SANTA CLARA — Brock Purdy played two years of high school baseball, and he was not half bad. After all, he had the bloodlines.
His dad, Shawn, now 54, spent eight years in minor league baseball as a right-handed relief pitcher.
Brock Purdy was a seventh-round draft pick of the San Francisco 49ers and is the team’s starting quarterback entering Week 18 and into the NFC playoffs.
Three of his dad’s minor-league baseball seasons came in the San Francisco Giants organization, where he played with such future major leaguers as Rich Aurilia, Shawn Estes and Russ Ortiz.
“It’s a part of his story and where he played, so he knows some of the guys who ended up going to the big leagues for the San Francisco Giants,” Purdy said of his dad.
“It’s cool to see that I ended up here in terms of the organization he played for, too, in his career. So little things like that are things we can appreciate as a family.”
Because baseball is a year-round sport in Arizona, Purdy felt like those who devoted themselves entirely to baseball were passing him up. Therefore, he decided his future was as a football player, he said.
San Francisco 49ers
“I felt football was more of my calling, so my junior and senior year for recruiting and college, I focused on that,” Purdy said.
“It worked out.”
Purdy capped his career at Perry High in Gilbert, Arizona, 6A season records with 57 touchdown passes and 4,400 passing yards. He also had more than 1,000 rushing yards.
He was honored at an Arizona Cardinals game in December 2017 as the Cardinals’ Arizona High School Player of the Year.
On Sunday, Purdy will make his fifth start as a rookie and his first against the Cardinals.
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Although he did not play baseball during his junior and senior seasons of high school, he credits his early years playing shortstop and second base for his ease at changing arm angles as a quarterback.
“The arm angles, having a base as a thrower, all that kind of stuff definitely helped me to be where I’m at now, especially the quick game and throwing around defensive ends and stuff like that,” Purdy said. “It’s definitely a credit to baseball.”