Former Major League pitcher Al Leiter went 162-132 and was a two-time All-Star selection during a career that spanned parts of 19 seasons. He’s now a studio analyst for the MLB Network and the YES Network, also.

Leiter’s son, Jack Leiter, is a freshman pitcher for Vanderbilt. After VU’s recent baseball banquet, I asked Al several questions about the process of Jack’s landing at Vanderbilt and what that’s been like.

Chris Lee: Talk about your relationship with Vanderbilt. When did it first start? When did you first meet the coaches and such?

Al Leiter: Well, I'll back it all the way to when we were living in Florida at the time and 2008 the Phillies played the Rays. And I took Jack—Jack and I, we drove over to Tampa.

And we watched the Phillies-Rays games in Tampa and (former Vanderbilt pitcher) David Price, who had been drafted accelerated through the minor leagues and is in the big leagues. And for some reason—Jack was eight years old—I think there was some Vanderbilt David Price stuff at (Tropicana Field), some sort of Vanderbilt thing, and he was eight.

So fast forward, as he got better, you fantasize and dream about the big dogs, right? He was he is a good student. He cares about school, and he did well.

So we started like saying, Okay, well, if you're worthy of playing big baseball, then you eliminate some schools and we start eliminating certain schools, and you try to narrow it down to, you know, whatever, four or five, six schools that we can (consider).

So, Vanderbilt is on the list. It’s a very short list. And then it’s his sophomore year—sophomore summer, I think, or fall—I don’t know what it was, but he did the (Vanderbilt) camp. The camp was a good idea, to get in front of them before (he did) Perfect Game. He went to the Duke camp and went to the Vandy camp.

(Scott Brown) and (Tim Corbin) run the fall camp, right? And that kind of put him on the map. I guess those guys seeing who he was (helped), and then the following summer, all the schools started saying, hey, we’d love to have you kid, and that’s when it got narrower and narrower.

Sure, it was pretty easy. It was pretty easy like what Corbs has created. It's just it's almost a no-brainer, with respect to a great academic school amazing baseball program and a great coach. And you’re in Nashville. It checks every box.

It’s not that hard to say, “Vanderbilt.”

What’s that like, talking to (pitching coach) Scott Brown, baseball guy to baseball guy? You know, I know Brownie’s past through when he was (pitching coach) at St. John’s through some kids he recruited there. I know (former St. John’s coach) Ed Blankmeyer well, Johnny Franco, who is a friend and teammate of mine, also did a lot of stuff at St. John's.

So I've known about Brownie for a long time. I like him a lot. It's really knowledgeable understands technology and all the analytics moving forward. He’s left-handed is sort of little goofy. I like that. I'm goofy. And he keeps it intelligent, but fun, for the for the guys. I like that.

How did your son end up right-handed when you’re left-handed?

Well, (my wife) is left-handed. She’s ambidextrous but she writes left-handed, et cetera. I don’t know.

Truthfully, I didn’t want Jack to be a pitcher. My brother (Kurt Leiter) went to Oklahoma State played pro ball for six years and my legs never made it (as a) right handed pitcher. My other brother made it to the big leagues for 11 years, Mark. My nephew played and made it to the big leagues as a right handed pitcher. We’re all pitchers.

So, Jack was a pretty good pitcher. And I thought, “This would be awesome.” He’s gonna play third base, play every day, get dirty, be a ballplayer.” And his freshman year, he got on the bump, and he’s throwing and I’m looking at it, ad he had a little bit of a fatal flaw in his swing that we’re trying to get worked out. He’d drift a little bit and I’m like, “You need to be a pitcher.”

But I purposely kept him off the mound in the hopes that the hitting would take.

And you never made him throw left-handed as a kid or anything? You never messed with it?

No.

When he was a little boy, we lived in Manhattan in my last few years with the Mets and the kids actually went to school in the city. And when Jack barely could walk, I had a little bounce house with balls that you'd see at like Chucky Cheese, or whatever. I had bounce-house balls all around the apartment.

And Jack, just as he started learning how to walk, he'd get the ball and throw it and it was always right handed. And I'm crawling on my knees and as he's ready to throw it.

You know, kids, when you naturally throw a ball incorrectly, you throw a ball and your arm is down. So as he's walking around the apartment—hold on to your phone.

[At this point, Leiter grabs my arm and demonstrates how he was showing Jack how to throw a baseball.]

And he picked the ball up and he starts to throw it, and I've moved his arm up, and he looked at me like… he's a little guy. He looked at me like, “Leave me alone.”

And I'm walking around and I'm picking his elbow back for him to throw it. He’s two. Funny.

And then we’d go to Shea Stadium, and he’s around it. And we have a little park not far from our apartment, and he’d play wall ball. I just, you know, I didn’t have to make him do it. The last thing I was going to do was tie his right arm behind his back. I mean, come on!

Yeah, I’ve got a son like that. My mother-in-law is one of those people that she feels like, when my daughter gets a birthday present. he gets something, too. She gave a batting tee when he was one and a half and he just took to. I’ve got a video (from then). It's 30 degrees. It's snowing. He's out there playing, saying, “Dad come play with me!”

I say this all the time, all it takes is to plant a seed. Take him to a Big League game and let him see it, him or her. Let them see it at a young age. They’re very impressionable.

As a parent, what’s that like, turning him over to Tim Corbin? You sit in a lot of living rooms and hear a lot of pitches. What about his stood out?

I totally understood what what Tim's created. I talked to enough of his his ex players. While he's very tough, and he's very disciplined, he’s stern, almost to a player. they said he's almost like a second dad.

And as a father, like you said, to hand them off somewhere—because nobody knows my son, how he throws better than I do, since he’s a little guy, I know the good spots and the bad spots.

But (Corbin, at the banquet that had just completed), he memorized what, 36 names? And it wasn’t just Mom and Dad, but where he’s from, and a little bio. Little brothers, sisters. That’s like, crazy, savant stuff. And he cares to an obvious other level.

Yes, he wants to win. Yes, there's a lot of pressure for all these Division One coaches to do it right. And then you get spoiled, right? He's won couple championships, ‘I want to win again,’ so, that drives it.

But between him Maggie, like, I feel it. Jack, he narrowed it down to UNC and Duke and Vandy. That was his final three. And somewhere before he committed, it was the end of the summer going into his senior, I said “alright.”

So Lore and I left and I said, “We’re going to do one quick look-see. We actually went to dinner with Corbs. And then the next day, we flew to Raleigh. We went to UNC with Mike Fox. We went over to Chris Pollard (Duke). And I said, “Within a 48-your period, you’re going to see your top three.”

And I said, “Make a decision.”

And while they’re all great schools, and you know, UNC and Vandy have the best baseball programs, Mike Fox at UNC, and Pollard is kind of getting it there (at Duke). It kind of went back to, “The other guys are fine, but Corbin, Vandy, Nashville—and oh, by the way, his sister, Carly, was already (at VU)…

Did she pull his arm a little on that?

There was very little. There really was.

I'll tell you what, the hesitation and reluctance for a lot of these families and these kids is—this is such a great program and you’re getting the creme de la creme—is, “Will I play? Where do I fit into this great program and process?”

That is terrifying, because some of these other schools are like—I know, it's just words—but they're kind of constant. “Hey, you come to our school. You're starting on the weekend. You’re our guy.” They’re telling you stuff like that.

(Corbin) would never say this. So there’s a little bit of reluctance of like, “Alright, I mean, you’re pretty good, but the other guys are pretty good.” You just work.

Jack could have made a lot of money out of high school. How much a thought was (going pro) out of high school?

Not much. Unlike my upbringing—my dad was a blue-collar guy and the money factor was my decision. Yeah, I had a scholarship accepted to Northwestern and Stanford, really good schools. But I was drafted, a high pick, and I got a signing bonus you couldn’t refuse, first-round (money). I got paid more than our first rounder because I waited, I held out.

So Jack, luckily, I was able to (set aside) money from what I was able to do with my life. And it was a life decision. It was a life decision for myself.

Now, I'm grateful and blessed and lucky that I was able to do that. But it was, it was pretty heavy stuff, actually, because all along, Jack was in. He was like, No, I'm going to Vanderbilt.

Okay. And then the scouts still showed up, and there's lots of room. Forty, 50 (scouts), every time he pitched.

And then the Saturday before the draft, and he was going to be anywhere—from my understanding it was going to be anywhere from like 14 to 22 (overall). And then just from the interest of the scouts that were calling, they said, “Listen, we just have to do our job. We have the 16th pick. Would he sign?” And I’m like, “He wants to go to Vanderbilt.”

They were circling back to say, “We just have to make sure.” This was on Saturday before Monday (which was the night of the draft). And I talked to Jack that night to say, “Listen, I know we talked about this. We covered it from soup to nuts. This isn’t my decision. This isn’t mom’s decision. It’s your decision. And I said, “Are you sure you want to go to Vanderbilt?”

And Jack got pissed off. He’s a very quiet kid, but, he’s like, “Why are you doing this to me?”

And I said, “I’m presenting this one last time. And I want to make sure it’s coming from you.” And he’s like, “Dad, you know, it’s Vanderbilt.”

(And I said), “Okay, we’re done.”

Because, I didn’t want it where he turns down—there’s a lot of money. A lot of money! Great. That’s what I wanted to hear. That’s what I wanted to hear.

I watch MLB Network all the time. I can’t believe how much Vanderbilt gets mentioned. What that’s about?

I’m on there. I’m always pulling Vanderbilt.

Yeah, but I mean, even when you’re not on there, they get mentioned a lot. How is they’ve become this brand name?

Corbs is intertwined nicely with baseball. He's done a few things, I think either some MLB—I’m not really sure. But MLB is trying to get greater continuity and connection with the NCAA. Yeah, I think they're pulling, like all-time key coaches and are having some kind of dialogue. So that's one.

I'm not kidding. It's the joke of the network. When I'm in the studio's like, “All right. Vanderbilt. Which Vanderbilt player you can talk about tonight?”

But it’s not just you.

Right, but I think that permeates a little bit. Yeah. Yeah, but, the problem is, they deserve it. They do great.

I mean, you could pick off a few of the other schools right? Like we can, Oregon or Oregon State is good, LSU, the University of Florida and go to UNC.

You know, it’s always back to (Vanderbilt). And oh, by the way, it's two great academic school, one of the best institutions in the country. And you have one of the best baseball programs and you have a really, really elite coach.