The problem isn’t that Denham Kozy cares about baseball.
The problem for the 2023 Munster graduate is that he sometimes cares too much.
“At the end of the day, it’s a game, and I’m not going to let a baseball game ruin my day,” Kozy said. “I just need to go out there, have some fun and try not to care so much. When I start playing a little more careless, I start having more success.”
Kozy is experiencing some of that success as one of the biggest bats in the middle of the lineup for the Lake County Corn Dogs this summer. After driving in three runs during the Corn Dogs’ 10-4 win against the Pumas in Crown Point on Thursday, Kozy is tied for the team lead with 20 RBIs, has a team-high four home runs and is third on the team with a .508 slugging percentage.
Lake County manager Justin Huisman said Kozy’s power numbers have come in bunches.
“Denham is streaky, and he has sneaky power,” Huisman said. “He’ll just get into a pitch all of a sudden and it’ll go a long way. He’s got the tools and the power. It’s just about getting consistency with his swing, and a lot of that is more mental than anything else.”
Kozy experienced plenty of mental challenges during his freshman season in the junior college program at John A. Logan in Southern Illinois.
“I was told when I went there that I’d have an opportunity to be a starter, but I didn’t think about all the transfers who were coming in,” Kozy said. “We had a Central Florida left fielder, a Purdue center fielder and a Louisville right fielder.”
Kozy got just 11 at-bats at Logan, although he did tally four hits, four runs and four RBIs. He’s hoping for more playing time at Morton, a junior college program in Cicero, Illinois. At Morton, Kozy will be reunited with best friend and Corn Dogs teammate Joey Russo.
Kozy calls Russo his “hitting instructor” and attributes some of his success for the Corn Dogs (22-7-1) to the time they’ve spent together since their college seasons ended.
“We worked on a lot of things when I came back, and I started getting more on time with pitchers,” Kozy said. “I was getting my A swing off and was having a lot of success with it.”
Russo laughed at the “hitting instructor” tag at first, saying the only other time he’d heard Kozy use it was at a graduation party, when Kozy sent an aspiring baseball player in search of hitting lessons to Russo. But as Russo discusses what he and Kozy have been working on together, the label becomes increasingly accurate.
“We’ve worked on slowing down and being more direct to the baseball,” Russo said. “A lot of the time, he has a problem with cutting his swing off. It’s not a terrible thing, and you can get away with it, but you’ll hit a line drive through the 5-6 hole when you could’ve hit a long line drive into the gap.”
Kozy has also worked on filling out his 5-foot-11, 180-pound frame.
“I need to focus on the physical side of things too,” he said. “I need to get faster, and I need to put on weight. I have four home runs right now, but with a little more weight and a little more power, I could have more.”
Kozy has a plan for that, as well, although it may challenge his personal budget.
“It’s going to be quite the journey,” he said. “I just got a job, and I’ve been spending a lot of my money on food. I’ve definitely been eating a lot, but I guess I need to eat more because I’m not gaining any weight right now.”
Dave Melton is a freelance reporter.
