Spencer Torkelson pulled off majestic feats in Tempe.

Two-and-a-half years of donning the maroon and gold, of showing the Arizona State faithful something they hadn’t seen before. Or perhaps things they had seen a long while back, and this 6-foot-1, 220-pound first baseman from Petaluma, Calif. jogged their memory to the days when guys like Sal Bando, Barry Bonds, or Reggie Jackson were playing in Packard Stadium.

On Wednesday night, his college resume concluded with the most prized exclamation point a young kid could hope for. The Detroit Tigers selected Torkelson no. 1 overall in the MLB Draft, solidifying his status as the best amateur baseball player in the country.

Torkelson became the fourth Sun Devil to be selected first overall, joining Rick Monday (1965), Floyd Bannister (1976) and Bob Horner (1978). And, in a feat even rarer, the ASU slugger etched his name into a class of one as the only right-handed hitting first baseman to come off the board first.

And, perhaps, that’s the most fitting end to Torkelson’s Arizona State tenure: doing something that hadn’t been done before. That’s what he’s been doing since he stepped on campus in 2017.

As you probably know by now, he wasn’t drafted out of high school. Going from undrafted to no. 1 isn’t completely uncommon -- it’s happened seven other times, most recently in 2009 with Steven Strasburg and 2018 with Casey Mize. But Strasburg, citing immaturity, told scouts not to take him, and Mize suffered a fluke injury his senior year of high school.

People just thought Torkelson wasn’t good enough. He was ASU’s ninth-ranked recruit in its 2017 signing class, coaches thinking he may be able to blossom his sophomore or junior season.

Then, he gained otherworldly confidence. He entered college trepid that he didn’t belong, that he had to imitate everyone else -- all the guys rated higher than him. One day in the fall of his freshman year, hitting coach Michael Earley was flipping Torkelson balls. The freshman had adopted a high leg kick. It wasn’t natural, but he saw others in college employing it and figured he needed to as well. He hoped he could will pitches over the fence with sheer effort. It wasn’t going well.

Then Earley told him to see how easy he could hit one out. Torkelson relaxed. His swing, his approach reversed course to the one that landed him in Tempe in the first place. And just like that, he began “flicking” balls out of Phoenix Municipal Stadium.

And he didn’t stop.

Torkelson hit 25 home runs his first season -- shattering Bonds’ ASU freshman record of 11 -- 23 his sophomore year and had a half dozen this season before the COVID-19 pandemic halted the season after only 17 games. He ended his career two dingers short of Horner’s school record of 56, and everyone, even Horner -- who called Torkelson to tell him how bad he felt -- knew the ASU first baseman would have obliterated Horner’s mark.

Regardless, he left so many in awe all the time. The way he seemed to tell a ball or strike a millisecond after the pitch was fired. The way he punished pitchers who left a pitch just over the plate. The way he made defenses adjust, sometimes to the extent that they would employ four outfielders when he stepped to the plate. The way he flummoxed opposing coaches, seemingly making them pay whether they pitched to him or gave him a free base. The way he so simply explained his approach and hitting philosophy in postgame press conferences, reiterating that he just makes the best of whatever the pitcher throws at him. The way he didn’t seem to care much about home runs. The way he spoke of his desire to win.

And now, he’ll do all that for Tigers’ fans.

Some can argue that he’s a below-average defender or that his ‘hit tool’ is nothing remarkable. But, they can’t deny his raw power, his athleticism, his uncanny eye at the plate. It’s so many special traits converging, scouts and analysts will say, that many expect he could be up in the majors in a little over a year, that he could easily have a career littered with a few hundred bombs and a couple of All-Star selections.

It’s a lot of pressure. Torkelson and those around him acknowledge that. Yet, they insist nothing has changed with him, that nothing will change with him. That being the first-overall pick won’t be an ego boost, or deter him away from his fun-loving, outwork-everyone mentality.

As his longtime hitting coach Joey Gomes said of Torkelson, “He’s just hitting play on life.”