The alarm sounded at five in the morning, with the sky still pitch black, as Chaz McNelis cautiously got out of bed not to wake his baby boy sleeping beside him. The 20-year-old had weights at sunrise as the mornings moved swiftly when his 1-year-old son Grayson was in town.
For McNelis, a sophomore outfielder who transferred to the University of Arizona from the College of Southern Nevada, fatherhood is not something that runs parallel to baseball; it is the center of it.
McNelis’ path started in Henderson, Nevada, where he played at Green Valley High School. His junior year was the moment things clicked. “I really started to get good my junior year,” he said. “After that year, I was like, okay, this is definitely working out for me.”
As a senior, he made all-state honors, a jump that earned him a spot at CSN, a powerhouse junior college that once produced eight-time MLB All-Star and two-time National League MVP, Bryce Harper.
“I had all the physical ability, but I needed to work on the mental side,” he said. “Visualizing success, self-talk, bouncing back from failure faster. That is honestly how I got where I am.”
During his sophomore season at CSN, life transformed when McNelis became a father. The news shook him, sending shockwaves with a kind of fear he had never felt before. “I expected people to look at me differently,” the 2025 NJCAA First Team All-American said.
Instead, his teammates supported him and treated Grayson’s birth as something that brought them closer. “It turned into more of a family than just teammates,” McNelis added.
Support mattered even more when Grayson was born with two holes in his heart. “We knew about it when she [the mother] was pregnant,” he said. “I had faith that everything would be okay and he was meant to be here.”
That experience changed the way McNelis saw the world, especially the way he handled adversity. “My life perspective would not be what it is now,” he said. “How I respond to failure, adversity, everything changed.”
Arizona recruited the 6-foot-1 outfielder near the end of his JUCO career. He chose the U of A because they made him feel welcome.
“I asked the players if it felt like a family,” he said. “They told me everyone is family here.” The coaching staff also made his situation priority one. “They checked on me and Baby G even before I committed.”
“We try to recruit the best families, because everybody needs a good support system. I become their father when they come here and it helps when they come from good houses and parents that love them and support them like we do,” Arizona head coach Chip Hale said.
That support continued once he arrived on campus. McNelis’ teammates would hold Baby G during warmups in the batting cages, and coaches would ask how he is doing. When Grayson visits Tucson for a week or two at a time, the program embraces him like one of its own.
“They love Baby G,” McNelis said. “I’ll bring him to the field, and while I am stretching, they’ll be holding him, feeding him […] they’ll be showing him how to hold a baseball bat and showing how to throw a ball.”
Sleep is scarce, but McNelis gets by. When Baby G visits, McNelis’ mom stays with him to help with childcare. “I am blessed for that,” McNelis said, and when baseball begins each day, he feels the stress fade.
“When I walk through the gates of the field, it is like Disneyland for me,” he said. “I do not worry about the outside world for a couple hours.”
His goals are ambitious. He wants to win a College World Series, he wants to earn all-conference honors and he wants to reach the big leagues.
Yet more than anything, he wants his son to never give up, no matter how hard life gets.
“I just want him [Grayson] to know, don’t give up, don’t ever give up and always give your 100% effort,” McNelis said. “Life will definitely not be easy, but that doesn’t mean that it’s not testing you. God would not throw something at you if you could not beat it.”
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