“I don’t take [playing at Baylor] for granted,” sophomore left-handed pitcher Ethan Calder often thinks to himself. “Every day, I still look at the ballpark and say, ‘Man, this is what I wanted to do as a kid.”’
In his second year donning the green and gold, Ethan, who is just one of over 10 BU legacies in his family, has become head coach Mitch Thompson’s most reliable lefty arm out of the bullpen.
Across 14.2 innings pitched so far this season, Ethan leads the Bears in appearances (8) and WHIP (.95) and boasts the second-best ERA (1.23) on the team. As a true freshman in 2023, Ethan saw significant playing time; he was tied for second in appearances (22) and led his squad in wins (3).
But before Ethan became a lockdown reliever, he came to Waco as a walk-on two-way player in the 2022 recruiting class out of Lake Travis. After talking things over with Thompson and his first-year coaching staff, he fully expected to see more time at the plate than on the bump.
With the Cavaliers, Ethan was a two-time First-Team All-District selection and was named Utility Player of the Year in 2022 for his versatility in the outfield, at first base and on the mound. As a senior, he hit for a .336 batting average with 32 RBIs while striking out 67 batters and maintaining a stellar 0.97 ERA. During his junior year, Ethan was voted Team MVP, hit .340, stole seven bags and fanned 50.
“I would say I’ve always felt more natural pitching,” Ethan told SicEm365 in a sit-down interview earlier this month. “But I really loved hitting – it’s challenging. I loved that challenge, and I loved getting dirty sliding.”
It wasn’t until a broken right hand during the fall of his freshman year forced Ethan to shut down most hitting activities temporarily.
“I was out for all of the fall, and I just sat there and watched,” Ethan said. “I had pitched all in high school, and the coaches knew that. We had only one lefty [on the roster] at the time, and they called me over [Christmas] break and asked, ‘Hey. Can you ramp it up?’
I said, ‘Yes sir – whatever you want me to do.’ So I came back in the spring, threw a couple of intrasquad [scrimmages] and it was on the ground running from there.”
“Ethan’s always been a hard worker,” Lake Travis head coach Ryan Rogers said about his former stud do-it-all specialist. “He’s just a baseball player. Whatever the team has needed, Ethan has always been able to fill in and fill that role or that need.”
Toward the end of a 20-5 Opening Weekend blowout to Central Michigan on Feb. 18, Thompson called Ethan’s name out of the bullpen for the first time. In two scoreless innings of work, the freshman lefty impressed and struck out four.
The following weekend, on Feb. 24 against a talented Duke Blue Devils ballclub, Ethan entered into a bases-loaded jam in the fourth inning to replace starter and fifth-year senior Blake Helton. Nine batters later, things piled up, and Ethan surrendered six hits and six earned runs, issued two walks and was able to get just one out.
“I was the first guy out of the ‘pen on Friday in the Duke series, and I got knocked around a bit,” Ethan said. “I was thinking maybe pitching is not it [for me]. But you have to keep your head down and keep working, and once you get that next opportunity, you see what you can do.”
Over the following two months, slowly but surely, Ethan was building his confidence back up on the mound. In his subsequent 11 appearances, he struck out 14 and allowed 12 earned runs across 17 frames.
“I was starting to fill up the zone, and my pitches were looking good,” Ethan said looking back at the middle of last season. “Once I could get more than a couple of outs, I was like, ‘Okay – I can probably do this.’”
The most pivotal moment of Ethan’s young collegiate career came against his hometown No. 12 Texas Longhorns on April 15.
“Ethan’s always been a hard worker,” Rogers said. “He’s always had the mentality to shine when the lights are the brightest. He’s always prepared. He’s a great competitor.”
With the game tied at five apiece in the third inning, Ethan entered into a bases-loaded jam to replace Saturday’s starting pitcher, sophomore Mason Marriott. Ethan kept the powerful UT offense at bay, getting out of the third unscathed and finishing with five strikeouts and four-plus quality innings out of the bullpen.
In the ninth, sophomore third baseman Hunter Teplanszky capped off the 10-9 comeback victory with a game-winning two-run walk-off single to give Baylor the victory. But without Ethan’s effort on the mound in the middle innings, the Bears wouldn’t have come up with that win.
“I think the most fun we had last year was when he pitched against Texas,” Ethan’s mom, Carole, said. “[My husband, John] and I sat there looking at each other, thinking about how last year he was pitching for his high school team, and now he’s pitching against Texas.
We were immensely proud of that. He takes a lot of pride in playing for Baylor, and he really wanted to win that game.”
However, for Ethan’s family, his performance against Texas was the culmination of everything that had brought them to this point. Ethan’s grandfather, Billy, played football at Baylor in the late 1960s, and despite suffering a career-ending injury, the university elected to honor the remainder of his scholarship.
From that point on, the Calder family sent almost all of their children and grandchildren to attend BU. John, Billy’s son and Ethan’s father, started dating his wife, Carole, at Baylor and raised their three kids to love the green and gold as well, making routine trips up I-35 to attend football and baseball games.
“Baylor has laid the foundation for my husband and I’s career and our personal life,” Carole said. “In every aspect, it’s shaped who we are. And I can see that with Ethan – the growth that I’ve seen on and off the field, and I attribute it to the people that are there. [Baylor] has made him a really well-rounded person.
Sometimes [John and myself] sit in the stands and look at each other and are in awe that he gets to play for the school that we love and the school that he now loves. I can’t even put into words how proud we are of him.”
Not very often does a kid get to play for the school he grew up cheering for, and in this case, that’s exactly Ethan’s reality. Carole recounts a time when the two were driving back from a recruiting trip to an opposing school and she realized her son was going to be a Bear.
“He was quiet the whole way home, and we weren’t sure it was going to work out with Baylor,” she said. “But he looked at me and said, ‘I want to win for Baylor.’ And I knew at that moment that he was going to wait until he figured out where he stood with [BU].”
For Ethan moving forward, playing for the Bears, and being a key piece in Thompson’s rebuild is all he could ever ask for.
“I’ve seen really good [BU] teams,” he said. “When I was a kid, I was here watching [NCAA Regionals], and I want that feeling again. I feel like I can help our [program], and I see it getting better.”
But what makes Ethan so beloved by his teammates and coaches is his everyday approach to the game of baseball, where he constantly tries to improve.
“He’s always trying to figure out how he can get an edge,” Rogers said. “He’s always paying attention to the details and what little things he can do to be successful. He’s very coachable.
Whatever adjustments we asked him to make or whatever he needed to tweak, he was always very open and receptive to it. Part of what has made him so successful is he wasn’t afraid to try new things or fail because he knew those failures would lead to growth and he’d come out better for it.”
Despite being just a sophomore, Thompson likes to call Ethan a “veteran” because even as a true freshman, he pitched the seventh-most innings (32.2) on last year’s team. With that experience, he’s trying his best to help guide some of Baylor’s younger but talented arms this spring.
“Last year, I did not expect to pitch that much,” Ethan said. “Getting all of that time under my belt definitely has helped me this year. … I think the biggest thing for me is just picking [the young pitchers] up after maybe getting knocked around because I’ve definitely been there, especially as a freshman. But they’re really talented, and they’re figuring things out.”
“Ethan has been a really good reference point for all of the different experiences and questions that I’ve had throughout the whole fall and so far into the spring as we’ve gotten into the season,” freshman left-handed pitcher RJ Ruais said.
“He’s very much one of the main characters of the team and is a big point of life and enthusiasm. You can always count on Ethan to have a great attitude and bring joy to any situation that the team finds themselves in. I’ve been blessed to have Ethan as a big brother to look up to and go to whenever I need him.”
The coaching staff, however, has no plans to put Ethan in harm’s way back in the batter’s box in the future; they much prefer to see him on the mound as one of the first names called from the bullpen.
“Every time I pick up a bat,” Ethan says with a smirk, “Coach Thompson always tells me, ‘Put that down.’”
Ethan and the Bears (7-13, 2-4) will travel to Austin to face Texas (14-8, 2-1) for the last time as conference foes, starting on Friday, March 22, at 6:30 p.m. at UFCU Disch-Falk Field.
