Nick Senzel still remembers the 16-hour drive from Knoxville, Tennessee, to Brewster, Massachusetts.
The Volunteers' season ended in disappointment when a 2-1 loss to Arkansas knocked them out of the first round of the SEC Tournament. Less than a month later, Senzel was on his way to a place he’d never been before, almost 1,000 miles away from home.
Though he was coming off a successful season at Tennessee, he knew the impending summer opportunity was pivotal to his future in baseball. Senzel was adamant about making an instant impact.
“I wanted to prove to myself that I was good enough and could square up against anyone in the country,” Senzel said.
In the next two months, he did that and more. With an unwavering tenacity, Senzel batted .364 with a .976 OPS across 40 games. At the end of the summer, Senzel became the fifth player — and only since 1996 — in Cape Cod Baseball League history to win MVP and Outstanding Pro Prospect honors.
With his breakout season on the Cape, Senzel evolved from a standout on a middling SEC team to the top college prospect in the 2016 MLB Draft. Since then, Senzel has appeared in MLB with the Cincinnati Reds, Washington Nationals and Chicago White Sox. This fall, he’ll be immortalized among the Cape League’s best when he’s inducted into the CCBL Hall of Fame on Nov. 17.
Now, nine seasons into his professional career, Senzel still looks back on his time on the Cape and ponders what life would have been like without it.
“I don't know if I go number two overall,” Senzel said. “Obviously (in) my junior year, I played good baseball, too. But without that stepping stone of the Cape League, I don't know, things could be different.”
Though the CCBL cemented Senzel’s status as a rising star, his college career got off to a rocky start. He was committed to Georgia, but head coach David Perno was fired just before collegiate summer camp. So, Senzel changed gears, deciding to stay close to home and play for the Volunteers.
Because of the timing, Tennessee was out of scholarship slots, forcing Senzel to walk on in his freshman season. The quick flip didn’t alter his success, though, as he earned Perfect Game Freshman All-American honors with a .315 average while slotting in mostly as a designated hitter.
Freshman success prompted a summer opportunity for Senzel in the Alaska Baseball League. Yet, according to his father, Jeff, Senzel was somewhat disappointed an opportunity on the Cape didn’t arise. In the ABL, he stayed on a large estate with a family that lived 45 minutes from the Mat-Su Miners' home field. He hit just .210 in 23 games there. But once he got back to campus, he returned to form.
Senzel became Tennessee’s everyday second baseman as a sophomore and emerged as the top bat in its lineup, recording a .894 OPS with 28 RBIs. Then came a summer with the Whitecaps — an opportunity that defined Senzel’s career.
In Brewster, Senzel followed the same routine meticulously. He’d wake up around 9 a.m. and make his way to the kitchen. There, his host parents, Art and Judy Arnold, fed him breakfast, where Art often made a veggie omelet.
Art, an avid chef, helped Senzel’s nutritional aspirations. At the time, he was eating extremely healthy and made the diet known to his host family early on. Senzel didn’t want sauce when eating pasta. So instead, Art made chicken broth to pair with the dish.
For Senzel’s 20th birthday in late June, Art asked what he wanted for a celebration dinner. Senzel answered with a simple request: chicken and rice.
“That's just kind of who he was,” said Nico Giarratano, Senzel’s roommate in Brewster. “Man, he was super dedicated about every aspect of the game.”
Following breakfast, he’d make his way to the couch, watching SportsCenter with Giarratano until around 10. After indulging in the previous days’ highlights, the pair would go to the gym. In the weight room, Giarratano says he simply followed Senzel’s workout schedule, trying to keep up with him daily. Then, they would grab a quick lunch and head to the field.
Early in the season, Brewster manager Jamie Shevchik struggled to find a third baseman. Shevchik thought Senzel, an athletic freak with a dynamic arm, wouldn’t properly showcase his talent by playing second base all summer. Shevchik asked him about the possibility of playing third, and he agreed.
Even still, Senzel played all over the diamond, appearing in the outfield at times while also playing some first base. But it was on offense where the prospect made a name for himself.
Shevchik recalls one occasion where Senzel’s diligence was on full display in the most routine circumstance. The right-handed slugger slapped a ball the opposite way for a base hit. As the right fielder casually meandered to the ball, Senzel sprinted out of the box. Before the opposition knew it, Senzel was sliding into second base safely, never taking an inch for granted.
“He really didn’t give a sh-t about the personal accolades,” Shevchik said of Senzel. “He just loved to play baseball. He wasn't the entitled kid. He was extremely regimented about how he worked.”
While disappointment from his time in Alaska likely motivated Senzel on the field, it was heartaches and failures from his upbringing that pushed him the hardest.
The Senzels moved to England when Nick was in sixth grade, forcing Nick away from baseball and into rugby. When he returned to the United States two years later, he was rusty and underdeveloped compared to his peers on the diamond. As a 5-foot-5 freshman, he didn’t make Farragut High School’s (Tennessee) team before earning a spot on the junior varsity squad a year later.
Senzel was always the ultra-competitive kid who wouldn’t back down. On many occasions, Jeff would get home from work and instantly be asked by his son to go outside. Senzel would hit perforated golf balls with a broomstick in their subdivision’s cul-de-sac.
His competitive nature extended to other sports, too. He often challenged his father to free-throw competitions, constantly eager for a battle.
“He always had a chip on his shoulder,” Jeff said. “It was always, ‘I'm going to prove people wrong.’”
The chip remained during his summer with Brewster. Senzel faced multiple injuries throughout the season. His wrist was tweaked. His groin was pulled. Art says trainers came over nightly to ice him down. They weren’t serious injuries but enough to send a player home for the summer. Senzel wouldn’t give in.
Throughout the summer, his numbers only improved. By July 18, his on-base percentage reached its peak at .420 while he continued to slug at a .559 rate. Shevchik felt Senzel’s success at the dish translated from Tennessee’s hitting philosophy, with some added flavor.
Senzel had a wider stance with the Volunteers, allowing more contact with fewer strikeouts. Shevchik says he adjusted a bit, which allowed him to showcase more power with the bonus of an advanced contact tool.
But the extraordinary results didn’t mean much to Senzel. He says that at the time, he didn’t realize how well he performed because he constantly focused on improving. Eventually, with a week or two to play, he realized his success and was “somewhat amazed at himself.”
Giarratano saw a laser-sharp focus from the outside.
“He could care less,” Giarratano said about Senzel’s reaction to success. “Every time you even tried to bring it up, it kind of annoyed him. Because he literally didn't care. He was just focused on getting better and doing as good as he could.”
When the season neared its end, Senzel found out about the chance of winning the league awards. With his outrageous numbers, he easily took home both in a pregame ceremony at the last game of the season.
Senzel also came close to being the batting champion of the league. He finished second, behind only Wareham’s Andrew Calica (also a member of the 2024 CCBL Hall of Fame class).
When it was all said and done, Senzel cemented a legacy in Brewster on and off the field. As a part of his daily routine, Senzel often went to the Brewster Village Marketplace to grab lunch. He frequently ordered the same sandwich: ham, turkey, lettuce, tomato and onion.
After his monster season on the field, the owners named that order the “Senzel Special.”
The sandwich isn’t sold anymore, but Senzel’s impact on the Whitecaps organization is still seen today, as he was on Shevchik’s first-ever roster. Now in Shevchik’s 10th season at the helm, Senzel will be his first player inducted into the CCBL Hall of Fame.
“It was like love at first sight. My first true love when I got to the Cape was Nick Senzel,” Shevchik joked. “You knew that he was gonna be a big leaguer because he played the game a different way. He played it harder and faster than everybody else.”
Following one of the best individual seasons in Whitecaps history, Senzel springboarded it into even more success in his junior season at Tennessee, driving in 59 runs with a 1.054 OPS. At the end of the season, Senzel was selected second overall in the 2016 MLB Draft by the Reds.
The highly-touted prospect moved up in the farm system and made his major league debut on May 3, 2019. Since then, he’s bounced to Washington and Chicago and has over four years of service time.
Almost a decade after playing in the CCBL, Senzel still credits the everyday grind and competition for helping him evolve into a professional. Now, he’ll be forever enshrined with the best to ever grace the Cape.
Photo Credit: SportsPix