Steele has unique hometown All-Star connection

CHICAGO -- When baseball is referred to as the American pastime, Justin Steele believes that is just about the best way to describe growing up in his hometown. Steele cracked a smile on a recent morning, sitting in a big league dugout and reflecting back to those days in Lucedale, a small town deep in southern Mississippi.

Steele said his grandmother would come out into the backyard sometimes and toss him pitches. His grandfather would come in shouting when all those baseballs the Steele boys lost in the tall grass chewed up the lawnmower. He and his older brother, Jordan, were constantly competing against one another.

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“If you go back to our old house,” Steele said, “there’s still probably a fence post that’s still beat to hell and back from me and him just beating it with a bat, working on our swing.”

Steele has been thinking back a lot lately, given that he was named to the National League All-Star team for the first time in his career. He made the Senior Circuit’s squad along with shortstop Dansby Swanson and fellow starter Marcus Stroman, who have each experienced All-Star nods in the past.

For the Cubs, Steele’s inclusion was a point of pride, considering the winding road he took to Chicago’s rotation since being selected in the fifth round of the 2014 Draft. Steele faced injury setbacks -- Tommy John surgery among them-- tested the big league waters as a reliever, and finally grew into a top-tier starter across the last two seasons.

“There’s so many people in this organization who should be proud,” Cubs pitching coach Tommy Hottovy said.

There are also plenty of proud folks down in Lucedale, especially given the strong connection the Cubs have to their community of fewer than 3,000 people.

The most recent Cubs pitcher to start an All-Star Game for the NL was Claude Passeau in 1946. Passeau was born in Mississippi and was a prominent businessman and farmer in Lucedale. Steele pitched for George County High School on Claude Passeau Sr. Field, and is good friends with the pitcher’s grandson.

Passeau pitched for the Cubs from 1939-47, made five All-Star teams for the ballclub and tossed a one-hit shutout for Chicago in Game 3 of the 1945 World Series. That was the last Fall Classic the Cubs appeared in until winning it all in 2016 (shortly after Steele wrapped up his season with South Bend in the Midwest League).

“I’ve got a picture on my phone of me wearing his jersey,” Steele said. “It was a big deal back home when I got Drafted by the Cubs. It’s a really small town in Mississippi. It’s funny how the universe works like that. How small things come together like that.”

After a quality start against the Brewers in his final outing of the first half, Steele walked off the mound at American Family Field with a 2.56 ERA in 16 starts. In 91 1/3 innings, the lefty had one of the stingiest rates of home runs allowed per nine innings (0.39) in the Majors, while logging 81 strikeouts and 19 walks.

Asked when he felt Steele really turned a corner, Cubs veteran Kyle Hendricks pointed back to an outing in 2021. On May 4 that season, when Steele was coming out of the bullpen, he entered in the eighth inning of a tie game against the Dodgers. The lefty held L.A. in check, ending with a strikeout and celebrating boisterously as he left the field.

“He was not scared at all,” Hendricks said.

For Hottovy, he felt Steele’s turning point arrived midway through the ‘22 season.

Yes, there was the well-documented advice from veteran Jon Lester that helped convince Steele to pound right-handed batters inside. But more than that bit of transformational insight, Hottovy saw a young pitcher taking ownership of his routine and drills and becoming a pitching coach’s dream.

“When he started doing some of that,” Hottovy said, “he really started feeling what his body was doing and how to control it. And then he started seeing things take off.”

Since the start of June of last season, Steele has turned in a 2.32 ERA that ranks second in baseball to only Max Fried among pitchers with at least 150 innings. Steele has done it with primarily a two-pitch mix, leaning on a wipeout slider and a fastball that has a variety of late cut-and-ride movement.

“There’s a lot of looking back on the work he’s put in,” Cubs manager David Ross said. “To watch that transpire, and to watch him continue to grow, I’m just happy I’ve got a front-row seat, because he’s really, really good and I think he’s going to be good for a long time.”

Steele has been doing a lot of that looking back this week, too.

“It’s flown by,” he said. “You just have to trust the process, trust the journey. It’s something I can’t really put into words. It’s a lot of hard work, a lot of hours put into this to be in this position now, getting my first All-Star Game in the big leagues. It’s something I’ll never forget.”