Luke Raley\u2019s alma mater is Lake Erie College in Painesville, Ohio. Founded in 1856 as a female seminary, the school initially aimed to educate the gentler sex in the domestic arts and etiquette, but gradually became a cradle of the suffragist movement, hosting speakers like Jane Addams and Susan B. Anthony and educating the women\u2019s rights activist Frances Jennings Casement; today, it\u2019s a stop on the National Trail of Votes for Women. As part of the emphasis on gentility, the arts play a large role on campus: a limestone Neoclassical music building with Art Deco flourishes, featuring a grand Skinner pipe organ, opened in 1927 for small concerts; the Royce Arts Center, a Brutalist riff on a those same Neoclassical columns and proportions, opened in the 1970s with a keynote speech delivered by Buckminster Fuller.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not the most likely place to imagine the gargantuan figure of Luke Raley undergoing the Bildungs part of his roman, although the image of Raley noodling away on the pipe organ or scrutinizing a de Kooning has brought me much warmth over this cold, baseball-less period. But it was athletics that brought Raley an hour northeast from his hometown in Hinckley, OH, from one side of the Cleveland suburbs to the other, a drive that hugs the outline of the lake the college is named for. Raley didn\u2019t receive interest from Division I schools despite being named to the All-Ohio baseball team as a senior at Highland High School, so he followed his older brother to become part of the Division II Lake Erie Storm (whose mascot \u201cStormy,\u201d an anthropomorphized muscular cyclone, was needed to replace the former school mascot, The Unicorns, when the school went coed in the 80s).<\/p>\n
Raley\u2019s broad-chested physique and cordwood-sized forearms might look more like the pugnacious Stormy, but he\u2019s got a fair amount of Unicorn in him, as well. He\u2019s capable of hitting a baseball as far and as hard as anyone on the team, like this Statcast-estimated 459-footer. The Raley family runs a Christmas tree farm in Ohio, and if this home run was a tree on the lot, it\u2019d be one that took two handlers to wrangle, destined for a grand hotel lobby:<\/p>\n
But Raley the Unicorn is just as likely to get on base like a slap-hitting infielder. He\u2019ll drop a bunt down and use his surprising speed to leg out an infield base hit. He\u2019s even likelier to wear a pitch, in the vein of the player the Mariners traded to the Rays for Raley, utilityman Jos\u00e9 Caballero. Here<\/a> he makes no effort to get out of the way of 99 mph from the Rockies\u2019 Angel Mejia. Raley walks away unscathed; the catcher is not so lucky.<\/p>\n
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