Lt. Hill

Geoff Baker had a good story on a potential Rattler in the Seattle Times yesterday. I'm pretty sure that I've mentioned Nick Hill, but this has a lot of things you may be wondering about this pitcher out of West Point.

Being forced out of bed at 5:30 each morning was the easiest part of how Mariners pitching prospect Nick Hill spent his offseason.

Then came the push-ups, the wind sprints, not to mention the 5-mile runs before breakfast. Later on, after that first meal of the day, Hill sat in a classroom learning how to build bridges and homes. Then, in other classes, he'd learn how to blow them up.

Army life isn't for everyone.

But for 2nd Lt. Hill, a graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point and an active Army regular, it's the only life he knows when not in a baseball uniform. Hill is one of a handful of participants in the Army's two-year-old Alternative Service Options program, enabling athletes to pursue careers in professional sports while fulfilling their military obligations.

And so the 23-year-old left-hander was given the chance to impress the Mariners with a solid first season at Class A Everett last summer. But once that season ended, as teammates prepared to go fishing or sun themselves on a beach someplace, it was back to the barracks for Hill.

"To be honest, spring training is fun," Hill said this week. "Anything we do here seems like fun."

Hill keeps in touch with former classmates who are now lieutenants commanding platoons in Iraq.

Baker gets into the details of the Alternative Service Options program, the reaction of Hill's parents when he decided to go to West Point in 2003, and his off-season training at Fort Benning in Georgia.

Here is a bit about his time with Everett in the Northwest League and what may be in store in his baseball career.

The Mariners are eager to see how Hill follows up his short rookie season, in which he went 1-3 with an 0.51 earned-run average in 18 outings while being broken in as a reliever. He struck out 45 batters and walked only nine in 35 innings.

Whether Hill remains a starter, as he did while breaking or tying 46 school and league records at Army, or moves into relief will depend on how well he hones his change-up and curveball to go with a high-80s fastball.

"I'm definitely a finesse pitcher," he says, chuckling.

This is how the story wraps up.

But Hill says that, in the end, it's really all about choice. The choice to pursue a military career, reap its rewards and accept the consequences.

Hill knows all about Pat Tillman, the former Arizona Cardinals safety killed by friendly fire while serving with the Army Rangers in Afghanistan. He knows that other athletes, like those in the Navy or Air Force, won't get the same chance as he did. Knows that, if not for a God-given ability to throw a baseball, he could be on the receiving end of buddy e-mails from the U.S.

"If they said I had to go, then I'd go, no doubt," he says. "But the people that I know over there support me 100 percent and want me to do this. They told me if I got this opportunity I should jump at it.

"That's what I'm doing. If, down the road, I'm needed someplace else, I'll do that, too."

It wouldn't be a bad thing if Hill wound up in a Timber Rattler uniform this season.

Please, go over and read the whole thing.