PHILADELPHIA _ Gabe Kapler had already thrown away his first chance at college baseball when he grabbed the roof of his junior-college dugout and started doing pull-ups. Kapler, who morphed that season into a walking, talking fitness video, lowered himself against the dugout bench for a set of dips and then dropped to the ground and started counting push-ups.
Kapler was at Moorpark College, a junior college about 40 miles northwest of Los Angeles, in 1995 because he had gotten kicked out of Cal State Fullerton before the end of his first semester. He had no interest in attending class, which caused Fullerton's legendary baseball coach to no longer have interest in him. Augie Garrido yanked Kapler's scholarship and poured doubt on the baseball dreams he had held ever since he wore a satin Phillies jacket around his Southern California neighborhood.
The embarrassment at Fullerton _ Kapler had to call home and explain to his working-class parents how he had squandered a near full-ride to college _ set the rest of Kapler's life in motion. His adolescence, Kapler said, ended in Garrido's office when the Fullerton coach told Kapler that he wasn't quite ready for college.
Kapler packed up his dorm room and drove home, spending the next eight months taking community-college courses and delivering pizzas. He altered his outlook _ finding the structure and discipline that launched a journey that returns him home to L.A. on Monday when he heads to Dodger Stadium as Phillies manager. And the first step of that journey came when he went to Moorpark seeking a chance.
"My m.o. was that nobody is going to outwork me. Nobody is going to out-prepare me. Nobody is going to outhustle me," Kapler said. "You might be more talented. You might have a prettier swing. You might be more skilled. But I'm going to outwork you. I'm going to outhustle you."
He reprioritized his life and dedicated himself to baseball, setting his sights on being selected in the MLB draft. Kapler was determined to not repeat what had happened at Fullerton. No more drives home in the middle of the night to visit his girlfriend. No weeks of classes simply ignored. No one would work harder than Kapler, even if it meant using the time between innings to turn the dugout into his personal fitness center.
"That was just Kap," said Pat Queenen, who played with Kapler on that 1995 Moorpark team. "Whether if he was in the gym or on the field, he was always working out. That dude was a friggin' health freak. We joke about it, some of the guys that I still talk to, as most of us in college are doing our own thing, farting around, chasing girls and parties, he was dedicated. He was a worker. He knew what he wanted to do. He worked his tail off."
