North Jersey Male Athlete of the Week swinging a hot bat right now
Michael Steinhauser is a good teammate, but right now, they better stay away from his bat.
“I try not to let anyone else even touch it,” the Bergen Tech senior infielder said. “I need to keep the heat on that bat and not let anyone else cool it down.”
Steinhauser’s silver/blue custom DeMarini 30-ounce bat delivered a pair of key home runs, translating into big wins last week for the Knights.
“I guess there is always that thought in my head, go hit a home run, but my dad would kill me if I tried to do that,” Steinhauser, a Lodi resident, said with a laugh. “So we look for gap-to-gap line drives. I would say I try to hit more doubles than home runs.”
The 5-foot-7, 210-pound slugger got started playing baseball early. Actually, he played a lot of sports early in his life including soccer, basketball and flag football.
He got the first clue he was pretty good at baseball when, during T-ball, he was one of the kids who the coaches had to pitch to.
To be fair, his uncle played baseball for Princeton and wore No. 27, same as him – although Steinhauser may have picked the number to honor MLB superstar Mike Trout.
Mike’s older brother Nicholas went to St. Joseph Regional and ran track and cross country. Mike applied at Bergen Tech and – much to his surprise – was accepted.
“My brother is miles smarter than me,” Mike said. “It just happened to work out that way.”
Bergen Tech, especially for seniors, is a lot different than a typical high school year. As a student in the Business and Finance Academy, Mike takes international baccalaureate classes and spends more time on campus in Hackensack than ever before, starting his day at 8 a.m. and heading to practice around 4 p.m.
Mike also interns with a sports marketing group that focuses on college athletics. He earned a full trustee scholarship to Rider, one of just 10 students picked for the year.
He hopes to double major in sports management and business analytics and perhaps walk on to the baseball team.
“I want to work in sports in some capacity,” Mike said. “If I have a dream job per se, I have always been good with numbers, I don’t really like math, but I am good with numbers, so I could work in an analytics department for a baseball team.”
Analytics can’t explain the Knights surge at the start of the year. Bergen Tech trailed Teaneck 8-3 going into the seventh inning last week, but Steinhauser hit a three-run homer to ignite a rally, then homered the next day against Hackensack.
He has three homers this season, matching the same number he had last year.
Not bad for a player just trying to hit doubles. Maybe it is the bat.
“I don’t try to hit home runs,” Mike said. “I was never really a home run hitter at all until I was about 12 years old, and then all of the sudden the ball started to fly a little farther than it used to.”
Michael Steinhauser
Sport: Baseball
School: Bergen Tech
Class: Senior. Age 17
Accomplishment: In a week that saw the Knights go 4-0, Steinhauser went 7-9 with two homers, nine RBIs, eight runs and six stolen bases.
Also nominated: Sammy Aguilar of Ridgefield Park, Joey Bernardo of DePaul, Alex Kranzler of Old Tappan, Miguel David (MD) Cabral of Westwood, Delvison Reyes of Eastside, Nick Eder of Dumont, and Brant Vicini of St. Joseph for baseball; Dylan Reichel of Tenafly and Ty Christianson of Fair Lawn for lacrosse; Christian Mercado of Wayne Valley for track and field; and Harry Cohen of Ramapo for golf.
This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: Bergen Record Male Athlete of the Week: Michael Steinhauser
