Hall of Fame Class of 2023 Blake Trahan
He didn't know it at the time, but Jace Conrad got an early preview of the player that he'd share UL's middle infield with during one of the best stretches in UL baseball history.
It was in 10-year-old travel ball, and Blake Trahan was the shortstop for a regional Team Action squad that also included Conrad's younger brother Brenn.
"He was already the best player in the ballpark the first time I saw him," said Conrad, a first-team All-American during his own Ragin' Cajun career. "He was always the smoothest infielder, just very, very comfortable with his glove. Everything he did was smooth from age 9 until he stopped playing. Heck, he was catching ground balls out of the womb."
A few years later in 2014, Trahan was the shortstop and Conrad the second baseman on arguably the best team in UL history, and Trahan was in the middle of a career that included All-America honors three straight seasons, selection as the Sun Belt Conference's Player of the Year at the end of his 2015 finale season and a Team USA spot on USA Baseball's Collegiate National Team.
"He was just gifted, just filled with great instincts," said Cajun head coach Matt Deggs, who served as UL's top assistant in Trahan's first two college seasons. "And he was so mature. He was soft spoken, but one of the most intense competitors I've been around. You have to have that when you're 5-foot-9 and still get to the big leagues."
Those talents and his accomplishments were more than enough for Trahan to be honored with induction into the UL Athletic Hall of Fame on Friday as part of the university's Homecoming celebration, one day before UL meets Sun Belt rival Georgia State in the annual Homecoming game. He will be inducted along with seven other former athletes, coaches and staff members in a 7:30 p.m. ceremony at Warehouse 535 in Lafayette.
Trahan made the Louisville Slugger and Perfect Game Freshman All-America teams in 2013 when the Cajuns finished second in the Sun Belt with a 43-20 record and made the first of his three NCAA Tournament appearances. That set the stage for the magical 2014 season when UL went 58-10, was ranked first nationally during the final one-third of the season, won the Sun Belt regular-season and tournament titles and their own NCAA Regional under legendary coach Tony Robichaux.
Trahan was the first-team shortstop on the American Baseball Coaches Association/Rawlings All-America team, and a second-team pick by Baseball America and Perfect Game after hitting .355 with an OPS of .920. He had 91 hits, 12 doubles, 49 RBI and 15 stolen bases while committing only 10 errors.
"Everyone talks about him defensively and well they should," Deggs said, "but he could do everything. He was a jack of all trades. He could bunt, he could handle the bat, he could get you a double or hit a home run. In my two years then, he literally hit one through nine at some point."
"Everything he did, baserunning, knowing when to use the turf when throwing across, where to be on cutoffs, everything he did was right," Conrad said. "He's probably the only player I ever played with that didn't get screamed at by Coach Robe and that was hard to do. Robe was always picky about everything you did, but BT was always doing the right thing at the right time."
With those two solidifying the middle infield, UL never lost two straight games in 2014 until falling in the final two games of its own Super Regional to Ole Miss.
The Cajuns followed with another Sun Belt Tournament and NCAA Regional title in 2015 in Trahan's final year, when he hit .315 with 15 doubles, 17 stolen bases and more walks (38) than strikeouts (32). The Kinder native earned third-team All-America honors from ABCA/Rawlings and Louisville Slugger that season to go with his Sun Belt Player of the Year honor.
A third-round draft pick of the Cincinnati Reds, Trahan worked his way up the professional ranks starting with the Billings Mustangs of the rookie Pioneer League, and later in high Class A with Daytona, Class AA with Pensacola and eventually with the Reds' Class AAA International League in Louisville in 2018.
It was late that season while he was playing shortstop for the Louisville Bats that he was called up to the Reds that September. He was still with the Reds organization through 2020 when COVID-19 forced a shutdown of spring training, and chose to retire from baseball when professional play resumed that July.
Not that long after that, Trahan was back at M. L. "Tigue" Moore Field for a reunion and an "Old Timers" game involving the 2014 team, and he showed he hadn't lost anything.
"We were doing that scrimmage with guys from that year," Conrad said. "He'd been out of ball for a couple of years, and he still made a backhanded play that was one of the best I'd ever seen."
That shouldn't have been a surprise. At the completion of his three-year career, one that he left after his junior season to enter the professional ranks, Trahan ranked in the top five in UL history in games played (194, third), runs (155, fifth), hits (239, third), walks (112, third) and sacrifice hits (23, fifth). His 23-game hitting streak in his final season is still tied for the longest in Cajun history.
"Nobody was ever going to outwork him," Deggs said. "You could tell he was special from an athletic and from a baseball standpoint. He came in day one and was just way beyond his years. The game was never too fast for him. Even when he was a freshman, we're pretty famous for our falls and what you go through, and he chewed it up and spit it out as a freshman just out of high school. And did it all with a smile on his face."
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Re: Baseball, Athletics: Blake Trahan: Louisiana Athletics Hall of Fame Class of 2023
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