Baseball has a profound way of humbling even its best players. At the same time, good karma is often rewarded by the proverbial baseball gods in the most poetic form of justice. Arizona State redshirt senior first baseman Conor Davis has experienced the extremes of both sides of this fickle coin. When he dug into the right-handed batter’s box at Phoenix Municipal Stadium for the first time in February, it had been two years since he took his last collegiate at-bat.

Since then? A cross-country transfer, a global pandemic, and a torn ACL.

Those who don’t know Davis may have been surprised when he blasted a monster home run to left field on the second pitch he saw in that at-bat. Those who know him well, however, weren’t at all.

“You just know your kid. Conor is a fighter,” Davis’s mother, Maura Baker, said. “He walked up so confident and determined; we knew he was ready to make his mark. We were screaming and cheering from across the country, and then my phone started blowing up. No, I wasn’t surprised at all.”

In the fall of 2020, Davis thought the hardest part of his college baseball career was behind him when he left Auburn for Arizona State following the COVID-shortened 2020 season. He couldn’t have been more wrong. In sports and in life, adversity presents itself in many different ways. In Davis’s case, it came in the form of a career-threatening injury.

Davis’s greatest challenge to this point of his career originated in an October scrimmage. Before he’d even taken an at-bat for ASU, he went down in a heap after leaping for an errant throw at first base. In one play, Davis went from a middle of the order bat to part-time first-base coach and glorified cheerleader.

“I was just devastated. Those first couple of weeks were very, very tough for me mentally,” Davis told Devils Digest. “When I got hurt, I questioned a lot of things, why did I have to come out here, why I wasn’t playing pro ball. It was one of the toughest things I’ve ever been through, but I do believe everything happens for a reason.”

Much like she was watching in February when Davis made his grand return to college baseball, Baker was watching a live stream of that fateful fall scrimmage when she watched her son go down in pain. And while her phone blew up with congratulatory texts and calls following this year’s inaugural home run, she got a phone call she wasn’t hoping to get just minutes after he exited the field.

“My heart immediately sunk. I’ve torn my ACL before, and I just knew,” Baker said. “The trainer called, and Conor got on the phone, and he just said ‘Mom…’ and I knew he was trying to fight back the tears. He’s so strong and so positive, though; one of the first things he told me was, ‘Mom, this is God’s plan.’”

If you talk to Conor for just a few minutes, it’s clear how much passion and care goes into everything he does concerning baseball. If he was going to come back from this injury to play Division I baseball– which was far from a given– it was going to be with every fiber of his being.

“Once I made the decision that I want to try and come back, I decided to make a change in my life,” Davis said. “Not even just mentally but also physically. I started to make differences in my diet and my fitness; I really started to transform my body. The biggest thing I took from the rehab process was figuring out how to enjoy taking care of my whole body, not just my knee.”

Surgery, rehab, and countless hours of physical therapy stood between Davis and stepping back onto a baseball field. If those obstacles weren’t enough, a complete overhaul of the ASU coaching staff following the 2021 season muddied the waters of an already tumultuous process. The continuity that was there during the first eight months of the injury process was suddenly gone, but Davis didn’t miss a beat when Willie Bloomquist was introduced as head coach.

The first-year manager immediately gravitated towards Davis. The way Conor carried himself through the latter stages of his recovery earned him respect among players and coaches alike. The idea of having a player-coach to command the locker room during Bloomquist’s inaugural season has ended up as a mutually beneficial arrangement.

“To see his resilience and his work ethic to try and get back to 100 percent as really my first impression of him was something I obviously respect and admire,” Bloomquist said. “I’m grateful to have him down in the clubhouse to be a kind of bridge on what’s going on down there. I couldn’t ask for anything more out of a leader.”

Davis’s strength and resolve throughout the rehab process have yielded enormous benefits for the 2022 Sun Devils, both on and off the field. Through 37 games, he’s hitting .341 with five home runs and 26 RBIs and has batted clean-up and started at first base in all but one game. He gets on base nearly half the time with an on-base percentage that sits at .440 while slugging .507 and playing Gold Glove caliber defense at first base. In his best season at Auburn in 2019, Davis batted .290 while homering eight times and driving in 36 runs. It was uncertain if he’d be able to return to that form following his injury. So far, he’s done that and then some.

These quantifiable advantages are dwarfed, however, by the intangible value he brings to the team as its leader and elder statesman.

When Davis was a freshman at Auburn in 2017, his current freshmen teammates were in eighth grade. He’s been to a College World Series, graduated with a bachelor’s degree, and navigated the transfer portal in the time that Will Rogers, Jacob Tobias, and every other rookie passed their driver's tests and took their SATs. As a 24-year-old, his life experience is vastly different from that of his young teammates, but you wouldn’t know it from watching them interact.

“He’s never really made it feel like he’s any bigger or better than any of us, even though his experience is so much more than ours,” Rogers said. “In the beginning of the fall, I wasn’t sure how the older guys felt about the freshmen, so I was more quiet. Conor made sure that didn’t last long. As the year’s gone on, I know I can talk to him about anything. He’s a really great resource and friend.”

How rewarding has that process been for Davis?

“I could tell a little bit in the fall that some guys were nervous to approach me, and I didn’t really understand why,” Davis said with a grin before acknowledging he too, would be intimidated by a teammate six years older. “Being able to build relationships with some of those guys that weren’t comfortable early is so awesome. It doesn’t just help us; it helps the whole team.”

The welcoming environment fostered by Davis and other upperclassmen has allowed the Sun Devils to find common ground on the field when they otherwise wouldn’t cross paths in life. It’s impossible to avoid the stark age difference at all times, though, as conversations about hobbies, social lives, and even social media often bring out what at times feels like a generational divide to the 24-year-old.

“The age gap is big, and sometimes you can’t avoid it; sometimes it comes out off the field just based on things we talk about,” Davis said with a chuckle. “I have younger siblings, so if anything, I just try to treat them almost like younger brothers. At the same time, I realize that they’re college guys, and they’re here because they’re really good at what they do.”

Guys like Rogers, Jacob Tobias, and Ryan Campos have been able to enjoy Davis’s leadership on the field as well as in the locker room. Last year’s robust crop of freshmen didn’t have the same advantage, as Davis played a more distant role within the team given his injury. A rigorous rehab schedule often kept him away from his teammates in 2021. When he was with the squad during the home series, Davis had to get creative to stay involved. Well enough to move without pain by mid-spring, he donned a coach’s helmet and coached first base while Arizona State was at the plate.

Assistant coach Travis Buck fills Davis’s shoes as first base coach this season. Aside from living up to those massive expectations, Buck has enjoyed Conor’s unique ability to coach and be coached.

“We know we can approach him a little bit differently,” Buck said. “We still have the same high expectations for him as we do everyone else, but you definitely consider his experience in the game. We know things mean more coming from teammates, and he’s done a great job playing that role too.”

The 2022 Sun Devils are generally a pretty positive bunch. When things haven’t gone their way this season, key players are quick to highlight positives and have held fast to the belief that the necessary talent to make a run is present and better days are ahead. No one on the roster or the coaching staff has embodied this unbridled positivity like Davis. When the team is down, he’s on the top step of the dugout, injecting energy into a deflated bunch. When a teammate homers or makes a stellar defensive play, Davis is often the first in maroon and gold to greet him.

According to his teammates, this infectious energy was present even last season. While the current freshmen are enjoying the full Conor Davis experience, (trademark?) last year’s robust freshmen class was impacted not only by his wise voice but by his unwavering positivity. Even from an almost immobile and seemingly bleak situation, Davis got through to several young teammates.

“I think the biggest thing we all kind of feed off of is his positive energy. No matter the situation, he always tries to stay positive,” sophomore infielder Hunter Haas said. “He’s all about that positive mentality. Last year, a couple of times, if I was having a rough game, he would come up to me and calm me down. That was huge for me.”

It would have been understandable if Conor had elected to take a total backseat during the 2021 campaign. He was dealing with a brutally tough physical recovery while wrestling with the well-documented emotional tax that comes with such a process. But Davis is just wired differently.

“Each day is a new opportunity. If I hadn’t gotten hurt, I wouldn’t have had the opportunity to be back here playing with and leading a new group,” Davis said. “Getting another opportunity to try and influence and lead this young group of guys is a blessing from God. I love having the opportunity to change people’s lives.”

Davis has taken pride in this role since the moment he stepped on campus in Tempe, but it hasn’t always been easy to approach leadership.

Athletes who suffer serious injuries often discuss the challenging mental aspect of the injury, highlighting the disconnect one can feel from the rest of the team during rehab. Fitting in while on the shelf is hard enough; being a vocal leader can be nearly impossible from the sidelines. Redshirt sophomore center fielder Joe Lampe recalls Davis being able to expertly navigate this tricky juxtaposition during the 2021 season.

“He had to pick his places to speak up. One of those times was during a postgame speech after a tough loss,” Lampe said. “He said I know I’m not playing right now, and you guys might not listen to me, but there can’t be any doubt in your mind going into any series that we are the better team when we play together. He said that in front of the whole team and coaching staff. I gained a ton of respect for him then and just how he carried himself last year overall.”

Now Lampe can enjoy Davis’s tutelage between the lines. The duo carried a struggling offense early in the year when the rest of a formidable Arizona State lineup couldn’t seem to pick up the clutch hit. From Lampe’s perspective, it has been Davis’s presence that has helped ignite the bats.

“He has seen a lot of things in college baseball. He’s taken some of the biggest at-bats you can take,” Lampe said after considering the scope of Davis’s experience. “He takes us under his wing, especially younger guys like Tobias and Campos. It goes both ways; I think he learns from them too.”

Most players Davis’s age have put their college careers in the rearview and are well into their minor league careers – if not on the doorstep of the big leagues – already. Although his age will surely make scouting departments think twice about using valuable draft capital on him, Davis’ numbers and character should increase his draft stock considerably. He plays for an Arizona State coaching staff comprised of individuals who are no strangers to what it takes to succeed at the next level. Their seal of approval, as well as that of past coaches, will carry weight.

Many people are quick to point out the bright future Davis can have in coaching when he decides to hang it up. Bloomquist made an effort to acknowledge that despite a promising future as a coach, his first baseman’s playing days are far from over.

“He still has gas in the tank, and somebody will be really lucky to have him in their organization as a player,” Bloomquist said. “But once his playing days are eventually over, yeah, I think he would be a phenomenal guy to have as part of a coaching staff.”

Wherever his next stop ends up being, Conor Davis is prepared for whatever baseball and life may throw at him. In an age that sees athletes often lose sight of roles and life lessons beyond their sport, his authentic belief in living where his feet are is refreshing for so many. He brings a unique combination of maturity, passion, and looseness to ASU baseball everyday. That will always be valuable at any level of the game.

How deeply ingrained are these qualities into Davis’s character? Mama knows best.

“I always joke that he stood up and walked out of the womb when he was born,” Baker said. “He’s always been mature, been a leader, every step of the way. I think God made him my firstborn for a reason.”

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