I’m not sure what I expected, but I found myself surprised as I scanned the busy outdoor dining area at Tempe’s Pedal Haus brewery. I was there to meet Ethan Long, whom I expected to be holding court at a populous corner booth or signing and posing with young fans near the outdoor bar. Instead, he was tucked away near the back of the patio, partially hidden behind a space heater and some oddly placed shrubbery that obscured him from my view until I was close enough for him to verbally flag me down.

I’d never seen Long away from his natural habitat at Phoenix Municipal Stadium, where he plays and holds himself daily with the swagger of the ever-confident budding prospect that he is. The more we chatted, the more I understood how different Long, the player is from Long, the person. It’s a contrast that he says has always been there but one that he’s just now learning to harness. The difference? Maturity. And a whole lot of perspective.

–

To say Ethan Long has done a lot of growing up in the last year would be a gross understatement. “I’d like to think so,” Long said with a flashy grin when asked if he feels like he’s a more mature version of his underclassmen self. “I’m still me, but I definitely have learned so much about myself as a baseball player and as a person in the last year.”

Adversity will do that. He entered the 2022 campaign an almost surefire early-round draft pick and the centerpiece of a formidable ASU lineup. He leaves it having been humbled by the game that has humbled so many players of both greater and lesser stature than his own. After a freshman campaign featuring a barrage of bombs that placed him within the upper echelon of 2022 returners in all of college baseball, the target on his back grew from the size of a dart board to that of a helipad. Long said all the right things ahead of his sophomore season. He acknowledged he’d see fewer pitches to hit and that he’d be the focal point of every single opposing pitching coach’s game plan. “I was prepared as well as I needed to be,” he sighed and chuckled. “Baseball is a tough game.”

He made it look easy as a freshman in 2021. His .340 batting average, 1.121 OPS, and 16 home runs were all good for the team lead. His second-half surge, homering in 8 of 10 games at one point in May, earned him freshman All-American honors. His numbers in 2022 tell a much different story. While playing in just 42 of 57 games, he batted .294 and left the yard just seven times. “It wasn’t as much fun, that’s for sure,” Long said with a pained grin.

Long shys away from no challenge, so it was a bit of a surprise when he slumped out of the gate to begin his sophomore season. Not horribly, but enough to notice and certainly enough for the sophomore slugger who holds himself to an almost unrealistically high standard to begin to press. “I got away from myself a little bit there in the beginning,” Long explained. “We have really good hitters up and down our lineup, and I felt like sometimes I wasn’t putting together team at-bats.”

Head coach Willie Bloomquist wasn’t around for Long’s freshman onslaught, but he experienced it as a fan. He knew that a sophomore slump would be hard to avoid. Bloomquist likes to see things in the big picture when it comes to his most promising young stars. As committed and nurturing as he is at his core, he isn’t one to mince words. He’s climbed to the mountain top in college baseball as a player. He worked his way through the minor leagues. He made it to the show and then made it stick for 14 seasons with three different franchises. There aren’t many people in Long’s circle who know every twist and turn of this rollercoaster quite like Bloomquist.

“This game will humble you, and then it will humble you again,” he said in his signature short and blunt fashion. “Doesn’t matter who you are. I’ve played with some historically great players. They all got humbled at one point or another by the game. How you use that is what separates guys.”

Bloomquist and the rest of the staff are the beneficiaries, so to speak, of Long’s rough 2022 in that they get to enjoy his service for another season. “From a selfish standpoint, yeah, I am pumped that he’s still with us,” Bloomquist laughed. “How could I not be? He’s one of the most dangerous hitters in the sport.” Bloomquist has no concerns about Long’s ability to become a great professional when that time comes. “There is a ton of baseball ahead of Ethan Long. To have him here as a leader, as well as a contributor, is invaluable.”

The second-year skipper has had a front row seat to the intangible evolution Long has undergone since May. He believes it will pay dividends for the 2023 Sun Devils. “He’s always led with his actions,” Bloomquist observed. “Now, you can see him take more of a verbal command in a way that commands respect and inspires. I couldn’t be happier to have Ethan on our team.”

This attitude adjustment when it comes to Long’s “Why” is due to several external factors, but the shift Long is focusing on most comes almost entirely from within. He admitted to losing a bit of his fire in the 2022 season, not so much becoming complacent but forgetting what revved his baseball engine for most of his young career.

“My freshman year, not getting picked out of high school as high as I thought I should have been, that freshman season was more about proving myself right,” Long explained. “Then, last year, I got caught up in wanting to prove others right and validate what people were saying about me. This year I’m focusing on getting back to that internal motivation because that’s really all that matters. Proving others wrong? I couldn’t care less about that. I’d rather just prove myself right.”

Long’s story begins locally. He’s been proving himself right since his little league days in nearby Gilbert and prepped at Phoenix Mountain Pointe High School. Like many of the state’s most prolific young baseball talents, Long initially pledged his commitment to Jay Johnson and the University of Arizona when he was just a freshman in high school. For the next two years and change, he operated under the assumption he’d either be going pro or heading south down 1-10 to play for the school and colors he now sees as a bitter rival. For a number of reasons, he ended up in maroon and gold. Now Sun Devil fans get to enjoy his bat and his ever-present charisma in Tempe. Call it confidence, call it cockiness, whatever it’s billed, as it won’t be changing much despite Long’s newfound perspective. “I like to talk shit,” Long said with a shrug. “At the end of the day, this is a game. I want to make it fun. Maybe I’ll try to reel it in a little here and there, but I’m going to be me.”

As unpleasant as it is to play against him, there are certainly some teams that feed off Long’s often boisterous comments. Take crosstown foe Grand Canyon, for example. After the visiting Lopes downed the Sun Devils in March of last year, Long made it clear that he thought the better team had lost, stating that GCU “doesn’t belong on the same field as us.” GCU got word of that, and they had fun with it. Long was the subject of multiple video edits released by GCU. “They got me,” he said. “Yeah, they definitely got me there. I kinda liked it, though, but that is an example of one spot where I might have to tone it down.” He reiterated that nothing would deter him from being himself on the diamond.

It wasn’t just about his performance in 2022; it was attrition. Long didn’t skip a single hurdle this offseason. He was hampered by a wrist injury throughout the second half of the season. Playing through it was the obvious choice, to begin with, but playing in the field became too much by mid-April, and by the first week of May, each swing was accompanied by excruciating pain. Long finished the tumultuous season about two weeks before ASU was eliminated.

Recovering from wrist surgery simply wasn’t enough of a challenge. He battled illness for much of the fall, most of which stemmed from a bout with black mold that had infested the walls of his bedroom just south of campus. “It has been a lot, for sure,” Long conceded when asked about the tidal wave of adversity he’s experienced over the last calendar year. “At a certain point, I was kind of thinking, ‘man, I can’t catch a break.’ But it’s just going to make this season that much more rewarding.” Clearly, the confidence isn’t going anywhere.

There’s a patriarchal vacancy on the ASU roster this season following the departure of the sixth-year senior Conor Davis. His experience, eloquence, and older brother-like presence allowed for him to mentor younger players as well as serve as a bridge from staff to the locker room. Long isn’t the oldest player on the roster this season, but he’s the closest to holding Davis’s 2022 role.

“Ethan being able to mature in the sense of knowing when and how to lead in the right way has been the biggest area of growth I’ve seen,” Davis said of his former teammate. “Everyone knows he can be one of the best players in the country, but he’s really grown in the clubhouse. I’m proud of him for that.”

Long still considered staying the course and going pro last summer. In talking with representatives and scouts, however, it became clear that his value wouldn’t be met and that another year of college ball at the peak of his powers would be the best choice. On July 19, 615 out of 616 picks had been made in the MLB draft. Long’s name hadn’t been called. With the final pick of that 20th round, the San Francisco Giants decided to take a flyer on Long, selecting him and making him the new “Mr. Irrelevant,” a nickname reserved for the final pick of the NFL and MLB drafts.

Six months later, fellow valley native Brock Purdy has made it en vogue to be Mr. Irrelevant. But that summer, the shine wore off fairly quickly for Ethan Long. “I just thought it was funny; I wanted to run with it at first.,” Long said after turning the Giants down. “Then it got to the point where all my friends, every text, every call, I was Mr. Irrelevant. I get the bit; I really do. But it got to the point where I just got tired of hearing it.”

It’s ironic that such a mediocre title belongs to Long, who by all means is anything but irrelevant in the college baseball world and 2023 draft projections. As if he needed more motivation, he’ll be playing to make sure the late rounds of the draft this year are nothing more than a leisurely watch.

As the calendar has turned to 2023, and the countdown to first pitch is now being measured not in months or even weeks but in days, Long is enjoying a clean bill of health for the first time since that magical freshman campaign came to a close. Yet, physical health is one thing; the mental side of his game is another. The good news is that his growth in that department has been evident to all of those around him.

Beware if you’re using a 2022 performance as your basis for doubting Long. He doesn’t care what you think, and yet he is his own toughest critic and knows he has plenty to prove. If ASU is going to reach its lofty goals, it goes without saying that it will be due in large part to Ethan Long.

“I think fans understand the truth, that winning is the most important thing to me,” Long said before an extended pause. “We’ve got unfinished business.”

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