Benny Montgomery used to make his money pushing a red bike through the mountain trails behind Danville’s Geisinger Hospital, but if the experts are correct, he could cash much bigger checks in the future by swinging a bat.
That’s because that 8-year-old who used to tear up the mountainside has grown into a 6-foot-4, 200-pound 17-year-old outfielder for Red Land who can demolish a fastball. And because of that, and the other tools he possesses — he has a rocket arm in the outfield and is lightning on the base paths — many consider him to be among the best players in the country. He has committed to Virginia but Perfect Game has him ranked as the fourth-best prospect in his class, meaning he could be a high MLB Draft pick come June.
And what makes that such an eye-opener is how Montgomery managed to make it happen.
Benny has climbed the trail from just another guy to, maybe, the guy in his class quicker than he ever climbed those mountains behind Geisinger. Montgomery was just a lanky, uncoordinated kid scrapping for a varsity spot on a heralded Patriots’ squad — many of his teammates were part of that amazing Little League World Series run, Montgomery wasn’t — two years ago.
Cracking that lineup was a daunting task, but it was one Montgomery kept working toward, and as the coordination came, his game began to take off. He began to develop, not just as a varsity contributor, but as a real prospect. And, over the past two years, he has played his way right into elite status.
“I always knew I had it,” Montgomery said. “I just had to work harder and harder to get my body in shape, which was hard because I’m 6-4 and it was harder to always coordinate everything. But in the past two years, I have and it has made good results.
“I know there’s a lot of kids probably that get upset that they’re on the JV team or on the B travel team and just because you get put on that your first year doesn’t mean you can’t outwork everybody and do better.”
And, now, the kid who was struggling to put a dent in the varsity scorebook just a few years ago, finds himself at a crossroads months out from the MLB Draft. How high might he go? Will he opt to head off to Virginia instead? All questions he didn’t necessarily expect to be juggling now, and all things Montgomery says he tries not to think about.
But that’s tough.
He has an agent and has had to talk to wealth managers about how to handle his potential future baseball earnings. He hears from MLB scouts just about every day.
And it’s not going to slow down. Not with June, and, perhaps, the biggest decision of his young life looming.
Getting competitive
Benny Montgomery mountain biker really could have been a thing.
It started with the mountain bikes when his father, Ben, brought home a red, specialized aluminum number for Benny to hop on when he was 8. It wasn’t long before Ben was shelling out more money for Benny, though, because that little red bike wasn’t going to match his son’s competitiveness. Benny graduated to a 16-inch, carbon-fiber, hard-tail red, black and white setup with a front suspension that allowed him to hit the trails harder.
It wasn’t long before he was racing past his dad and his dad’s friends on the mountain— his dad would give him $50 to clean the things up at the end of the day — and zipping past kids in competitions, too, as he won Mid-Atlantic competitions.
“I remember all this stuff because it was super fun for me when I was little,” Benny said. “I miss it to be honest. Less traveling.”
When he wasn’t biking, he was diving into books. Ben says the Montgomerys are not a video game family. So, instead of plugging in Call of Duty, Benny was cracking open hardcovers of A Series of Unfortunate Events, Harry Potter or Percy Jackson.
He was such a speed-reader that Ben suggested they go soft-cover and save a few bucks, but Benny’s mom, Tonya, made that hard-cover investment.
“I mean, I never thought I’d be critical of him reading so much,” Ben said. “But he would burn through a book in two or three days.”
Competition has been a constant with Benny, and this was part of it. How fast could he get through a book and get to the next? It was different, and, his parents swear, natural.
“We don’t pressure him to be that way,” Tonya said. “That’s just Benny.”
He tackled other things besides trails and pages, too.
He took on karate for seven years — age 3-to-10 — and ran track, even finishing eighth in the Mid-Atlantic Regional Championships behind future star football players Marvin Harrison Jr., who has committed to Ohio State, and Malcolm Folk, who has committed to Syracuse.
But when Ben looked at Benny, he saw a kid who he figured might sprout to be the tall teenager that he is. He saw a baseball player blooming, and so, he signed him up at 7 to play coach-pitch baseball in Bloomsburg. Benny had already been a baseball fan, taking a particular interest in the Phillies as they made World Series runs in 2008 and 2009.
“I realized from a very young age that I had to do more than all the other kids to make sure I could get to where I am today and where I want to get in the future,” Benny said. “I knew that those guys, the Chase Utleys, Ryan Howards of the world were practicing tons when they were my age, when they were younger than me even to get where they are today.”
And, so, with that idea in his mind, the competitiveness in Benny took over.
He’d have “hill sprint days,” even in six inches of snow, Ben remembered. And, while other kids would take ground balls out at Lightstreet Field, Benny would have Ben hit him hundreds of ground balls.
Hundreds.
“Just scorch them at him and have him knock them down,” Dave Yost, an assistant on the South Columbia team, said. “The kids would not want to go home. There were nights we practiced over three hours and then after that, we’d all go out to eat, hang out.”
And Benny started to see the idea he got watching the Phillies — that hard work would pay off — coming to fruition in real life. His South Columbia team made a run at a state title when he was 10.
During sectionals, the team lost its first game of a double-elimination series, but battled back to win every remaining game and force its way to West Middlesex for the state tournament, a run that has been a motivating factor in the careers of several on the team.
“Before that age, I never really got out of that area and saw other competition,” Dylan Harris, a second baseman on the team, said. “And when we made it that far, I was like, ‘Man we have a legit shot to keep playing baseball for a long time.’”
Benny hit his first homer along the way helping push South Columbia through the tournament.
But there was a team — Red Land — standing in their way.
“There was this little Red Land team with not particularly large kids, but they were killing everybody,” Ben said. “That was kind of the beginning of his baseball journey as well as his beginning of his Red Land baseball journey.”
The growth spurt
Hitting a homer and making a run at a state title can do wonders for a guy’s confidence, and it opened Benny Montgomery’s eyes.
Maybe he could be pretty good at baseball.
So, he decided to take it to the next level and join a travel team — the Central Pa. Raptors. But the real change began when he hit 12 and began to commute to Harrisburg to play with the GoWags Patriots where, again, he was face-to-face with those Red Land guys.
And, despite having a target on their back — this team was comprised of players from that Little League team — they were winners.
“We were going around to tournaments and pretty much just destroying everyone,” Grant Smeltzer, a current pitcher at Central York who was a teammate of Montgomery’s then, said. “Anybody on the team could go deep at any time. It was kind of like a Yankees’ type of lineup where you’ve got to be careful with everybody in the lineup.”
While Benny was taking off with the Red Land boys, Ben was seeing professional changes. He’d moved from Bloomsburg to Berwick for his job as an OBGYN, and when that department began to shut down, he was looking to make another move. And, with Benny getting along so well with the GoWags guys, Ben packed up his family and moved into the district.
Benny came motivated and, naturally, ready to compete.
“I didn’t have the Williamsport background, so I had to work even harder to get to where I am,” he said. “But that was definitely a motivating experience to play with these kids who are super good and that are known by everybody.”
Benny hit a growth-spurt at the same time, shooting up six-plus inches over a year. And, while that is usually a blessing for an athlete, it was a bit of curse, initially, for Montgomery. His hamstrings tightened, and his lower back stiffened as he worked his way into the new frame.
“The boy that kind of ran like a deer his entire life looked like an injured deer,” Ben said.
Tonya said it took her son around 18 months to adjust, but when he did, flashes of what we see now began to show.
“Once he got over that, then he was just a tall, gangly kid with a lot of power and explosiveness,” his hitting instructor and Red Land assistant, Teed Wertz, said. “Now I think he’s in a good point where he’s kind of hanging around the 6-4 range, probably 200 pounds and he’s really coming into his own.”
“He was just killing the ball.” Red Land coach Nate Ebbert said of a freshman year batting practice.
And the coach saw what could be, leaning from behind the L-screen and shouting, “Why the heck wouldn’t you want to be like that every time and do this every time?”
Rising in the rankings
The short answer to Ebbert’s question is that Benny did want to be great.
He always has.
But those growing pains and that 18-month span of trying to adjust to it slowed Benny enough that he wasn’t the superstar prospect in the eyes of scouts that some of his other teammates were.
At least not early on.
But a trend was developing, too. The competitive kid was getting pushed harder than ever by his coach. Ebbert said you never think a guy might explode on the national scene the way Montgomery has, but he could see something there. So, Ebbert said, he pushed him harder than others.
And Benny matched it.
He lifted weights to add muscles to that lanky frame, and when he wasn’t running, he was in the cage. The summer after his freshman year, he hit the travel circuit hard, joining Team Elite — initially on the C or D team before, in more recent years, he’s moved up to the top squad — and facing stiffer competition.
He began turning a corner and coming into his own on the field, and he matched it in the classroom. Colleges took notice, and Virginia Tech was the first to offer in mid-August of 2018. Then, on Sept. 9, he visited Virginia, picked up the offer and committed on the spot, on his 16th birthday. And, all of a sudden, the gangly outfielder was committed to one of the top academic and baseball schools — UVA played for national titles in 2014 and 2015 — in the country.
“Super good school so I’m confident that if, God forbid, baseball doesn’t work out, which is what I hope it will, I’ll have a good education to fall back on,” Benny said.
Benny slid into the starting center field role for the Patriots as a sophomore and was a key player in the run to a state championship.
“He was really, really fast and that was always the thing that stood out. That was always something that he would excel in more than anyone,” Braden Kolmansberger, now a senior middle infielder for Red Land, said. “He used to be one of our best hitters on the team and he could hit nukes, just be able to hit it so far.”
But he still wasn’t a highly thought of prospect.
Perfect Game ranked him in the 300s heading into the summer before his junior year. But he spent that summer opening eyes and rapidly rising in the rankings. He participated in the Area Code Games in August and was already in the 60s. By the time he got into the fall he was at No. 44, and second in Pennsylvania to Vanderbilt commit, East Pennsboro right-hander Michael Morales.
He completed the meteoric rise at Perfect Game’s 2019 National Underclass Showcase Main Event in December. There, he put on a show, hitting a home run and a triple, ran a 6.4 60-yard dash — faster than a lot of the guys in the bigs — and threw 97 miles per hour from the outfield.
As he prepared for an AP Calculus exam in February, he checked his Instagram and found a surprise waiting for him. Perfect Game had bumped him up to fourth in the country. His life had, officially, changed.
“I couldn’t focus on the rest of the math test, my brain was gone, which was a problem, but I was just so excited to see that,” Benny said.
The rapid rise hasn’t slowed since.
Scouts started calling. Agents started battling for his services — he eventually signed with Jet Sports. And, those wealth advisors started finding his phone number, too.
“This is all new to us,” Tonya said. “So, it’s been a learning experience and a little bit crazy too.”
Counting down to June
Benny said it took time, but he has started to acclimate to the attention.
And, earlier this summer, as he prepared for a local Twilight League game, he said he’d be doing so under watchful eyes with a few scouts in attendance. And, as soon as he stepped to the plate, three video cameras went up, tipping off who the guys watching for MLB teams were.
Benny didn’t disappoint them.
The sound of the ball coming off his 34-inch Old Hickory bat was just different than everybody else at the field that night. And he’s still improving. The coronavirus was a setback, and because of a lost spring season, he had to jump into some of the most important travel competitions of his life, against live pitching from top arms hovering in the 90s. But he’s been faring well and living up to his now heralded billing.
And of course, when he finds the time, he’s still grinding away in the weight room and trying to make himself stronger. His former teammate from the South Columbia All-Stars, now-junior outfielder Luke Zeisloft said the two have worked out through the summer to make sure they’re staying in shape after a lost season.
“I credit a lot of my success to him recently with all the training he’s taught me,” Zeisloft said. “Because my numbers last fall were not that great, he taught me workouts for the offseason, sprinting workouts to get faster and everything and he’s just a great kid and he’s always trying to help out.”
All the hard work has continued to pay off with recognitions from the baseball community. He earned an invite to the Perfect Game All-American Classic which is slated for Oklahoma in September, and he’ll have another chance to face the nation’s best there. Do well, and it only solidifies him as a potential high draft pick come June. But Benny’s not looking that far ahead. Or, at least, he’s trying not to. He said, instead, he’s just focusing as much as he can on a final run with the Patriots and hopefully winning another state title.
And then the mountain biking, book reading, gangly competitor turned prized prospect knows he will be in for a whirlwind.
Handle it well enough and he might even be in the discussion for the top pick in the draft. Just don’t expect much to change — he’s going to keep working hard, keep reading his books, keep turning in those good grades and just keep being Benny — as the day approaches.
“Benny’s taking it in stride and it’s cool to see how he deals with it,” Wertz said. “Benny’s as mature as a 17-year-old comes.”
-- Follow Ed Sutelan on Twitter, @EdwardSutelan
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The Link LonkAugust 31, 2020 at 04:15PM
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Racing to the top: Red Land’s Benny Montgomery continues rapid rise to becoming one of baseball’s top prospec - PennLive
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