MILWAUKEE -- Travis Lallemand has seen Aaron Ashby struggle to get two outs. On Thursday night, he watched Ashby collect the final nine that sent the Brewers to their first World Series in 44 years.
The Crowder College coach was on his couch with his family, hanging on every pitch as his former left-hander finished Milwaukee’s National League Championship Series sweep of the Dodgers. Another former Roughrider, Jacob Misiorowski, was headed to the Fall Classic, too.
“Not gonna lie, it was emotional,” Lallemand said.
Imagine how Friday will feel. Lallemand will be in Milwaukee, watching two pitchers who passed through his junior college program in Neosho, Mo., take on the Rays on baseball’s biggest stage.
They arrived at Crowder four years apart. Different arms. Different personalities. Same instructor in the fine art of getting back up.
“We might not have seen the Misiorowski and the Ashby that we’re seeing today,” Lallemand said, “if they weren’t such strong-character and tough kids.”
Before there were champagne showers, there were morning workouts. Before packed Major League ballparks, there were dorm rooms, video games and trips to Subway.
Kobe Morris, Ashby’s dorm roommate and teammate in 2017 and ’18, remembers the adjustment as a reality check. Both were learning how much work college baseball required. Neither had much choice but to lean on the other.
“You kind of learn to love the suck,” Morris said.
When Ashby played there, bad weather meant sharing gym space with other sports, sometimes waiting for another team to finish before baseball could begin. By Misiorowski’s arrival, Crowder had added a $2 million indoor facility. The surroundings improved. The expectations endured: classes, practice, work in smaller groups, then another day of it. Lallemand likens the fall to a 12-week extended Spring Training.
Ashby’s first college outing supplied an immediate reality check. He couldn’t command the baseball, recorded just two outs and left with a lesson that his talent alone wouldn’t carry him.
“He realized it wasn’t going to be as easy as he thought,” Morris said.
The pitcher who eventually emerged struck out 156 batters in 74 2/3 innings in 2018, before Milwaukee selected him in the fourth round of the Draft that year.
But Morris remembers more than the strikeouts. The stone-faced reliever Brewers fans see now was a goofball who brought energy to his college teammates. Lallemand remembers him dancing for a camera on the bus to the JUCO World Series in Grand Junction, Colo.
Morris remembers somewhere else Ashby helped him get: home.
Originally from British Columbia, Morris and a friend from back home joined Ashby’s family for Thanksgiving and long weekends. In a new country, navigating a demanding program, they found somewhere they were welcome.
“He was kind of that guy we leaned on,” Morris said, “and his family brought us in.”
Misiorowski arrived with a different disposition. When Lallemand met him during a recruiting visit at the coach’s house amid COVID-19 shutdowns, the lanky right-hander was reserved, still feeling things out.
His first college season ended with a knee injury. The anticipated springboard to professional baseball became a longer stay in Neosho.
Misiorowski’s everyday catcher, Adamo Stornello, watched him begin investing more in the teammates around him and embracing the program’s demands.
Nobody’s fastball bought an exemption from the hard stuff.
“He held Miz to a very, very, very high standard,” Stornello said of Lallemand.
Misiorowski went 10-0 with a 2.72 ERA and 136 strikeouts in 76 innings in 2022. Milwaukee selected him in the second round of the Draft that year, four years after taking Ashby.
Now Stornello watches with a sense of ownership that has nothing to do with radar-gun readings.
“I feel like a piece of me is out there with him,” Stornello said. “And a piece of the program’s out there with him.”
At Crowder, the connection has a name: GhostRiders. It follows former Roughriders beyond their time on campus, a reminder of the work and people that helped get them wherever they went next.
For Morris, that reaches beyond baseball. He and Ashby are fathers now. He credits Lallemand with helping prepare them for that responsibility, too.
“He cares about you outside of baseball,” Morris said. “And then, especially even after you left, man, that guy’s following you wherever you go.”
This week, that means Milwaukee. Back in Neosho, the next generation is watching, too. While at practice on Monday, Lallemand spotted a current player wearing white Oakley glasses similar to what Ashby wears.
The coach tells those players about the beginnings: the struggles, the responses, the character behind the stuff.
The road to this World Series runs right through a junior college in Neosho.