Tigers prospect watch: Wynton Bernard runs onto 40-man

LAKELAND, Fla. – It wasn't the body; he'd seen them all.

Benny Castillo is a baseball guy — no, a baseball dinosaur, he says — and a lot of his friends say he talks up every kid, but really, he doesn't.

It wasn't the way Wynton Bernard walked — quickly, Castillo remembers — through a parking lot in TigerTown or the way Bernard ran — fast — when he got onto a back field in a tryout for the Tigers last March.

"He just had those eyes," Castillo said.

He didn't know the story behind them, that the red Chevy Cobalt Bernard stepped out of was a rental car and he was flying back to California the next day — a $700 lottery ticket for a final chance at a dream — or that he was cut by the Padres a few weeks before, on the cusp of his breakout season.

But Castillo had seen enough baseball players to know that, of the 100-something guys on the field that day, only one was going to get signed.

So when Bernard walked by, Castillo told him: "Kid, you're going to get signed."

'An outsider'

Castillo runs a baseball academy in Thonotassa, Fla.

He flies kids in from all over the world, one month at a time, and brings professional and college recruiters to come and sign them. Before that, he worked for a couple of major league teams and played in the minor leagues for 12 years.

He knows the politics part of baseball, he said. The business part of it.

"You don't have a lot of control in baseball," he says. "He was an outsider looking in."

Bernard had been since high school, when his coaches really didn't give him a chance and one time even asked: "How are you going to play Division I baseball if you didn't even play varsity four years?"

A few months later, Bernard was, and after watching him play on the first day, Niagara coach Rob McCoy thought: "Well, worst-case scenario, he's the best athlete on the team."

But a few years before McCoy could see what the best-case scenario was, before Bernard was selected in the 35th round of the 2012 MLB draft, the outfielder received a call from his older brother, saying he had to come home.

His dad had suffered a stroke.

Staying home

Bernard is the youngest of Walter and Janet Bernard's three sons.

The oldest, Walter Jr., 36, played in the NFL for a few years. The middle son, Wayne, 34, played pro basketball in Europe.

And after his brothers left home, after his dad — a Navy veteran turned engineer at a local TV station — retired when Bernard was in the sixth grade, they spent a lot of days together.

"Every day," Bernard said.

And after growing up poor, Walter Bernard was determined to give his sons the opportunities he never had. He put them in piano lessons, hooked them up with hitting instructors and brought them to basketball games.

So when Bernard walked into the hospital room that day and saw his dad looking at him that way — "He didn't even remember who I was," Bernard said, "and that was scary" — he knew home was where he had to stay.

Dad was there

His dad never fully recovered from the stroke, stuck in a wheelchair from then on, but a game here and a game there at Riverside (Calif.) Community College, where Bernard enrolled after leaving Niagara, Janet would get Walter out of that wheelchair to watch his youngest son play ball.

"That was the best part of being back home," Bernard said. "He was never really supposed to ever see me play again."

Bernard commuted to Riverside and spent much of the time helping his dad deal with kidney disease and helping his mom around the house. And while Walter Bernard couldn't walk, he could watch, and one day he saw Bernard hit a home run.

But what his father couldn't see were the tears streaming down Bernard's face as he rounded third base, when "I just started breaking down, I couldn't take it. There was just so much that went into it.

"I was so proud that he got to see me hit a home run again. I didn't think he was going to be there for any more."

It was the last home run his dad would see him hit.

Walter Bernard died on July 5, 2010, just after his son left for summer ball in Washington, where he had promised his father he was going to get a scholarship to play college baseball closer to home.

'A big leaguer'

That scholarship never came — the Riverside coaches wouldn't let Bernard run free on the bases — so he returned to Niagara the following spring and came within a stolen base of the school record before suffering a broken hand late in his senior year.

Coach McCoy remembers watching him then, thinking: "If this kid's not a big leaguer, I don't know who is."

After getting drafted by the Padres in 2012, Bernard bounced around the low minors the next season, and on more than one occasion, took batting practice from then-Padres special assistant Brad Ausmus at Petco Park. (He was raw, Ausmus said, adding that he didn't get to know Bernard that well.)

And after a winter in the weight room, putting up 10 reps instead of eight — "All-Star reps," Walter Bernard Jr. calls them — and hitting in the cage when the rest of the baseball world was sleeping on Christmas Eve — "He doesn't take holidays" — Bernard received a call from the Padres in February 2014 expecting to get the report date for his big season ahead.

Instead, he received word of his release.

It was a quick conversation, maybe a minute. They didn't have a spot for him, they said.

It wouldn't be the last time he cried in a car.

'I get it'

Tell Bernard he can't get something, the tale goes, and he'll get it.

And so on a March morning last spring, sitting in that rental car, he knew he was going to get it. The song said so.

He was cut close to Opening Day. If the Padres didn't have a spot for him, most major league teams wouldn't. He drove to Arizona and tried out for the Dodgers. They liked him, but didn't have a spot for him.

Then a couple of Google searches and a San Diego-area scout pointed him a few thousand miles east.

A flight and a night in a budget hotel later, he sat in a driver's seat in Lakeland, Fla., asking his older brother over the phone for advice on this — the final at-bat of his baseball life, down two strikes with his career on the line.

"I literally told him that this is yours," Walter Bernard Jr. said. "You just gotta get it."

And while he said that, he heard the words through the stereo speakers.

"I get it, I get it," the rap song repeated.

So Bernard got out of the car, walked quickly past Castillo onto a back field and wowed Tigers scouts in attendance with his speed and his strength, and kept standing as they weeded out the wannabes from the willbes — throws on the money, hits off the wall, speed to burn.

About 45 minutes later, back in the car, back on the phone with his brother, he got the call.

"Wynton," Tigers director of player development Dave Owen said, "we've got good news for you."

The fire in his eyes

It wasn't surprising to Bernard, or his brothers, or his mother, and it wouldn't surprise his father, who to this day has a ticket left for him at will-call for his youngest son's games.

And it certainly wasn't a surprise to Castillo, the baseball dinosaur that could see the fire in Bernard's eyes a mile away, that the Tigers signed him last March.

They exchanged numbers and, almost a year later, Castillo sent Bernard a text to see what he was up to.

Castillo recalled: "He said, 'Benny, not only did they sign me, but I was the MVP.' "

Last season at Class A West Michigan, Bernard hit .323 with 45 stolen bases and took home the top Midwest League honor.

"I said, 'Get out!' " Castillo said. "Then he said he was on the Tigers' 40-man roster."

And a year after being on the outside looking in, the kid in the black shirt with the intense stare is inside the Tigers' clubhouse, looking out at the players around him and reflecting on the year that was.

"Just thinking about all the hard work that went into it," he said. "I've just come a long way."

A year ago, Bernard didn't have a team. Now, he has a locker with a nameplate, a big league jersey with his last name, and the chance he always has coveted.

He learns from Hall of Famers, rubs shoulders with future Hall of Famers — a heck of a lot less famous than all of them.

They might have a bigger bank account than him, a better chance to make the major leagues. But none has a story that Bernard does.

"He's a story that's going to be told all over," Castillo said. "I didn't even know his story, but believe me, I felt it."

"I guess it was something in my eyes," Bernard said.

Contact Anthony Fenech: afenech@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @anthonyfenech.

Meet Wynton Bernard

Who: Tigers outfield prospect.

From: San Diego.

College: Niagara University (N.Y.).

Age: 24.

Vitals: 6-2, 200 pounds.

Bats/throws: Right.

Drafted by: The Padres in the 2012 35th round (No. 1,065 overall).

Acquired by the Tigers: Signed as a minor league free agent in 2014.

2014 by the numbers: In 131 games with Class A West Michigan, Bernard hit .323 with 30 doubles and 45 steals.

Did you know? Bernard, who set West Michigan's franchise record for hits (164), was the MVP of the Midwest League last season. He's the third Tigers prospect to win the award, after Robert Fick (1997) and Gorkys Hernandez (2007).