About 103 miles southwest of Dallas, almost a two-hour drive on Interstate 30 or U.S. Highway 377, is the small town of Stephenville, Texas.
The self-proclaimed "Cowboy Capital of the World" has a population of 15,565 in the latest U.S. Census and is the birthplace of, among others, golf great Ben Hogan and Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Kevin Kolb.
State College Spikes infielder Brock Holt is also from Stephenville, although he wasn't born there. He's a Fort Worth kid but went to Stephenville High School. He spent his college years in Houston and now hones his craft in State College as the Spikes' starting second baseman.
The hope is that the 5-foot-10, 165 pound Holt will soon be up with the Pirates in the majors, the team that drafted him in the ninth round out of Rice University in the 2009 MLB Draft.
It was a moment he wasn't even there for, because Holt thought he would go higher.
"I was watching the draft, and it ended up I didn't even see my name get called," Holt said. " I was watching it go across the board and I got hungry, so I went to go eat with my roommate, so one of my buddies on the team called me and told me the guy from the Pirates called and told me. But I was excited."
But it's nothing new for Holt; he's had to battle most of his career as a ball player.
Out of high school, he went about 130 miles east to Navarro College, a junior college in Corsicana, Texas. He found success there, hitting .405 in his sophomore season.
"I saw him play when he was a sophomore in high school, he was about 115 pounds," Whoa Dill, his coach at Navarro said. "He played the game right, he played the game hard and he just kept getting better and better."
The next thing Dill knew, Holt was his best player, leading the conference in hitting.
Then, as Dill's star shortstop, Holt signed a scholarship to Rice as a sophomore.
For one season, Holt played at Rice underneath the tutelage of famed coach Wayne Graham, who's won 787 games at Rice entering this season, coached 28 players to All-American status and led the school to a national championship in 2003. Holt hit .348 with 12 home runs and 43 RBIs while the Owls made it to the NCAA Super Regional in Baton Rouge, La. before Rice was eliminated by host and eventual national champ LSU.
Just three years removed from being a skinny Stephenville High infielder, Holt was drafted by the Pirates, another Owl Graham sent on his way toward a pro career.
Now, Holt had a decision to make: sign his first Major League contract or return for his senior season.
"I didn't really know what I was going to do," Holt said. "Whether I was going to sign or go back to Rice."
But Holt did decide to take his big smile and his defensive prowess to State College, a big change from the concrete confines of Houston and the prairies of West Central Texas and Stephenville. Already he's shown flashes of why he was picked in the ninth round.
"He's got a chance to be a legit...lead-off guy," Spikes manager Gary Robinson said. "With the capability of doing it at a level even higher than that, for sure can hit six-seven, I'm happy as I can be. I'm even happier about the energy he brings to our defense."
It's the same thing Dill saw when he watched Holt play as a sophomore in Stephenville.
"Little-bitty guy that played the game hard and everybody watched play," Dill said of Holt. "He didn't weigh more than 135 pounds wet, he was a skinny little kid. Good swing, really played defense. A-OK, he's just a guy who played the game right. He played hard and when you went to that field, that's the first guy you noticed."
A couple of years later, Holt still has that effect at Medlar Field at Lubrano Park. He's still getting acclimated to the pro game, getting used to swinging a wooden bat. He's struggled somewhat in his first few games as a pro, although the bat is starting to come around, as he was hitting .333 in his last five games with a home run and 4 RBIs.
At Rice, he's another of the numerous draft picks and pros Graham and the program have developed, along with former MLB player Jose Cruz Jr. and current Houston Astros star Lance Berkman.
But back in Corsicana and Navarro College, there's no question in Dill's mind that Holt's among the elite players to ever pass through.
"He's one of the best players to ever step on this field," Dill said. "He was one of the best ones ever."
