Ex-Valley High star Houston content with life after baseball

If you were around in 1989, you probably remember when Tyler Houston was Bryce Harper.

Tyler Sam Houston used to hit baseballs so hard that the Atlanta Braves selected him second overall in the 1989 draft out of Valley High School; he hit them so far that Las Vegas fathers named their sons after him, something I learned two weeks ago when the Colorado Rockies selected left-handed pitcher Tyler Anderson of Spring Valley High and the University of Oregon 20th overall in this year's draft.

I learned Monday that Tyler Houston has turned 40, and it doesn't seem possible. And now Bryce Harper is Bryce Harper, and Tyler Houston is just a guy whose potential once was just as promising, who spent eight seasons in the big leagues, compiling a lifetime .265 batting average with 63 home runs and 253 RBIs, who now coaches his son's traveling team and doesn't regret the glory days having passed him by.

In 2004, he had been offered a big-money deal with the Yankees. Two weeks before spring training, the Bombers traded for Alex Rodriguez, and there went any chance Houston had of playing third base. It was then he remembered discussions with former teammate Gary Gaetti, who played until he was 41, who wasn't around very much when his kids were growing up. And it was then that Houston retired, a month after turning 33.

He has never regretted a decision many termed premature, because by then he had become a heck of a left-handed-hitting pinch-hitter who could catch and play first and third base. Neither has his wife, Gabi, his 13-year-old soccer-playing daughter, Taylor, and 11-year-old son Chase, who plays second base and center field for the barnstorming Nevada Wildcats, who will be storming barns in Omaha, Neb., later this week.

Chase Houston's father earned more than $6 million playing baseball, and other than investing in a car wash, he socked a lot of it away. So he has a lot of time to coach his kids and help out with Coronado High's American Legion team before moving on to the next thing. He is doing much better than Lenny Dykstra, who invested in a lot of car washes, and now owes creditors $31 million.

Houston also sees what is happening to Harper, how every night these minor league Nuke Lalooshes come at him with everything they've got, simply because they don't have as much as Harper has, and Houston understands it. Both sides of it.

The $242,000 Houston received for signing with the Braves was the biggest bonus ever paid a high school ballplayer at the time. Maybe he wasn't on the cover of Sports Illustrated in high school, but they were always chatting him up in Baseball America. Something like that will still put a young man in the crosshairs when he's not emotionally equipped to deal with being in the shooting gallery.

"They can't say much about your ability, so they attack your character," Houston said. "And before you know it, you're this guy, and you're living down (perceptions) for years."

Houston said he had to live down the cutthroat attitude espoused by Rodger Fairless, his legendary high school coach. "We're gonna win, and we're going to kick your butt," he said. "The other guys just wanted to put up numbers and get to the next level, and I didn't comprehend that."

Houston said this is something Harper will figure out, probably around the time he gets to Double-A, where there are older players and backup catchers wise beyond their years, who know how to deal with the Nuke Lalooshes and the rah-rah bonus babies and set them straight about how the game is to be played, which is with a minimum of helmet slamming if one does not reach base safely.

"I don't really remember who it was, but it was a journeyman, like a Crash Davis, who was a catcher in Double-A, and he said something to me that really made sense," Houston recalled. "He said if you get out your first at-bat, roll over a ball to second base in your second at-bat and strike out your third at-bat -- and hit a three-run home run your fourth at-bat, and win the game, you're 1-for-4 and you sleep good."

While Tyler Sam Houston did not achieve baseball superstardom, they'll never forget him in Milwaukee for what he did on July 9, 2000. He hit three home runs the first three times up against the Tigers that day and became the first Brewers backup catcher to receive a curtain call.

He slept good that night. Real good.

And I'll bet there are a lot of kids living in Wisconsin named Tyler getting ready to celebrate their 11th birthdays because of it.

Las Vegas Review-Journal columnist Ron Kantowski can be reached at rkantowski@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0352. Follow him on Twitter: @ronkantowski.