Gary Sheffield imparts bat wiggle, cautionary tales to FSU-bound son

TAMPA — The dad and son hail from distinctly different generations and socio-economic backgrounds.

One was an only child raised by a stern stepdad who worked on the Port Tampa docks. The other has seven siblings, attended private high schools and lives at the end of a cul-de-sac on Harbour Island. One cut his baseball teeth in the Belmont Heights Little League, the other in the Bayshore Little League. One was a Terrier, the other a Tiger.

Yet society in general sees them as virtual clones, forever intertwined by blood and bat wiggle. Especially bat wiggle.

Noah Sheffield, who turns 18 on Saturday, proudly indicates he has spent years trying to replicate the unorthodox, unnerving, back-and-forth whipping motion that immediately preceded his father’s 509 big-league home runs.

“Growing up, I had kind of always done, like, a circular motion with my hands instead of the bat wiggle,” said Noah, the seventh of Gary Sheffield’s eight kids. “And then around 14 years old, that was the age that my dad got serious in training me for baseball. So helping me develop my swing, I just kind of bought all-in and copied his swing at 14 exactly how it was.”

Replicating the other staggering components of his dad’s career — namely the home run total and nine All-Star nods — is a grossly unfair ask. Bat wiggle aside, Noah Antonian Sheffield is his own individual, despite sharing Gary’s middle name. Father and son would have it no other way.

“I definitely know that Gary aspires to make sure that Noah is his own person,” said DeLeon Richards Sheffield, Noah’s mom and Gary’s wife of 25 years. “He looks at it as if taking the Sheffield name, if that opens up doors for you, great. Walk through that door and then you pick up and you do the rest and be who God is calling you to be.”

At 6-foot-1, Noah is roughly 2 inches taller than his dad. Whereas Gary spent a bulk of his big-league career at third base or in the outfield, Noah projects as a middle infielder. By all accounts, Noah appears more soft-spoken than his dad, one of the most candid players of his time.

And unlike Gary, the No. 6 overall pick in the 1986 draft, Noah’s draft fate is trickier to guess, likely hinging on how clubs view his signability. Gary, who became a sports agent upon his retirement, is not even representing Noah, who has signed with Florida State.

“I don’t want nobody to look at my son in a way where you’ve got to mention daddy first,” said Gary, who set up Noah with an advisor. “I want them to take his career as his career, and I don’t want to be involved with it for it to go any other way. When I decided that he was ready to step out to the world, I gave it to the coach, and I told the coach he’s yours.”

Jesuit coach Miguel Menendez corroborates, saying Gary was a far more model parent than a meddlesome one.

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“In fact, I’ve gone to him a couple of times, I’ve had him come speak to the team,” Menendez said.

“But he just kind of stays away, does his own thing. He’s like, ‘Coach, I told you when I brought him here he’s all yours.’ But there were a couple of times where I was like, ‘Gary, do you mind coming to talk to the guys about hitting?’ I said, ‘They’re probably going to listen to you and your 500 home runs more than they’re going to listen to me sometimes.’ ”

Which isn’t to suggest a wholly hands-off approach. Father still trains with son almost daily at a Tampa batting facility. He still mentors him, scrutinizes his game performances.

And is quick to offer the cautionary tales of a baseball life as complicated as it was prolific.

“I tell him everybody has their vices that they like,” said Gary, clutching a half-smoked cigar, on a recent Saturday evening from the second-floor man cave of his Harbour Island home.

“There are certain things you’re going to like more than others, and as a dad, you can talk to me about that and I’ll talk you through it. That way, you can understand the good about it and the bad about it, and then you can decide from there what kind of problems you want in life.”

A quiet catalyst

In two seasons at Jesuit, Noah evolved into arguably the team’s most dangerous offensive player. He was named team MVP this past season, leading the Tigers in batting average (37 of 90, .411), on-base percentage (.505), home runs (four) and RBIs (28), while finishing second in stolen bases (15).

Jesuit finished 26-6, winning the Class 5A state crown. In 2023, his first season at Jesuit, Noah hit .281 with three homers, 23 RBIs and 13 steals, embedding himself in Tigers baseball lore with an eighth-inning walk-off home run in the 5A region final.

Menendez described him as a selfless teammate who exuded a quiet confidence.

“That was the biggest question mark coming in, because Noah transferred in (from Tampa Prep) as a junior, which doesn’t happen a whole lot around (Jesuit),” Menendez said. “You always wonder, you’re bringing somebody in and we’ve had guys around for a couple of years and you’re trying to build a culture, but he was awesome. He was a great teammate. He kind of fit right in, wanted to do whatever it took to win.”

Prior to each Jesuit at-bat, Noah would draw the letters R and B and a cross in the batter’s box dirt as a tribute to Rex and Brody Reinhart, two travel-ball peers killed by their dad in a murder-suicide in north Florida in May 2021. That travel team, the Florida Heat, was assembled by Gary when Noah was 13, for all intents launching his full-time commitment to baseball.

Before that, he dabbled in basketball, soccer, track, football and flag football. As a prepubescent, he even played the violin and saxophone — an artistic bent likely culled from his mother’s genes. Noah is the middle of three boys born to Gary and DeLeon, a Grammy Award-nominated gospel singer.

“I got my good looks from my mom,” said Noah, also an aspiring chef who loves to experiment in the kitchen, especially with hibachi. “I did not get the voice, but I can play an instrument.”

And while his folks demand a clean bedroom and the completion of homework before leisure activities, Noah describes his household as “relaxed, it’s not strict.”

Which is to say, more than a mere generation separates Noah’s upbringing from his father’s.

An only child, Gary’s mom, Betty, married his stepdad, Harold Jones, when Gary was 2. A dockworker, bodybuilder and former Robinson High wrestler, Harold presided over their home — just off Gandy Boulevard — with a master sergeant’s meticulousness.

“I had to clean the bathrooms, the toilets, the tub, wash the dishes,” Gary recalled. “I had things to do around the house. So that was my way of giving back. It wasn’t monetary, but it was just something I had to give back from living with my parents.”

When the family moved in with Betty’s parents in the Belmont Heights area, Betty’s younger brother — a lanky aspiring pitcher named Dwight Gooden — became Gary’s roommate. The neighborhood’s hardscrabble nature only intensified the strictness imposed on the youngster.

In a 2016 article for The Players’ Tribune, Gary said he only ventured outside the neighborhood to play a sport, and even then the competition was so fierce that if his team won, people from the rival neighborhood would chase them back home.

“I wasn’t allowed to go over to other people’s house, I wasn’t allowed to spend the night at nobody’s house,” Gary said. “I had to be home by dark, and I couldn’t be no more than two blocks away. So everything we did, we did in the front yard or a block or two away.”

Neither latitude nor leniency greeted him as he got older. Gary played at Hillsborough High for legendary coach Billy Reed, who would make his players run laps — even after returning from road trips — if they lost a game they should have won.

“It was his way of (stressing) accountability,” said Gary, named the Gatorade National Player of the Year as a Terriers senior in 1986. “You win the games you’re supposed to win. You’re going to lose your fair share, but if you don’t win the ones you’re supposed to win, you’re going to be a bad team.”

Yet the stern paternal figures couldn’t totally mollify the wunderkind brimming with potential. At age 12, Gary skipped a Belmont Heights Little League practice to go watch Gooden — four years his senior — pitch, and he was benched the next game. When he went after his coach with a bat, he was banned from the league for a year, missing out on a second straight trip to the Little League World Series.

While an isolated incident, it served as a harbinger of sorts. The volatile kid evolved into one of the most fiery competitors of his era, as candid as he was consistent, brandishing his emotions on the sleeves of each of the eight big-league jerseys he wore. After a childhood spent dealing with — or dodging — Gooden fastballs, no pitcher intimidated him. Nor did any contract negotiator.

He was defiant, dedicated, and sometimes — by his own admission — dumb. There were a few well-chronicled arrests, usually involving alcohol and automobiles, and some dalliances.

Hence the reason he wants his son to tread more carefully as he travels the same path. To be his own player, and person. To stand his ground, but avoid the figurative quicksand.

’A good shot at life’

When asked about the mistakes he made as a young professional, the dad is quick to note the one he most wants the son to avoid.

“Having kids out of wedlock,” says Gary, who has five children from previous relationships.

“I don’t want him making that mistake. No child is a mistake, but at the same time, the act is. I don’t want him thinking the way I was thinking as a young kid. I was into girls. I don’t mind him being into girls, but do it the right way, because later on in life it’s going to show up, and it could be great, or it could be a problem.

“There are things that we talk about all the time. I tell him that I never smoked a joint in my life. I never did a lot of things in my life. My problem was, I just liked women.”

Perhaps this is the reason Gary stopped being Noah’s coach: He’s better served as his consigliere, or cautionary tale. To navigate from the stern as Noah’s arc unfolds. Those who attended Jesuit games the last two seasons would have sooner spotted an infield sinkhole than Gary standing along the fence line barking at umpires.

“He usually sits somewhere away from everyone,” DeLeon said. “Whether it’s somewhere like right field or even top of the bleachers, you might spot him up there, but he definitely kind of just picks his spots.”

All part of the strategy: to impart lessons without imposing; oversight minus the overbearing. It’s perhaps the best way to achieve the end result Gary seems to desire.

For Noah to someday not be known as Gary Sheffield’s son, but for Gary to be known as Noah Sheffield’s dad.

“I just try to be a honest as possible with him, and with all my kids ... and give them a chance to have a great life,” Gary said. “If they choose baseball or something else, I just want you to have a good shot at life.”

Contact Joey Knight at [email protected]. Follow @TBTimes_Bulls.