BY RALPH MORROW

NEWS EDITOR

 

The Dream Lives On

 

23-year-old Drew Rivera hasn’t given up on being a pro baseball pitcher

 

For Drew Rivera, it’s once a baseball pitcher, always a baseball pitcher.

 

Rivera, Key West High School Class of 2009, is now 23 years old, but hasn’t given up on becoming a professional baseball pitcher – preferably in the Major Leagues.

 

Rivera, who had an outstanding career with the Conchs, played two years at St. Thomas University and a fall season at Miami-Dade College.

 

Now, he’s at Mandeville, La., working on improving his pitching form and speeding up his fast ball at Brent Pourciau’s Top Velocity camp.

 

He’s been at the camp for three months. It fact, it’s his fourth time there in three years. He’s training there, as well as being one of the instructors. It’s almost a seven-day deal. “I get a little time to myself on Sundays,” he told Konk Life.

 

Rivera says he was 6-feet, 1-inch, 175 pounds when he pitched for the Conchs. Now, he weighs in at 200. The big thing, however, is the change in his pitching motion.

 

“See how he’s pitching,” said his father, Michael, recently, pointing to a poster-size picture of Drew pitching for the Conchs that hangs in his father’s area at Dr. Bruce Boros’ Key West office. “He was pitching with his arm. Now, he gets the strength from his body.”

 

Pourciau calls it “core strength,” and Rivera says it’s improving his fast ball. “To be a power pitcher, you have to be a power athlete,” Drew quotes Pourciau. He says his fast ball has gone from 86-87 miles per hour to 88-89 mph. However, in between, it dipped to 81-83. “In high school,” said young Rivera, “I was crafty. No velocity. Now, I’m really getting out of the conventional wisdom that this is as far as I can go. I hate to say this, but I feel younger.”

 

His next stop is Feb. 1-13 when goes to St. Petersburg for the Florida Minor League Camp. “Guys are looking for power lefties,” he says.

 

If he shows that he is one, he hopes to get a minor league contract with a major league team or even a contract with an independent team.

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