Erie Otters’ Hayden Hodgson has daily affirmation for choosing hockey over baseball

Hayden Hodgson is reminded of the path he could have chosen every time he shows up for work with the Erie Otters.

Talk about a coincidence: the player in the Ontario Hockey League's freshman class who serious prospects as a left-handed pitcher plays for a team whose arena abuts a minor-league baseball stadium. Not only that, but it's also the park where Cy Young Award winner Justin Verlander, Hodgson's favourite pitcher on his beloved Detroit Tigers, honed his repertoire with the Double-A Erie SeaWolves. Instead of being tempted, though, the 16-year-old says it only reminds him that he feels he was right to pick hockey.

"It's a good feeling, just to see a baseball park around here," says Hodgson, a native of Leamington, Ont., where the mild climate meant for a long baseball season by Canadian standards. "It's tough. I miss playing ball and everything like that. It had to come down to picking the sport I really enjoy and love."

Since Hodgson is a southpaw — he's a right shot in hockey and a righty golfer, but bats left-handed — it's tempting to ask if he didn't frame his choice in terms of longevity. Think Jamie Moyer or Jesse Orosco, two lefties who pitched past the age of 45 when a right-hander of similar skill would have been retired a good decade earlier. Now, this had to come down to what was in the heart.

"I was really torn that way, between baseball and hockey," says Hodgson, who was also a talented youth golfer. "I went to a national camp for ball and I've been a couple Team Ontario camps. There was a camp sponsored by Mizuno and it was 60 players invited who were under-17 and I went as a 15-year-old. That was where the idea started of me playing ball. But through this summer, after being drafted, my real focus was getting summer was getting physically ready for the OHL. After that, I knew what I wanted to do."

There's actually precedent for an OHLer ditching skates and stick for a bat and glove. In 2005, Mississauga IceDogs defenceman Adam Abraham gave up hockey to play baseball for the University of Michigan. Now 25 years old, Abraham just reached Double-A ball this season in Cleveland's farm system.

The Otters, who seem to have a thing for southpaws — 17-year-old star Stephen Harper was a lefty pitcher and first baseman in his diamond days — drafted Hodgson 43rd overall in the last spring's OHL priority selection draft. With his strapping 6-foot-1, 185-pound frame, they seem him as a future power winger.

"He has great speed, a really big shot, although he needs to hit the net more," Otters coach Robbie Ftorek says of Hodgson. "He's not afraid to hit. He's going to be who's going to really come on, I don't know exactly when, but he's going to be good.

"He's a big boy," Ftorek adds. "He's a solid guy physically. He's not just a hockey player, he's an athlete."

Hodgson has one assist through his first five games in Erie. Perhaps it's his background in baseball and golf — both games that require extraordinary patience, since perfection is so unreachable — talking when he says becoming a prospect will be a long process.

"Over the season, I just want to improve and hopefully next year, by mid-season I'll be ready to put up some points and be ready for the [2014 NHL] draft," he says. "I'm not expecting anything early. I know it's going to take time for me to fit in."

Athletically, though, Hodgson and his supportive parents, mother Christine and father Todd Hodgson, feel he has the right fit for his physical gifts. Meantime, from the outside looking in, one wonders if it's for the best that the pressure to get ahead in sports means teens have to go all in one sport so early in life.

"I wish there was a way but it's really tough," he says.

Neate Sager is a writer for Yahoo! Canada Sports. Contact him at neatesager@yahoo.ca and follow him on Twitter @neatebuzzthenet.