SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — The backyard was small, but it was always busy.
It was long but only about 10 feet deep, roughly the dimensions of an indoor batting cage, and its frequent occupants used it in just that fashion. There were only two of them, mother and son, but that was all they needed. The rest could be imagined. Every evening and every weekend afternoon, that small and skinny backyard in North Texas transformed. The second the son got home from school, he’d pull his mother out the back door and into Yankee Stadium.
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Baseball had not been Hope Lawlar’s sport, but it had become her son’s, and a parent’s duty is to encourage such interests. So there in that backyard, night after night, she set balls on a tee and played catch and fed her son grounders. She corrected his swing and his mechanics, guided less by any formal expertise than by a mental image of what looked right. Some nights, after working a full shift managing a boutique in nearby Dallas, she’d come home exhausted. But then she’d see her son’s big, pleading eyes and hear that irrefusable request — “Will you throw the ball to me?” — and to the backyard they’d go.
At the time, she was just a single mother and her son was just another baseball-obsessed kid. But all those backyard sessions were building toward something. These days, Hope Lawlar is an empty nester. Jordan Lawlar, her son, is a former first-round pick, a Diamondbacks minor-leaguer and one of the very best prospects in baseball.
He is 6-foot-2 with a short, compact and powerful swing and a preternatural approach at the plate. He offers a rare mix of athleticism and aptitude, to the point that Arizona farm director Josh Barfield labels him as the best base-stealer in the organization. Only 20, he has already reached Double A and has an outside shot to reach the majors by the end of this season. Beyond that, there are plenty around the game who project him for stardom.
There is a lot of credit to distribute for Lawlar’s potential, including to a host of youth coaches who shaped him as a teen and to a Diamondbacks’ player development system that is beginning to churn out high-end prospects one after another. There is Hall of Fame shortstop Derek Jeter, whose example Lawlar strives to follow and to whom he is often compared. There is even, Lawlar says, the round-the-clock programming of MLB Network.
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But all of it starts in that sliver of a yard and with his mother, a woman working full time while also shouldering the demanding load of single parenthood. When he said he dreamed of being an MLB player, it was she who grabbed a glove. It was she who, in word and by example, taught him the importance of hard work.
“She started the fire,” Jordan says, “and I just kept it going.”
How did Lawlar get here, on the precipice of the majors? With a mother’s love.
Jordan (age 9) and his mother, Hope. (Courtesy of Hope Lawlar)From the beginning, it was Jordan and Mom.
Jordan has a relationship with his father — “We talk every now and then,” he says — but it was Hope who raised him. She also had been an athlete growing up (she played basketball and ran track), and as a little boy, Jordan pursued just about every athletic endeavor for which there is a Sports-Reference site. The Lawlar house was filled the implements of each — footballs, baseballs and basketballs; gloves and tennis rackets and cleats of all varieties — and Hope would be his catch partner, quarterback, hitting coach and goalie.
Baseball began to grip him around 8 or 9. “We spent hours putting balls on the tees and hitting it off and then throwing and playing catch,” Hope says, and if they were going to do it, they were going to do it purposefully. The last action of any backyard session, be it a swing or a throw or a fielded groundball, had to be a good one. Anything worth doing was worth doing with intent. “We weren’t just going to go out there and pick daisies,” she says. They were going to have fun, yes, but they were also going to get better.
Before long, Jordan began to grow beyond her limited coaching influence. When he first started playing baseball, he played first base because he was the only kid who could catch the ball. By the time he began club ball at age 9, he was handling shortstop, the most demanding position on the field. He began to coach her just as much as she instructed him. Together, they learned what makes a good swing. Sometimes, he’d correct her throwing motion. But she was always there — watching intently during practices and games, looking to apply what she’d observed in that backyard — to support him however she could.
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Their relationship was a close one. Every morning, she’d send him off to school with a hug and a kiss on the forehead. Before long, Jordan had to lean down to receive the latter. Whenever he comes home — even late at night, even now as a young adult — he gently wakes his mom and returns the gesture. But Hope also raised him to be his own best coach, and Jordan took that to heart. He rapaciously watched MLB Network, picking up whatever tips he could about hitting. He studied Jeter’s career and interviews, resolving to carry himself in the same manner. And he got terrific grades. “He was never allowed a B,” Hope says. “He could do A work and he was going to do A work.”
His baseball future opened up in front of him by the time he hit high school. Transfer rules prevented Jordan from playing varsity baseball as a freshman, but that only meant scouts began showing up at his JV games. (“I’ve never seen him do anything,” Jesuit varsity coach Brian Jones found himself telling recruiters that first year. “I don’t know what to tell you.”) In the fall of his sophomore year, before he’d played a single inning with the varsity squad, he’d committed to Vanderbilt. By the first scrimmage of his senior year, scouts from 27 major-league teams lined the chain link fence to get a look at him.
It might have been overwhelming if not for his mom’s steadying influence. She raised him to be humble and not take things for granted. That’s why, even as he looked more and more like a high first-rounder, he told everyone he was likely headed to college. Why, even when he went sixth to the Diamondbacks in 2021, he held firm to his Vanderbilt commitment. Why it took until the last days before that summer’s signing deadline — and $6.7 million, the third-biggest bonus of that draft class — to change his mind.
Hope had always said education comes first, and at least one team picking near the top of the draft wondered if Jordan would have chosen pro ball against his mother’s wishes. But the decision to sign was all her son’s, she says. That’s the way she wanted it. After all, the point of parenting is to encourage independence.
“There’s a peace,” she says, “when you know your child is doing what he’s called to do.”
Hope and Jordan (age 17) at Jesuit High School. (Courtesy Hope Lawlar)The second Jordan signed with the Diamondbacks, Hope relinquished the role of coach. The Lawlar backyard is quiet and empty. For a mother who had been there every step of the way, the first few months without Jordan felt like withdrawal. “You’re just used to seeing the smile in his eyes. I missed his hug and allowing me to give him a kiss,” she says. “I missed those intimate moments, but I knew that he was fine.”
Indeed, Jordan has placed himself in quite capable hands. He is one of the most important prospects in a farm system loaded with good ones, with a battalion of coaches and staffers dedicated to turning his boundless potential into performance. But even now, Hope’s handiwork is evident.
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Jordan is an easy pupil, with good study skills. Drew Hedman, the team’s director of minor-league hitting, remembers Lawlar was taking live batting practice against another Diamondbacks farmhand last spring. “It’s one of our guys. He’s not going to face him this year,” Hedman says. “But he wanted the scouting report.” Those self-taught backyard sessions, focused on replicating what felt and looked right, have produced a player uncommonly in tune with his body. He rarely needs to fuss with his swing mechanics, and when he does, he is often able to adjust them from pitch to pitch.
Some strengths, like his batting eye, appear to be just natural. Despite a series of injury setbacks — including shoulder surgery that ended his debut season after two games, a rib growth that cost him a month last year and a fractured scapula that ended his stint in the Arizona Fall League — Lawlar has zoomed through the minors by excelling at the plate. He played his way out of Low A after 44 games with a 1.051 OPS and then posted an .862 OPS in 30 games with High-A Hillsboro. His only period of struggle came after a late-season promotion to Double A, where he hit .212 in 20 games. But even then, he chased out of the zone far less often than the average player.
“He’s so advanced offensively,” says Diamondbacks quality control coordinator Jeff Gardner, “it’s crazy.”
Crazy enough that it perhaps distorts views of his defense, Gardner thinks. Scouts rave nearly universally about Lawlar’s bat, but many harbor concerns about his glove — or, more specifically, his feet. Lawlar committed 29 errors in 87 games last season, and iffy footwork was often the culprit. Some evaluators raise the possibility, if not the likelihood, of an eventual move to third base.
Gardner thinks such scrutiny is a bit overharsh. “He’s almost a victim of his offensive prowess,” he says. “He’s so advanced offensively that you think he should be defensively.”
If he hit far beyond his years last season, he fielded just about at his age level. The solution there is reps and time, and Lawlar has made sure to get a head start. Since mid-January, he’s been in Arizona working with Diamondbacks infield coach Tony Perezchica and former Gold Glove shortstop Nick Ahmed. Together, they have instructed him on the fundamentals of the position, from the angle of his glove on backhands to the depth he should sink into his legs when scooping a ball. “It’s just the basics with him,” Perezchica says, but for a player with Lawlar’s physical gifts, “the basics are going to be huge.”
Lawlar eats it up because he is determined to maximize his talents. “I want to be the best player,” he says, “and you can’t be the best player if you’re making errors and you’re not playing elite defense.” But that’s about as much as he’ll crow about his aspirations. In interviews, Lawlar is accommodating and friendly but often vanilla. He carries himself not with a chip on his shoulder but with a quiet sense of belonging. Just like another tall, biracial shortstop he’s long idolized. “He’s very Jeter-like,” says Gardner. The fact that so many note the similarity suggests that Lawlar’s emulation efforts are going well.
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That comparison will always stir a memory for his mother — of she and her son at Yankee Stadium late in Jeter’s 20-year run with the Bronx Bombers, Jordan’s face beaming with joy. Now, her son is not far from beginning a major-league journey of his own. She will be there as much as she can, but she is no longer there always. Instead, she literally counts the days until her son will return to her. Even if those days run into the triple digits, it gives her something happy to anticipate.
But some traditions continue. Just like when he was in high school, she sends Jordan the same text before every game, with a message that Jordan prefers to keep between just the two of them. If she’s not in the stands, she will watch on MLB.TV. Afterward, if the time zone difference cooperates, she will be there for a debriefing phone call, offering her undying support whether he starred that night or scuffled. And whenever he returns home, he will once again greet the woman who made all of this possible, and lower his head to receive a kiss.
(Top photo of Lawlar: Abbie Parr / Associated Press)
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