The biggest game of Marcus Stroman's life is the next one. Or it was the last one.
Or maybe it was the one he pitched against Steven Matz back in 2009, when they were high school seniors dueling on Long Island.
Matz was the big prospect, sure to be a high pick in that June's draft (he went to the New York Mets in the second round). Stroman, his talented but undersized opponent, knew it.
That day, Stroman matched Matz, strikeout for strikeout. Matz fanned 12. He fanned 14.
"It was like he was saying, "I'm going to show them they really should be looking at me,'" said one of the 40 or 50 major league scouts in attendance that day. "That's the game that put him on the map."
He's on the map today, for sure. He's pitching again Monday for the Toronto Blue Jays, pitching again in a game the Jays absolutely need to win. They're down two games to none in the American League Championship Series, and they need a big performance from the same 24-year-old kid they turned to in their must-win Game 5 last week against the Texas Rangers.
"He's the perfect guy for it," Blue Jays manager John Gibbons said at a Sunday press conference.
He's the guy who gets overlooked at first, because he's only 5'8". He's the guy you soon realize is much bigger than that, not by tape measure but by the way he acts.
"He's a 5'8" kid who thinks he's 6'5"," said Larry Izzo, who has scouted Long Island for three decades (and signed Matz for the Mets). "I told him you'll be a model for young kids. He said, 'Fine, but I'm 6'5".'"
He's using his height to his advantage now after getting a trademark on the "HDMH" slogan he has put on clothing.
"Stands for 'Height Doesn't Measure Heart,'" Stroman explained. "It's kind of being the small guy in the room growing up and being able to overcome stereotypes. You don't have to be 6'2", 6'4", 6'5" to do anything in the world."
You just need talent, and you just need to believe. Stroman has it, and does it—and he always has.
"I would say he has a lot of confidence," Matz said this weekend at Citi Field. "He's always had that confidence about him."
The two have known each other since they were nine or 10 years old. They were high school rivals but summer teammates and sometimes roommates. They follow each other's careers closely to this day, and they both know well they could meet up again in the World Series.
They've been through a lot since that game in 2009 (Matz's Ward Melville team won 1-0). Matz fought injuries to make it through the minor leagues. Stroman went to Duke, became a first-round draft pick and a 23-year-old rookie and then tore up his knee in a spring training drill this year.
The Blue Jays said at the time Stroman would miss the season, but he told them he'd be back. He did his rehab in Durham, North Carolina, so he could finish his degree at Duke, but he never gave up on the idea of returning and impacting this season's team.
And when he followed through on the promise and returned in September, he only impressed his Blue Jays bosses that much more.
Larry Izzo wasn't surprised.
Izzo knew the Stroman family, and he knew what Marcus could do. Besides scouting him in baseball, he refereed basketball games Stroman played in.
"He could shoot, and he could dribble," Izzo said.
He had the same drive to succeed that showed up the day he pitched against Matz—the same drive the Blue Jays saw all summer and the baseball world saw in Game 5 last week.
"What you see on the mound now is what you saw in high school," Izzo said. "He hasn't changed at all."
Only the stage has changed. Instead of 40 or 50 scouts, there will be nearly 50,000 fans at the Rogers Centre on Monday night.
It won't matter to Stroman.
"The bigger the crowd, the bigger the moment," he said Sunday. "[And] I feel like I'm able to put myself in a position that I excel better."
He's ready for this. He's been ready for it since those days on Long Island.
Just don't tell him he's 5'8".
Danny Knobler covers Major League Baseball as a national columnist for Bleacher Report.
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