From brushing off an early-inning home run to no-hitting the hottest lineup on earth, Sean Manaea carries himself with quiet confidence.
But that wasn’t always the case.
In the small town of Wanatah, Indiana (population 1,017), the A’s left-hander stood out as the best young pitching prospect in the middle of hoops country — but how much stock was he supposed to put into that?
He had hardly even garnered a sniff from Division I college programs, and even when he got his D-I chance at second-tier Indiana State he hadn’t exactly blown the doors off that opportunity and flourished.