Finding Barefoot

July 22, 2018

There’s a common theme about baseball games at McKeon Park in Hyannis this season. Opposing fans, media teams and coaches all whispering the same question.

‘Where did this Barefoot kid come from?’

The inquiry is about Campbell left fielder Matthew Barefoot, the player who has been the star for the West Division leading Harbor Hawks. Barefoot is one of six Hawks selected to the league’s All-Star Game on Sunday. He’ll head to Whitehouse Field in Harwich accompanied by a group of the best players Cape Cod has to offer. But none of them has a higher average than Barefoot, who leads the league in batting at .396.

How is it the player leading the league filled with potential future MLB stars is so unknown? The question that should be asked, is why would anyone know who Matthew Barefoot is?

He isn’t Falmouth’s Logan Davidson and Tyler Dyson or Chatham’s Drew Mendoza, all are which are being slated to be high draft selections in 2019. He doesn’t play in the SEC, Pac-12 or the ACC. Nothing Barefoot does is flashy, he just goes out and does what is asked of him.

To answer the original question put forward of ‘where does he come from?’ The answer is Dunn, North Carolina, about a 45-minute drive from the state’s capital of Raleigh. He attended Midway High School in Newton Grove, a school that homes around 800 students. As well as growing up on a farm with his parents and a younger brother, things were plain.

“Life is pretty simple, not really a whole lot to do where I’m from – I enjoy it, it’s home to me,” Barefoot said.

The baseball life started for him at age four, while also endeavoring a bit with basketball. Although, as the results of being a Cape Cod All-Star have shown, he knew baseball was what was best for him. A large part of that he credits to his dad, Wesley Barefoot.

“He spent a lot of time and money on making me the player I am today,” Barefoot said. “He’s had me go to many kinds of coaches. All kinds of stuff. Always got me teams to play with. And he always stays positive even when things don’t go right. He’ll always just try to stay positive through everything.”

Campbell is only 20 minutes away from the Barefoot family household. But how did a player of Matthew’s caliber only end up at a Big South school rather than one of the ACC schools across the state such as the University of North Carolina, North Carolina State, Wake Forest or Duke?

“Campbell was my only Division I opportunity to hit,” Barefoot said. “They heavily recruited me to pitch, but they gave me an opportunity to hit. And I trusted them, and I got a lot better when I got to Campbell.”

And if the hidden treasure of the league wasn’t mysterious enough, he talked about the player he can be as a pitcher.

“A lot of my travel ball coaches always saw me projectable to pitch. I can run it up to 93 [mph] from the left-side,” he said. “I guess that’s kind of attractive for scouts, but I don’t think my future is as bright on the mound as it is from the plate. I’ve had a little bit of control issues from the mound, but I’m going to work on it. Going back to school to work on it some more and I’m just going to try to get better at it.”

The Fighting Camels did present Barefoot with a chance and he’s made the most of it. He led the team in average and stolen bases and ranked second in home runs this past season. As well as earning Big South Tournament MVP, helping Campbell earn a spot in the Athens Regional. There, in the Camels’ two losses to the No. 8 national seed Georgia and Duke, Barefoot went 6-for-10, with a home run, three RBIs and four runs scored.

With a small-town kid being the most productive hitter in the country’s biggest collegiate summer league. The noise, the spotlight, it’s warranted, but at the same time, other individuals may let the stardom fill their head. That however, is never a possibility for the very modest Barefoot.

“It’s cool, the places we play at kind of humble me,” he said. “I think it’s a whole different atmosphere, if you’re going to see these same kids in their home stadiums with the big crowd and students. Everybody is just here playing ball. As a hitter I just stay to what I did at school, lock into my zones and hit the pitches I can handle.”

It’s the simple fact Barefoot is infatuated with hitting baseballs. And if you’re doing what you love, it’s easier to be good at it.

“I’ve put in a lot more work hitting than I have anything else. I’ve done countless amount of lessons,” Barefoot said. “And that’s something I’ve always cared about and I understand it. I enjoy it, it’s fun.”

It’s also a lot of fun when a player holds a 22-game hit streak, the longest the Cape Cod League has seen in the past decade. Barefoot’s remarkable streak finally snapped this past Friday against the Orleans Firebirds. But every day during the stretch, with each hit that fell, his teammates were in awestruck. Dazzled by how incredible their teammate has been the entire season.

They’d ask Barefoot if he was every worried about it ending. His reply was just with a smile and talking about how it didn’t really concern him at all. Because that’s who Matthew Barefoot is, a humble kid from Dunn, North Carolina, that is just on a baseball field doing what he loves every day.