On the outside, he was living the dream. He had just completed a collegiate career on a full baseball scholarship at the school he had grown up adoring. He had been drafted by the Cleveland Indians and was pitching in their minor league system.
But on the inside, he was fighting himself with every pitch. Something just didn’t feel right. So he walked away from his dream, and turned to a career in the banking industry, where he eventually became a bank president.
No, it’s not your typical career path. But it’s the one Kent Maggard took. And even though it’s unusual, it’s still a success story.
Between the baseball diamond and the board room, Maggard has learned how to lead and motivate people. It’s a message that he has taken to audiences around the country, using stories from both sides of his unique career.
Maggard was an unheralded pitcher out of Norwell High School in Ossian, Ind., just outside of Fort Wayne. Norwell was a small school and Maggard, a three-sport athlete with tremendous pitching talent, had gone unnoticed by collegiate scouts, until a tryout camp for the Cincinnati Reds in 1981 put him firmly in the spotlight.
“My life literally changed in the matter of a week,” Maggard recalled. “I went from being on no one’s radar to being on everyone’s radar. I had more college scholarship offers than I could count.”
Maggard ultimately chose Purdue, the school he’d been a fan of since his early childhood.
In his very first pitching appearance at Purdue, though, something changed. He was tense, and the team’s assistant coach came out and told him to relax a bit.
“So I loosened my grip and the ball goes about halfway to the backstop,” Maggard recalled. “Well, the next pitch, I figured I needed to tighten my grip a little bit and it gets about halfway there. And from then on, you start thinking about grip and where the ball is going to go, and I was done. It happened that quickly.”
Maggard had gone from prized pitching prospect to overanalyzing every aspect of his release, fighting an internal mental battle with every outing.
It was a battle he fought for four seasons. He wound up being drafted in the 12th round of the 1986 Major League Baseball free agent draft by the Cleveland Indians, although not before earning his bachelor’s degree in supervision.
He spent his rookie season in the minor leagues as a member of the Batavia Indians in the New York-Penn League. He began the year as a starting pitcher, then moved to the bullpen where he closed out games. But the internal battle never went away.
“I knew what I was capable of doing. I just couldn’t do it,” he said. “Talk about being trapped. It’s a tough thing to go through. It really is.”
So, after completing his rookie season, returning to training camp the following year and deciding that nothing had changed, he walked away from the game.
He returned to Indiana and got a job in a local bank. That led to a banking career that he says was purely an accident.
“I was getting exposed to new things, learning and in a role that allowed me to learn a lot about how money worked,” he said.
After quickly rising up the ladder and becoming an officer at a good bank in just a couple of years, Maggard went to a summer recreation league baseball game and picked up a ball. It was the first time he’d done so since he walked away from his professional career. And it felt right again. Just like his days back at Norwell High.
So, with the blessing of his bank supervisors, Maggard worked out for a pitching coach in the St. Louis Cardinals organization and received an invite to Spring Training, where he eventually signed a AA contract. He had the opportunity to pitch games at the AA and AAA levels and was performing at the level he had always believed he could.
“I was throwing the ball great, getting people out with ease,” he said. “Baseball was fun again.”
But it was 1990. Major League Baseball owners had locked out major league players. Once the lockout ended, and those players returned, a number of minor leaguers had to be cut from the organization. Maggard ended up being one of those players. As quickly as his career had resumed, it was over.
But Maggard said he had no regrets of his short-lived return.
“I went home with a pretty good feeling about what I had done, that I had at least answered some questions for myself,” he said.
He returned to the banking industry where he worked for more than 20 years and held numerous titles, including that of community president at a large Midwest regional bank.
Maggard now lives in Fort Wayne, with his wife, Karen, and their children, Loren, Ross and Delaney.
In 2012, Maggard became president and CEO of Maggard Business Advisors, Inc. He entertains audiences by speaking on various topics, primarily focusing on motivation and leadership.
“We laugh a lot and think a lot,” Maggard said of his presentations. “But in the end, participants leave a little better educated on motivation and leadership.”