Sumter is a charming, historic city of about 40,000 that sits near the middle of South Carolina, about a two-hour drive inland from Myrtle Beach and an hour east of Columbia, where the University of South Carolina is located. Named after Thomas Sumter, whose bellicosity against the British during the American Revolution earned him the nickname “Carolina Gamecock,” it is known today for its picturesque parks, Shaw Air Force Base and sports -- particularly baseball. It is the home of former Yankees second baseman Bobby Richardson, and although there hasn’t been a professional team in Sumter since the Expos’ Class A affiliate left in 1991, locals still eagerly come out to 2,000-seat Riley Park on summer nights to watch the American Legion Post 15 team known as the “P-15s.” Sumter Post 15 has fielded a team every year since 1929, making it the second-oldest American Legion team in the country, and with more than a dozen state championships, the P-15s are “the team to be on” for any baseball-loving kid in Sumter.

“I strived and worked for that and was lucky enough to make the P-15s when I was 14,” says Yankees left-hander Jordan Montgomery. “I played for them for five summers, and that put me around older guys and older competition and really taught me how to work hard and just provided a lot of life lessons, also.”

If the P-15s are akin to the New York Yankees of South Carolina summer ball, then Wallie Jones was the team’s Casey Stengel. When the South Carolina House of Representatives “learned with regret” that Dr. Jones, a dentist by trade, was stepping down after 25 years of coaching the P-15s in 2012, it passed a resolution thanking him “for his many years of helping to build boys into men through baseball and the example of a fine character worthy of emulation.” Under Jones’ strict guidance, players were expected to show up early and get their work in before practice officially started at 5:37 p.m. sharp (5:37 adding up to 15, naturally). They wore long sleeves and pulled heavy sleds and ran poles in the summer heat. The players were building character, but also the stamina necessary for pitchers to last late into ballgames. No detail was too small, no task unimportant.

“They’re going to be playing baseball for a short period in life -- it’s like a flower that blooms -- but they’re going to be men the rest of their life,” says the 74-year-old Jones. “We wanted to make sure that they’re good men because, at some point, everybody’s going to take the jersey off.”

Those lessons have indeed stuck with Montgomery. The 28-year-old treats every bullpen and every game as if it’s the World Series, so that when he does get there, he’s ready. And based on what Montgomery has done in big spots so far, there’s no reason to think he won’t succeed.

***

There is no sugarcoating the fact that the Yankees began the second half of 2021 in disarray. Trailing the Red Sox by eight games at the All-Star break, the Yanks were set to open the second half with a nationally televised Thursday night game against their rivals from Boston, the start of a four-game series at Yankee Stadium. But the pandemic reared its ugly head, forcing the postponement of the game, and with six Yankees players heading to the COVID-19 injured list, the Yanks’ July 16 game the following day would feature an emergency-kit roster that included two players -- Trey Amburgey and Hoy Park -- making their Major League debuts and another, Greg Allen, making his Yankees debut.

Still, there was reason for hope. Toeing the slab that night was Montgomery, who went 3-4 with a 4.16 ERA in 17 first-half starts, numbers that don’t necessarily pop off the page but that fail to reflect the totality of his body of work.

“[I have] a lot of confidence in Monty, and I’m excited for him to kick off the second half of the season for us,” Yankees manager Aaron Boone said before the game. “I feel like he’s coming off a strong first half, and I actually think he even pitched better than his ultimate numbers, even though a lot of them are very good. He’s turning himself into a really good Major League pitcher. He continues to evolve, continues to develop. He’s a guy who certainly wants the ball, and hopefully he can get us off to a good start. I’m excited about where he’s at heading into the second half of the season.”

A hallmark of Montgomery’s career has been resilience. He rarely, if ever, goes through long funks; if he has a bad start, he bounces back with a good one nearly every time. Even within games themselves, he may have a rocky inning, but it rarely carries over to the next frame.

“I really hate losing,” Montgomery explains. “I expect a lot of myself. I’ve kind of had success at every level, and everywhere I’ve been, I’ve won in the big situations. And I’ve always been the pitcher that kind of needed to be out there. So, that’s what I expect out of myself. I always want it, and you’ve just got to put yourself in the position in the big leagues to be that guy. Every year, I’m trying to be more and more of that for the Yankees. So, if I get hit once, it’s not going to happen again the next game.”

Montgomery utilizes a five-pitch arsenal -- four-seamer, sinker, curve, changeup and cutter -- mixing speeds and location effectively. What he lacks in velocity -- his fastball rarely cracks 92 mph -- he makes up for in command.

“He’s got a lot of weapons that can neutralize really any lineup,” says teammate Gerrit Cole. “He’s extremely tough to pick up; he’s extremely hard to hit.

“I think Jordan’s put some real good work into taking the next step forward in his career.”

When everything’s clicking -- like it was on May 21, when he struck out 11 White Sox over seven scoreless innings -- Montgomery says that he’s “not thinking too much on the mound, just kind of executing pitch after pitch and staying aggressive. I expect that out of every game I get out there.”

Against the Red Sox in the second-half opener, Montgomery had it all going, save for a tough second inning in which he gave up three runs. (He put up five scoreless frames otherwise.) Still, the Yankees lost, 4-0, and in doing so tied a dubious franchise record: It was the fifth straight start for Montgomery in which he received zero run support.

“I’m not worried about that,” he said afterward. “I’m just trying to do my job better every game that I go out there and just keep trying to keep us in it. I’m going to keep being a good teammate, supporting the hitters, [whether] they’re not scoring runs or if they’re scoring a ton of runs. They’re trying their hardest, and I’ve always got their backs.”

Arriving at powerhouse South Carolina in the fall of 2011 just after the Gamecocks won their second consecutive NCAA championship, Montgomery, at first, seemed out of place among the nation’s top recruiting class. Despite pitching brilliantly as a senior at Sumter High School, going 11-0 with a 0.38 ERA en route to a state championship -- he threw a seven-inning shutout in the title game -- and Gatorade State Player of the Year honors, Montgomery never played travel ball or got the same kind of exposure that his new college teammates had.

“I was probably the least hyped-up recruit coming in,” he says. Those who knew him then use adjectives like “lanky” and “gangly” to describe his physique. Looking back, Montgomery has to stifle a laugh at the thought of being drafted out of high school and going straight to the pros.

“No. I had a lot of learning to do, a lot of maturing to do still. I was still kind of a goofball, hadn’t really gotten much athleticism, and my body just hadn’t grown into itself yet. And so, college was a good thing for me.”

Grayson Greiner, a catcher in that class who has been with the Tigers since the 2014 Draft, chuckles at those early memories of Montgomery.

“I mean, he’s a little goofy,” Greiner says. “His nickname was ‘Gumby’ just because his body when he got there resembled the big green Gumby guy.”

But Montgomery soon started to prove that he was more than just some tall “goofball.” His work in the weight room and during practice impressed coach Ray Tanner, who gave the frosh an opportunity to join the team’s midweek rotation.

“You could kind of see he was going to be a special pitcher from the moment he stepped on campus,” Greiner says. “When you come out of high school and into an SEC program, nothing’s really guaranteed, but his work ethic was phenomenal from the moment he got there. And then as he got stronger and grew into his body, the velocity started to come, yet he was able to maintain that pitchability.”

By the time the Gamecocks rolled into Omaha, Neb., seeking to join Southern California (five straight national championships from 1970 to ’74) as the only schools to win three straight titles, Montgomery had not only earned a spot as a weekend starter, but his reputation as a pitcher who could be counted on when it mattered most was also starting to grow. A loss to Arkansas that snapped South Carolina’s 22-game postseason winning streak was followed by a rainout that meant the Gamecocks would have to play two elimination games in one day. And after beating Kent State in the first game, it was the 18-year-old Montgomery who would take the mound at TD Ameritrade Park with the season on the line.

“It still gives me chills a little bit,” Montgomery says. “I remember being ready and kind of just standing out on the mound, and I think there were like 24,000 people there. It was a crazy night game.”

Montgomery put his team on his back, firing eight scoreless innings against Arkansas, allowing just three hits and one walk as South Carolina won, 2-0.

“He seized the role that he earned and became a big-game pitcher for us,” Greiner says.

The Gamecocks won again the next night to advance to the best-of-three College World Series final. They lost the first game to Arizona, and with the score tied, 1-1, heading into the ninth inning of Game 2, Montgomery -- who was lined up to start a winner-take-all Game 3 -- and his teammates put on their rally caps, trying to will the Gamecocks to victory.

It wasn’t to be. The tournament’s Most Outstanding Player, Rob Refsnyder, and the Arizona Wildcats scored three in the ninth for a 4-1 win.

“I wish we could have won one of those games so I could have had a chance at Arizona, but it was definitely awesome,” Montgomery says. “It helped my career trajectory.”

“If you’re a true freshman and you throw eight scoreless to send your team to the national championship, you can’t help but gain some confidence,” Greiner says.

After finishing his first collegiate season 6-1 with a 3.62 ERA, Montgomery was even tougher the following season, going 6-1 with a 1.48 ERA. Now the bona fide ace of the Gamecocks’ staff, he once again saved his best for last, tossing his first college shutout against North Carolina in the 2013 Super Regional. South Carolina would fall short of getting back to Omaha that year and the next, but Montgomery had done more than enough -- especially in crunch time -- to be selected by the Yankees in the fourth round of the 2014 MLB Draft, one round after Greiner. The former batterymates have remained close while carving out their professional careers.

“He’s just a great guy that you can always depend on,” Greiner says. “Baseball can be a lonely game sometimes. You’re on the road a lot, by yourself in a hotel. When we played in Yankee Stadium earlier this year, I got to chat with him on the field for a good 20 minutes. Just being able to catch up with an old buddy and have that person you can talk to that’s going through the same thing as you is always nice.”

***

His last appearance with the 2010 P-15s was the rare big game that did not go well for Montgomery. The summer before pitching Sumter High to a state title and heading off to college, Montgomery led his American Legion team to the mountaintop. With a chance to lock up another state title for his hometown, Montgomery took the ball in the championship game, brimming with confidence. But the second batter laid down a bunt, and Gumby tweaked his knee while fielding it. When the southpaw tried to stay in the game, he couldn’t; his LCL was torn. (The P-15s went on to win, anyway.)

In the decade since, though, most of his seasons have ended on a high note. He rose quickly through the Yankees’ farm system, winning the 2016 Triple-A National Championship Game in just his eighth start at that level. After earning a spot in the Yankees’ rotation out of Spring Training in 2017, he made 29 starts and finished sixth in American League Rookie of the Year voting; his final three starts saw him go 2-0 with a 1.04 ERA. The next two seasons were mostly wiped out by Tommy John surgery, but Montgomery used the downtime during the pandemic to get into the best shape of his life and has been a reliable presence in the rotation ever since. He made his postseason debut in 2020, allowing one run over four innings in a Game 4 win over Tampa Bay in the ALDS.

Yet he believes the best is yet to come.

“I want to be a top-of-the-rotation arm for the Yankees,” he says. “You see [Mets pitcher Jacob] deGrom and how his career kind of went up. I’m not saying I’m ever going to be deGrom, but it took him five years to get comfortable in the league and get to where he’s been the last two, three years. So that kind of gives me hope that it’s not like, You’re in the league, this is how you’re going to be the rest of your career. I’m just going to keep working and trying to be the best pitcher I can be for these guys.”

He’ll do so knowing that there’s a whole city down South pulling for him. When Coach Jones meets up with Richardson, the 1960 World Series MVP, for their weekly Friday breakfast, “It’s a recap of all the Yankee stuff: ‘How’s Jordan? When’s Jordan pitching?’ and that kind of thing,” Jones says. “Everybody in town is just tuning in because, you know, that’s our boy.” The people of Sumter see themselves in Montgomery, who lives in Charleston during the offseason but visits often, tooling around town in a car that’s as non-flashy as he is.

“He’s made us all proud,” says Jones, who hopped a last-minute flight with his wife, Marcia, in 2017 to catch Montgomery’s debut at Yankee Stadium. “Now if he was a jerk, I don’t know that people would really care too much. But being such a good man, everybody’s saying, Good things don’t always happen to good people, but they did in this case.”