FAYETTEVILLE — Blaine Knight is built like a basketball player, long and wiry. Listed at 6-3 and 165 pounds, he’d fit in alongside the Arkansas basketball team.
It wouldn’t have worked. Duck season doesn’t cooperate with hoops.
Duck season does match perfectly with what Knight does best, pitch in grand fashion for the Arkansas baseball team.
It is interesting to see how many baseball players gravitate to duck hunting. Big league catcher James McCann, raised in Santa Barbara, Calif., had never thought of hunting until he played college baseball at Arkansas. But it fits with the offseason and has provided great release over the winter.
Knight grew up in a far different way from McCann. Duck hunting was a way of life in Bryant. He learned to build a duck call from his grandfather. He tunes calls for his teammates.
It’s no surprise that Rachel Box, a catcher for the Arkansas softball team from White Hall, also loves to duck hunt. Knight quickly produced a picture of the couple with limits of ducks. There was also a duck hunting picture with the two of them with close friend Josh Alberius, a former UA pitcher, with his wife, the former Claire Clark, a former UA softball player.
“You talked to Blaine about duck hunting?” said Grant Koch at the start of another interview. “That took awhile, didn’t it?
“I hunt a little, but not like Blaine. He’s going to drive home every off day in the fall and winter, either to deer hunt or duck hunt. We have the report on what’s going on when he comes back. The whole team knows whether the woods are frozen, the ducks are here or it’s not worth going. We know he’s giving it to us right.”
Deer hunting?
“Oh, it’s just something to do before duck season opens,” Knight said. “I love duck hunting. I will go if I’ve got a day and I might go if I can get back for practice.”
There are a bunch more that love it, but Knight might be the lead duck hunter on the team, but some former teammates are right there with him.
“Josh Alberius loves it, too,” he said. “I’ve hunted with Josh the last three years. James Teague likes it, too.”
There’s a story about Teague calling Alberius about the possibility of a hunt west of his home in Bartlesville, Okla.
“I think Teague called Josh about 10 o’clock one night saying he had ducks,” Knight said. “We were on the road pretty quickly. We got to Teague’s about 3 a.m., got ready and were in the blind in another hour; never slept.”
Knight knows his way in and out of the Bayou Meto Wildlife Management Area near Stuttgart. It’s some of the best public shooting in the world, but it’s often crowded. He also hunts the Cache River.
“If it’s Bayou Meto, I have to get up at 3, leave at 3:30,” he said. “For the Cache, it’s more like 2, on the road at 2:30. I don’t care.
“I hate the boat races at Bayou Meta. It helped when they put in gates in the woods. You have to slow down. You are going to wreck a boat if you don’t. I don’t race. I’ll find a spot somewhere.”
He’s into the calling and the work it takes to tune a call. That means carving the reeds.
“I tune all the calls for my teammates,” he said. “I got to know Rick Dunn and learned a lot from him.”
Dunn’s Echo Calls have produced many world championships at Stuttgart. I have one of his calls, given to me by champion caller David St. John of Conway. St. John works for the Beebe company. Knight perked up at my story of giving a band to St. John, then getting a personalized red call with a Razorback on it from Echo Calls.
“That’s how they are,” Knight said. “They are great people.”
That’s the feel you get from Knight. It’s fun to watch him head to the railing before and after games in Baum Stadium to sign autographs.
“We are going to do that,” he said. “I know how much it means to those kids. It meant a lot to me as a kid. I grew up in Bryant going to Travelers games – sometimes to see the Razorbacks there – and coming to Baum Stadium to see the Razorbacks.”
There is proof of that hanging on the wall at home. It’s a framed picture with Knight and Arkansas coach Dave Van Horn.
“My mom has a picture of me standing on the home dugout (at Baum Stadium) handing Coach Van Horn a ball for him to autograph," Knight said. "I was 12. He talked to me for 10 minutes. I went home the happiest I’ve ever been.
“So that’s why I want to pay it back. I’m going to sign everything the kids bring to the wall. We were all kids once.”
Knight probably didn’t think he’d be signing autographs at Arkansas for his junior season. He was the best of Arkansas’ starting pitchers in SEC play with a 6-3 record and a 3.38 ERA in 10 games. Overall, he was 8-4 with 96 strikeouts and only 20 walks.
Most thought that his fastball, regularly clocked at 94 mph with highs on hot guns close to 100, would attract an early draft number. But his asking price was too high and teams stayed clear. The Texas Rangers finally took him in the 29th round with the 884th pick. Knight quickly turned them down.
“I didn’t really know what was going to happen,” he said. “There were days that I thought I would not be back and days that I was on the fence. It all happens for a reason. God has a plan and it’s for me to pitch here and I’m happy with it.
“We have a great older bunch with a really good young group, too. It’s falling together for a great year. I came back with talented players and great coaches.”
The Hogs have been in every preseason top 10 and picked as the likely national champ by D1 Baseball’s Kendall Rogers.
“We are highly ranked,” Knight said. “You look and it’s anywhere from third to sixth. It’s awesome. It’s a great thing for the program.
“But you have to go play and it doesn’t really matter for much. I take it as motivation. I guess it’s a good pat on the back for what we do, but just that mention by Kendall Rogers doesn’t get us anything. Go play.
“The key is to do what we did last year, play like our hair is on fire. Results prove what you are and that’s what we know we have to do, win games.”
Pitching coach Wes Johnson knows there are big expectations for Knight, just like the Hogs. Knight has been picked on a preseason All-America team. Johnson told Knight to quit reading the Twitter accounts of the top national media guys.
“I sat down with Blaine and wanted to check in with him and make sure he’s grounded because he is getting a lot of hype,” Johnson said. “I wanted to make he’s doing OK mentally. He seems to be really grounded.
“I challenged Dakota Hudson (at Mississippi State) with this back in 2016 because he was getting a lot of the same hype because of how he had performed in the Cape Cod League, but he wasn’t like Blaine; he hadn’t done anything in the SEC prior to that year.
“I told Blaine, ‘We go together.’ I challenged him to get off social media and to join a ban with me not to look at social media, and just put his head down and go. We’re talking five months, come on, you can live without it for five months.”
That’s when results will take the place of expectations.
“Blaine’s ability on the field is not going to be what defines his year,” Johnson said. “It’s going to be how he handles this off the field, in the media room after a game when he’s thrown well and we may lose. Blaine is probably in the top three competitors I’ve coached in my 21 years doing this. He’s such a competitor on the mound.
“Now he’s going to be the Friday night guy everyone is talking about. How can he handle success? I want him to be able to handle success and also handle failure. His stuff is fine, but that’s where he’s got to get to."
The schedule may be the most difficult any Arkansas team has attempted with games against Arizona, Southern Cal, Texas, Texas Tech and Missouri State - and that's just in the nonconference.
“Fun, that’s what it looks like to me,” Knight said. “I know it’s tough competition, but that’s what you want. Tough games are fun. If you win 14-1, it’s no fun. Games are not fun when they are easy. Tough and fun is what I expect every day with this schedule.”
Knight thinks he’s better in the second year under pitching coach Wes Johnson. He’s just not much bigger.
“I think I was around 165 (pounds) last year, maybe up over that at some points, but I don’t hold it,” Knight said.
No one is ever going to say he’s fat, no matter what he eats.
“Seriously, I don’t think I’ll ever be fat,” he said. “Maybe when I get to 60, right?”
That does sound right.
“I think I’m up 8 to 10 (pounds) from last year,” he said. “But I just don’t know if I can keep it. It doesn’t matter what I eat or do, it just doesn’t stay with me.
“It’s so frustrating to get on the scales one day and you have dropped 2 pounds. What I keep telling myself, that I’m built this way for a reason and I’m flexible and can throw with velocity. I believe that.
“I think it goes from 172 to 175 now, but I tell everyone I can eat a whole package of Oreo cookies and lose 3 pounds.”
Junior pitcher Kacey Murphy knows that’s true.
“We watch what he eats,” Murphy said. “None of the rest of us can do that. I sure can’t. It wouldn’t be good if one of the other pitchers ate a package of cookies like that. I don’t even want to hear him talk about it.”
Knight marvels at what he’s learned from Johnson, even if there have been no great revelations on how to add weight.
Asked to explain the knowledge Johnson has given the UA pitchers, Knight fired back, “How much paper do you have? Coach Johnson is a stud, a dude. I learned more about pitching in the last two years than the rest of my life. I didn’t think you could learn that much more, but he keeps helping us figure things out.”
That’s the good news “about not signing,” Knight added. There is another year to develop under Johnson.
“What he’s helped me do is figure out how to understand my body and when I don’t have a pitch or you just aren’t your best,” Knight said. “He’s taught me to figure out what each pitch is doing that day and adjust to it. I think when you look back, you have your best stuff maybe one, two or three times all season.
“There was that LSU game last year when everything worked. There was not another day like that. You’d have a pitch you couldn’t locate to one side of the plate, then you have to deal with adversity.
“Of course, he’s helped all of us with our velocity, but it’s the mental side where we’ve made a jump.”
Johnson sees the jump in Knight, especially in maturity. Falling in the draft below what some expected lit a fire under Knight.
“It has done two things for him,” Johnson said. “He’s worked even harder and found that next level in working. For me, he’s more mature which leads to him being more relaxed. He knows what we’re fixing to get into. He knows the grind of the SEC and getting everybody’s best bullet every weekend, even in your non conference games.
“From the workout, weight room side, to the maturity of understanding a pen or a pitch - like yesterday, we were working on a couple of pitches and if a guy hits him because he’s working on a pitch he’s fine. He knows the end goal is I’ve got to have this pitch to be successful in this league. Whereas last year he would’ve been ticked he gave up a hit. He has really matured.”
Knight sees a deep staff of pitchers.
“Unbelievably deep,” Knight said. “I look at our roster and see 20 guys who could help us. My freshman year there was no depth and guys had to go twice on the weekend. I know I got doubled up most weeks. It takes a toll.
“I don’t think we’ll see that this year. Guys like Jake Reindl pitched twice a lot on SEC weekends. I don’t think we’ll need that this year.
“We’ve got veterans, but we’ve also got talented freshmen. They won’t have to be thrown into the fire like we did my freshman year, but some are going to surprise people. Guys like Jackson Rutledge, Bryce Bonnin, Caleb Bolden and Hunter Milligan may get chances to show what they can do in this league.
“It won’t be easy. You’ll go out there and get knocked around. It’s going to happen to all of us. But we’ve got enough guys that if you get smoked, we can roll with the next guy.”
Blaine Knight doesn’t get smoked too often on the mound. Usually, when that word is mentioned, it’s what he’s doing to batters – or ducks.