Spencer Torkelson used to yell out towards the mound, begging his uncle to whip his arm a little faster. Mike Enochs’ 80-mile per hour heater wasn’t cutting it for a 12-year old who knew he was soon going to be facing changeups quicker than that.

But Enochs kept cocking it back for his nephew. When Torkelson would head home for a few days during his collegiate years, the pair would meet up at the Casa Grande fields for an impromptu batting practice -- and that can quickly turn into a one-man home run derby on the rare wind-less Northern California day.

Enochs will send out the bat signal to admiring kids who begged Torkelson’s uncle for the chance to shag for and hit with the Arizona State star. On those days, he’s not touching 80 -- that would be no fun. He’ll groove him into the right-handed Torkelson and watch the necks of the shaggers tilt up in awe.

“There’s like four or five other kids, they beg me like, ‘When Spenny’s in town, can I hit with him?’” Enochs said. “This winter or the winter before, he must have hit five or six that went between 380- and 420-feet.”

Balls don’t travel that far at Casa Grande home games -- a well-known home-run hell for right-handed hitters, in large part, because of gusting winds sneaking over the left-field wall.

Even so, after 110 games, Torkelson finished his high-school career with 136 hits, a slash line of .430/.556/.642 and nearly 100 free passes to first base, an egregious nod of respect. But the slugger who never spent a game away from varsity only belted 11 home runs.

For reference, he did that in 22 games with Arizona State his freshman year.

But, in high school, the home runs never seemed to define him in the way they did, at least at the beginning, by a captivated, caught-off-guard audience at ASU.

The eyes in Petaluma still saw him as the area’s best player, the kid who was being rewarded from not hitting snooze on his 5:15 a.m. alarm clock three days a week so he could lift before school. It was great results matching great character for a baseball player who didn’t “smell himself” after starting right away, a rarity according to his high school coach, Paul Maytorena

Or, perhaps, Tempe was the reason no one seemed to be thrown off.

You see, if Torkelson’s college plans were already locked in after year two, what did it matter how many home runs he hit?

Arizona State assistant coach Ben Greenspan began recruiting Torkelson during his sophomore year. In that summer, Torkelson and his family paid a visit to the desert. Head coach Tracy Smith was selling the family on what evolved into ASU starting Torkelson, Alika Williams, Drew Swift and Gage Workman as freshmen in 2018.

“We visited and toured the campus and they gave us the pitch that they were trying to get all these guys together,” Torkelson’s mom, Lori, said. “And we knew they hadn’t won a national championship in a while so they kind of said, ‘We’re trying to get these guys together and win another won.’”

That was great, and all but Torkelson didn’t need much of a pitch. Not when he caught a glimpse of No. 24 amongst ASU’s retired numbers.

To Torkelson, ASU wasn’t just appealing because of its historic baseball program and even more historical weather and excitement. This was the place where Barry Bonds became Barry Bonds. Where arguably the greatest hitter who ever lived learned and grew.

Torkelson could follow in those footsteps.

Even when he was young, Torkelson was like Bonds. The effortlessness of clobbering balls 450-feet aside, here was another player who seemingly couldn’t go a game without getting intentionally walked, who maybe saw three hittable pitches a game and had to capitalize on them. A player who, at times, seemed too good for his competition.

“I knew ASU was a great baseball school,” Enochs said. “Barry Bonds, who is both mine and Spencer’s favorite player of all time, he went there. That was a big thing.”

Without a hesitation, Torkelson, before his junior season started, committed to wearing the same jersey his idol once did.

And Torkelson doesn’t go back on his word, so much so that Lori admitted there were no more visits, no discussions about his college future after he gave a verbal commitment to the Sun Devils.

****

Torkelson arrived at ASU in the fall of 2017. For the first time in his life, he wasn’t the best player on his team.

Ok, well he wasn’t rated as the best player on his team. Eight commits in the Sun Devils’ signing class that year were ranked higher than Torkelson -- two signed with an MLB team out of high school and another pair transferred out of Tempe after one year.

“It was intimidating,” Torkelson said. “You don’t know anything about them other than they’re an ASU baseball player, and they were drafted out of high school. And I’m like, ‘Well, I wasn’t drafted out of high school, and I’m just a freshman at ASU.’”

How was Torkelson supposed to know how good his teammates actually were or weren’t? All he saw was MLB teams drafted them and not him. In his mind, that meant they were doing everything right, on the inside track towards success.

His doubts, though, didn’t lead him towards complete overhaul. His longtime hitting coach Joey Gomes taught him better than that. But he could outwork them. For all these years, Gomes had to scare Torkelson by planting thoughts inside his head that kids in the Dominican Republic were up before him, out-training him.

But that was always such a far-off scenario. Now, the example was in the same clubhouse.

Torkelson admitted he struggled during his first fall on a college campus. He was overdoing it, trying too hard in a foreign environment.

Then one day in November, ASU hitting coach Michael Earley brought Torkelson out on the field and started flipping him balls. Before they started, he offered a simple challenge.

“See how easy you can hit one out,” Earley said.

Torkelson began “flicking” balls out of a deep Phoenix Municipal Stadium.

“He’s like, ‘You don’t have to have a leg kick.’ I was messing around because I saw everyone had leg kicks and I’m like, ‘Oh god, it’s college, I need a leg kick,” Torkelson said.

By late January of that year, Torkelson had regained his confidence. The freshman was still weeks away from his first collegiate game, but he already had his mindset on doing things that no one had ever seen. He did that enough in Petaluma, gave enough people in his home-town stories that started with, “I remember when Spencer Torkelson did …” Why not do the same at ASU?

He had just finished his round of batting practice when he hopped out of the cage with a thought, asking Greenspan if anyone had ever hit the Sun Devil Baseball banner at the top of the batter’s eye in center field.

That’s a 410-foot wall in centerfield and about a 40-foot wall. The banner starts about 30 feet up the wall.

Greenspan said he’d never seen anyone hit it. Naturally, Torkelson continued to inquire, asking what’s the furthest he’s seen a ball hit at Muni. The Sun Devil assistant told the baseball player-turned-detective that then-sophomore Hunter Bishop, who was selected No. 10 by the Giants in the 2019 draft, once hit it three-quarters of the way up the batter’s eye.

Two rounds of batting practice later, Greenspan’s answer changed. Torkelson hit the first “A” in “Baseball” on the centerfield banner.

“No one stays the same — you get better, or you get worse,” Smith said at the end of 2017. “So, it’s which ones understand that you still have things to work on in your game or which ones say, ‘You know what, I’ve got it all figured out coach. Leave me alone.’”

That moment became indicative of Torkelson’s Sun Devil career.

He shattered his favorite player’s freshman school home-run record, which was later greeted with a seldom Barry Bonds’ shout out. He led the nation in long balls with 25. Had the 2020 season not been cut short, he would have shattered Bob Horner’s school record of 56 home runs (Torkelson finished with 54) and was on pace to set the NCAA record for most walks in a season (He had 31 through just 17).

Heck, he led opposing defenses to employ the bold, and rarely successful, four-outfielder configuration. He ensured he would never have to worry about going undrafted again. He made baseball super-agent Scott Boras, his advisor.

And, possibly most noteworthy, he led some pretty pissed off Oregon State fans to accuse him of taking steroids. Now, you have to be pretty darn good to accomplish that last one.

“Those Oregon State (fans), they don’t see me in the weight room,” Torkelson said. “But I’ve got 25 home runs, so I’m obviously doing something right. When it all pans out, it shows who is working hard. Maybe someone has a good season, but I guarantee you there’s not one guy in the world who had a Hall-of-Fame career and didn’t work hard.”

Click here for PART ONE: The Legend of Torkelson: The little-league Babe Ruth