler had broken his right arm as a freshman, requiring surgery and a pin to be inserted. He was only supposed to soft toss the football at workouts and practice, which is why the coach reacted so strongly when he saw the ball hurled from 50 yards away.
“Coach, I threw it left handed,” Chandler said.
Aurandt looked at an assistant coach, who was standing near the quarterback and laughing. The assistant confirmed the quarterback’s remarkable feat.
Chandler is a switch-hitting shortstop, which isn’t that uncommon. But since he was young, he’s experimented with throwing balls with his left hand. He grew so proficient in the technique he sometimes threw left-handed passes in practice to give his right arm a rest.
This spring, North Oconee baseball coach Jay Lasley honored a two-year promise and let him pitch the final inning of a game with his left hand.
The senior threw 17 pitches, nine for strikes, hitting the high-70s on radar guns, while also mixing in curveballs. Chandler struck out the side.
“Bubba is different in the terms of his mindset,” Aurandt said. “He thinks differently. He’s ultra-competitive, but he’s also ultra-confident in his ability. That separates him. Some guys are really competitive, but not as confident and so they end up stepping away from those big-game situations. He’s always been, ‘Get behind me and we’re gonna go.’ When the lights go on and there are people in the stands, Bubba hits another gear. He hits a gear a lot of people can’t find.”
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TOM REED // DKPS
Reuben and Bobbi Chandler are celebrating two graduations this year.
Chandler wanted to invite everyone back to the field house Monday afternoon for another draft watch party. His parents, who own a home-building company, talked him into holding it at the family’s house. About 50 people returned for rounds two and three.
Bobbi and Reuben had gone to bed Sunday night thinking their son might be leaning toward honoring his Clemson commitment. Mom raves about the culture Swinney is building, but she privately worried about serious injury in football. She couldn’t shake the image of Chandler getting hit about 20 times in North Oconee’s second-round playoff loss.
“It was about the most brutal thing a mother could witness,” she said.
Still, the decision belonged to Bubba and Bubba alone. And on Monday afternoon, there was much to consider. He understood that major-league baseball bonus pool money makes the sport’s draft much more unpredictable than others. Draft classes must fit together like a financial puzzle. Some prospects agree to take under-slot values so organizations can splash more cash on prep players like Chandler who have scholarship offers from major programs.
His pride took a hit when the league passed him over in the first round, but he realized draft picks below No. 22 overall were not even slotted at $3 million. At that point, it was almost better to wait and try to negotiate an over-slot deal with the club selecting him.
It’s believed the Angels, Orioles and Pirates were very much in play on Monday. Chandler’s phone had been ringing since 8 a.m. The Pirates’ area scout Cam Murphy, who attended every one of Chandler's starts during his senior season, had reached out to Lasley so the Titans’ baseball coach knew Pittsburgh was in the mix.
But as the second round got underway, and the Pirates chose left-hander Anthony Solometo with the first pick, the organization was still waffling on the idea of letting Chandler play shortstop as well as pitch. They took outfielder Lonnie White, a Penn State football recruit, at No. 64 overall with their Competitive Balance Round B pick.
“After Round 1, I think Bubba’s feelings were hurt,” Bobbi said. “After Round 2, he was mad. He was like, ‘I know I can compete with these guys.’”
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Reuben and Bobbi can hardly remember a time when their son wasn’t wearing a shirt with a number on the back. Chandler went from season to season, sport to sport and practice to practice with the little rest in between. He played football, baseball and basketball through his sophomore year at North Oconee, and that didn’t include for his travel baseball commitments.
“It felt like we were killing him, but this is what he wanted to do,” Reuben said.
In the fall of 2019, Lasley convinced Chandler that he needed to add muscle and weight to his slender frame to help absorb hits on the gridiron and survive the grind of year-round competition.
Naturally, the long-haired teenager turned it into a competition. Pitching coach Tom Dimitroff recalled getting texted pictures of LED readouts from scales as Chandler gradually packed on 25 pounds by the summer of 2020 to weigh 200.
His fastball now sits between 93-95 mph and tops out at 98. The increased muscle contributed to an 8-1 record with a 1.25 ERA and 96 strikeouts in 44.2 innings last season. But the most significant muscle-related enhancement involved hitting. Scouts previously only viewed Chandler as a pitching prospect, but now they watched as he hammered balls into the gaps. He batted .441 as a senior with 12 doubles, eight home runs and 35 RBI.
With Shohei Ohtani of the Angels evolving into a modern-day Babe Ruth, Chandler grew more serious in his desire to pitch and play shortstop at the next level. Lasley took every opportunity to tout his star’s new-found power at the plate.
“The Braves’ general manager (Alex Anthopoulos) came to a game one night and I was chirping him,” Lasley said. “I was telling him, ‘this kid is a combination of Chipper Jones and John Smoltz and the Braves need to draft him.’ . . . I don’t think he liked that too much.”
Lasley would gain a measure of vindication. The baseball coach told a Braves’ area scout that Chandler’s swing reminded him of the former Atlanta slugger.
“The scout comes back and says to me, ‘the big man agrees,’” Lasley recalled. “I guess he had showed Chipper video of Bubba and Chipper saw a resemblance in the swings.”
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TOM REED // DKPS
Baseball has been Bubba Chandler's first love from a young age.
Following the second round, many guests at the Chandler residence left the house to grab lunch.
Bobbi is a deeply spiritual person and she kept reminding her son, “there’s a plan, and it’s bigger than us and we have to just ride it out.”
As Chandler remained in contact with his agents, the family learned the Angels were ready to commit and willing to let him try to pitch and play shortstop. They owned the eighth pick in the third round.
But would the offer be enticing enough to make Chandler pick up the phone and call Clemson? Not too many recruits say “no” to Swinney.
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BOBBI CHANDLER
Bubba Chandler and Clemson head coach Dabo Swinney.
Reuben wasn’t wild about the idea of his son heading to Clemson to participate in workouts with the perennial football power just three weeks before the draft.
“Six months ago, I told him this is all fun and games right now,” Reuben said. “You’ve got an offer from Clemson. You’ve got (baseball) scouts coming to all your games. But as you get closer to decision day, there’s going to be a time frame when it’s going to suck. We knew those three weeks at Clemson were going to make his decision even tougher. I figured his decision was going to be Clemson.”
As Chandler was weighing his options, he was gifted a substantial bit of negotiating power. On June 21, the Supreme Court ruled against the NCAA, paving the way for college athletes to monetize their fame and enter into endorsement deals. If Chandler had developed into a star at Clemson, there’s no telling how much money he could have earned off his name and image.
“Bubba actually mentioned that the night of the draft to our offensive coordinator,” Aurandt said. “ . . . Those opportunities could have been endless for a quarterback at the University of Clemson.”
Complicating matters was how much the Chandler family adores Swinney. Even though Reuben was hoping his son would choose baseball, he couldn’t deny the respect he had for the Clemson football coach.
Bobbi saw the pressure mounting on her son. While he’s a fiery competitor, the charismatic Chandler is also a fun-loving kid. He’s been known to make up words and phrases in the dugout and turn them into rallying cries. During his sophomore season, he began shouting “Oshken Bosken.” He also got teammates to chant “FTK,” an abbreviation for “Gotta do it for the kids,” in reference to the little ones sitting in the stands at Titans baseball games
“I said, Bubba what does ‘Oshken Bosken’ mean?” his mother recalled asking. “He said, ‘It doesn’t mean anything.’ But during his sophomore year, it made headlines in the Athens paper as the team went on a Final Four run. Bubba was mad they misspelled it. I told him, ‘you can’t be upset when they spell made-up words incorrectly.”
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Minutes before Monday’s third round, Reuben and Bobbi heard a commotion outside the house. Chandler entered the home with such force that he broke the latch on the front door. He was on his phone talking with one of his agents and Pirates’ general manager Ben Cherington.
Chandler sat down and motioned to one of his friends to hand him a Pirates hat. The family had a collection of every major-league cap on a table, and Chandler was going to don the one of the team that selected him.
His parents were stunned. They weren’t aware of the Pirates’ serious interest and figured he was going to the Angels. But Chandler flashed a huge smile as the third round commenced. The Pirates not only had agreed to the $3 million bonus, but they were willing to give him the chance to pitch and play shortstop. That’s all he needed to hear.
Bubba Chandler's got a special talent you can't really teach. pic.twitter.com/h4QB8BZT9l
— Pittsburgh Pirates (@Pirates) July 12, 2021
The gathering of 50 friends and family members erupted. They had been handed canisters of confetti, and when the pick was announced, the Chandler household resembled an arena moments after a championship had been won.
“I’m a big confetti person,” Bobbi said. “It’s just more fun, right? Confetti makes everything more fun.”
All those years of bouncing from sport to sport, working himself into a state of exhaustion before getting up the next morning and doing it all over again. It's the kind of fuel-injected dedication that helps achieve dreams.
Chandler’s bonus tied for the second-largest amount ever awarded to a player selected in the third round or later.
“ . . . I couldn't pass on an opportunity like this, and you never know if I went to Clemson for three or four years, would the same opportunity have presented itself,” Chandler told reporters. “You never know, but I took the more safer route, because playing two sports in college is really hard. It's a lot on your body, and especially with football, because football is a really physical sport, and I pretty much took the safer route. This is pretty much what I wanted to do. I always wanted to be a high-round pick, high-name guy coming out of high school, kind of like one of my buddies was in Kumar Rocker.”
After the initial celebration, Chandler picked up his phone and made another call. He notified Swinney and Clemson of his intentions.
The Tigers football coach congratulated him, Reuben said, and told him the door at Clemson “is always open.” If baseball doesn’t work out, Chandler can try his luck at football again. Former Florida State quarterback Chris Weinke led Florida State to a 1999 national title after spending six years in the Blue Jays’ organization. Former Browns quarterback Brandon Weeden became an NFL first-round pick in 2012 after abandoning a minor-league baseball career.
“Bubba said Coach Swinney was so gracious and so positive and all he wants is to see him do well,” Aurandt said. “That was a weight off Bubba’s shoulders. He doesn’t like to let people down. He’s a pleaser.”
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TOM REED/DKPS
Bobbi Chandler had shirts with her son's favorite saying made up for his birthday.
Reuben and Bobbi returned to an empty house late Thursday night after a whirlwind two-day trip to Pittsburgh to meet with the Pirates’ brass.
The excited bark of Lola, the family’s dog, was the only sound piercing the welcomed silence. Pieces of confetti still hung from the living-room ceiling fan.
“It truly is the gift that keeps giving,” Bobbi said.
Husband and wife sat at the kitchen table recounting the stressful, but rewarding process that led to Monday afternoon. Reuben told the story of how one major-league team wanted to use Bubba’s name and blonde mullet as a marketing tool.
The family marveled at how the Pirates were able to spread their $14.4 million in bonus pool money to acquire so many top prospects. Reuben lauded the selflessness of Davis, the team’s top pick, for taking nearly $2 million less than his slot value.
“Kudos to the kid who went first,” the father said. “He took less to help build a program. He’s obviously a team player.”
The conversation briefly was interrupted by a phone call. It was Chandler on the other end of the line, letting his parents know he had made it to Bradenton, Fla.,where his pro career will soon begin.
“I’ve only scratched the surface,” Chandler told reporters after signing his deal.
Because of his longtime commitment to football, he’s never been able to focus exclusively on baseball. It’s what made him a late bloomer in the eyes of scouts.
“Bubba believes his ceiling is high and naturally I think he’s right,” Reuben said laughing.
The Chandlers hope their son will bank the $3 million in bonus cash and live off his minor-league salary. The teen is toying with the idea of making Clemson his offseason home, but Bobbi wants him under their roof until he establishes himself in the Pirates’ organization.
Mom’s happiest moment in recent months came Thursday morning as she saw her son put pen to paper.
“All that pressure just melted away when he signed his contract,” Bobbi said. “You could see it in his face.”
Maybe Chandler will settle into one position in the minors. The Pirates don’t need the next Shohei Ohtani, they just need good ballplayers to make fans forget the last two decades of misery.
But Chandler loves a good challenge and despises restrictions placed on his potential. He lives to throw curveballs at conventional thinkers —with either hand.
Oshken Bosken, baby.
