Caleb Wallingford, a senior left-handed pitcher for the University of Memphis baseball team, has had much success in his time at Memphis.
In Wallingford’s junior season at Memphis, he started 14 games and held opponents to a .237 batting average. He ended the year with a 2.44 ERA, a 6-5 record and was named to the American Athletic Conference first team.
Wallingford grew up in Elkhorn, Nebraska, just outside of Omaha. He not only played baseball at Elkhorn High, but he also played football and basketball. In his senior season he had much success on the football field, throwing for 1,750 yards, 15 touchdown passes, as well as six rushing touchdowns. Baseball though was what he saw his greatest opportunity.
“I had been playing three sports for six or eight years,” he said. “Baseball presented the opportunity to go the farthest for me, as far as playing professionally. For football I would have been looking at potentially going to Division 2 or 1-AA to play, but Baseball offered the highest upside for me, and as a competitor that’s always what I’m looking for. I’m looking for the biggest stage and the biggest challenge, and that’s what baseball offered to me.”
Wallingford took an interesting path to make it to Memphis. Out of high school, he committed and signed with Kansas State to play baseball. After one season with the wild cats he transferred to McLennan Community College, before making the leap back up to Division 1 his Junior year.
“About half way through the summer, in between my freshman and sophomore year, I decided to transfer,” he said. “I didn’t want to sit out a year—you know if you go D1 to D1 you have to redshirt a year—so I decided to take the junior college route and went and played in Texas for Mclennan. I had a great experience there. I love all the coaches and players I played with. Coach Schoenrock recruited me out of that junior college. It was between Memphis and about four other schools. At the time, Sam Moll and Erik Schoenrock, who were the Friday and Saturday guys, had just gotten drafted, so they had two openings on the weekend. For me, that was a big factor in my decision, that they had a need for weekend starting pitching and they welcomed me with open arms.”
Coach Schoenrock’s recruiting was not the first time Wallingford took notice of Memphis though. He explained how he grew up watching the Tigers when they came on TV and how the size of the city of Memphis really drew him here.
“There were a lot of attractions to Memphis,” he said. “When I was in high school I remember watching the year that Derrick Rose was here and while Calipari was here. Anytime Memphis was on TV playing basketball, I was watching. I loved watching Derrick Rose and Tyreke Evans. I remember even before that when Darius Washington was here and those guys. I just, from a far, knew about Memphis, I remember about DeAngelo Williams as well. Those guys were all on a national scale and they reached as far as Elkhorn, Nebraska. I knew about Memphis. It’s an attractive city to me because I grew up in a small town. It’s (Memphis) a big city and it’s just something new. For me that’s definitely attractive.”
Though Wallingford has enjoyed his time at Memphis, he has had to make the sacrifice of not seeing his family much. Omaha is over 600 miles away from the Bluff City, meaning Wallingford lives farther from home than any of his teammates.
“It’s definitely a sacrifice I make as far as, I’m not by my family,” he said. “They are all in Omaha. A perfect example would be my brother Jake just had a baby last January. She’s 1-year-old now. I was able to be there when she was born, but as far as the first year of her life, I haven’t been able to be there as much as I want to and that goes for everybody in my family. So there’s a sacrifice you make being that far away, but at the same time it’s totally worth it because I get to do what I love to do everyday and they are totally supportive of it.”
When it comes to the Tigers’ season so far, Wallingford is impressed with the way his team responded to so many scheduling conflicts, and believes his team has plenty of potential this year.
“We had some challenges early on with the weather that came in,” Wallingford said. “It seemed like we were playing once every eight days. With baseball it’s a rhythm sport, as far as getting in everyday, getting in swings and getting outside and all those different things. Just the challenges the weather presented and getting to play consistently. Once we got on a consistent role last week and got six games in, the six games in a week was really telling, as far as what we have here. We have a lot of talent and we have a lot of hard working guys, so anytime you mix that together you have a recipe for success and its starting to show, its starting to show that are team is capable of doing great things here and that’s what we got to keep doing just one game at a time.”
Wallingford has started the year in an impressive fashion. He currently sits at a 3-1 record in six appearances, with a 1.89 ERA—while holding batters to a striking .205 batting average. However, the lefty believes he could be more consistent and knows he can be better.
“Honestly its going to sound a little crazy, but I think I could have been a lot better so far, in certain areas and that’s what I’m trying to improve,” he said. “I’ve been really good so far at commanding the strike zone and attacking hitters, but what I think I can do better is just being more consistent. That’s really what I strive to do, is be as consistent as possible. For me, on paper if the results look good to somebody on the outside looking on, they might look at it one way, but I view it completely different. If I have a good game and on paper the stats look good, but I don’t fell like I pitched my full ability, that’s going to drive me the next week, so it’s an ongoing process. There is always something. I’m always looking to sharpen things and make things better and to improve. That is all the way through the season for me.”
In 2010, while at Elkhorn High School, Wallingford pitched a school record, 15 strikeouts in one game. This is no small feat for a pitcher at any level, but Wallingford said his best days are ahead of him.
“I’ve always been the guy that’s said I haven’t pitched my best game yet,” he said. “I feel like my best days, my best games, my best years are ahead of me. That’s because I put the work in and feel like I’m getting better everyday. That was definitely a fun game and I remember it pretty vividly, but I always feel my best games is a head of me.”
The Tigers currently sit a 15-4 on the year and are riding a 10 game winning streak. Even though the pitching core has played very well this season, Wallingford attributes their success to a total team effort.
“It’s the total package because we obviously are pitching the ball really well, but our hitting has really stepped up,” he said. “This past week we started tearing the cover off the ball. It’s the challenge of any baseball game, can you get your pitching, your offense and your defense to mesh together, so I think its just a combination of everything for us.”
Wallingford has seen plenty of individual awards and accolades throughout his baseball career, but he believes none of that matters if the team isn’t successful.
“Honestly, my individual goals are: I want to win a conference championship and get to a regional,” he said. “I think last year I had quite a bit of individual accolades and we didn’t win anything as a team. That’s not the recipe for success for our team. Our goals are to get in the NCAA tournament and we want to win our conference championship. Anything that happens outside of that, it just comes along with it. Team success breeds individual accolades, so for me, its all about our team getting as many wins as possible and anything outside of that, if it comes, it comes. If it doesn’t, whatever.”
Caleb Wallingford is 3-1 on the young season, and hitters are only batting .205 against him this season. He also has a 1.89 ERA through 18 games. Photo by Joe Murphy
