Painful Progress
The deepest valley in Ngoepe’s journey came four years ago with the Altoona Curve on a road trip to Akron, Ohio. He had finally advanced to Class AA, the proving ground for elite prospects, but felt completely overmatched at the plate. Worse — much worse — was an urgent phone call from home: His mother was in the hospital with pneumonia, and it was serious.
Ngoepe had managed his homesickness before. (“Gift is a conformist,” Larkin said. “He adapts well.”) But this felt different. He took batting practice in a fog, swinging as hard as he could at every pitch. When a teammate asked what was wrong, Ngoepe came undone.
He fled the field for the clubhouse, falling to the bathroom floor in tears. Prince, then a coordinator of instruction, found him there and let him compose himself. Huntington happened to be in town, and clearly, Prince said, they needed to talk.
“I know I’m not doing too good right now, and if you want to release me, go ahead and do it,” Ngoepe said he told his bosses. “But I need to be home. I need to be with my mom. My mom’s not doing too good. I will pick family over what I want in my life.”
There was no need to choose, Huntington said; of course Ngoepe could take all the time he needed at home. Ngoepe spent five torturous days by Maureen’s side until she died, at age 45, a loss that at first seemed to shatter his brothers. He felt a duty to be strong for them.
“Everybody’s crying — should I join them?” Ngoepe said. “But I was like: ‘Well, you have a responsibility now. You have to look after your brothers. They collapsed. They’re down. I have to pull them up.’”
The feeling was so strong for Ngoepe, Huntington said, that he was not sure he would ever return. Finally Ngoepe did, though, after more than two weeks, convinced that his mother would not want him to quit and believing that her memory could sustain him.
Yet progress was painful. Ngoepe hit .177 in Class AA in 2013, then repeated the level in 2014. After that season, he helped major leaguers run a clinic in South Africa and met Archer, who had no idea that anyone from there played in the pros.
Archer, whose biological father is black, had taken the trip to learn more about his heritage. He was eager to spread baseball to a continent not known for it, but also to interact with people and learn about their life. In Ngoepe he found a native who was grappling with his future in the game.
Archer gave Ngoepe a note with a one-word question: “Why?” Over dinner, Ngoepe shared his doubts and frustration.
“I get it, dude, I get it,” Archer said he had told him. “You’re on a different continent, in a different culture, and there’s no one like you anywhere — in Altoona, Indianapolis, or if you get to the big leagues. But you’re giving hope to more than just yourself.”
Archer insisted that the sacrifices Ngoepe was making — all those seasons away from his brothers, the added pain of leaving them without their mother — would one day make sense. Eventually, Archer promised, there would be a reward. Ngoepe listened and decided to press on.
“His mom named him Gift for a reason,” Archer said. “You get that feeling when you’re around him.”
Reaching the Pinnacle
Ngoepe finally reached Class AAA Indianapolis later in the 2015 season. He abandoned switch-hitting, focusing solely on the right side, and held his own for a few weeks. But last season brought more disappointment: a .217 average, with 130 strikeouts in 332 at-bats.
“He was always trying to find himself with the bat in his hand,” said the first-base coach Kimera Bartee, a minor league instructor throughout Ngoepe’s climb. “But when he’s in between the lines and he’s got that glove on? Extremely comfortable. Always has been, always will be.”
Clint Hurdle, the Pirates’ manager, could not shake the allure of that glove. It lit up the screen when he surveyed the team’s prospects on video. Hurdle would pester the minor league coaches: What about the bat? Do we have a player? But Ngoepe was often his own worst enemy at the plate, too impatient to work deep counts or commit to a consistent technique.