Benjamin Hill travels the nation collecting stories about what makes Minor League Baseball unique. This excerpt from his newsletter -- which he reported on from Lansing, Mich., on Aug. 27 -- is one of those stories. Read the full newsletter here, and subscribe to his newsletter here.

Mitch Myers, a pitcher in the Athletics organization, has pinpoint control and excels at hitting his target. If he didn’t have these skills, he wouldn’t have risen to the level he’s at now: Monkey Ball virtuoso.

Baseball players “can’t do anything too strenuous” in their free time, Myers explains, so this leads to “a lot of video games. It brings the guys together.”

Myers’ game of choice is, yes, Monkey Ball (or, to refer to it by its full name, Super Monkey Ball). The Alabama native, drafted by the A’s in 2021 out of the University of Pittsburgh, spent the bulk of the last two seasons with the High-A Lansing Lugnuts. Over the course of his professional career Myers has established himself as a Monkey Ball force to be reckoned with, but probably not to the extent that he ever thought he’d be interviewed about it.

But why not? It was a late August evening at Lansing’s Jackson Field, and the tarp was covering the playing surface following a brief yet intense thunderstorm. This writer was looking for people to talk to, so Lugnuts broadcaster Jesse Goldberg-Strassler -- ever knowledgeable when it comes to his team’s players and their idiosyncrasies -- suggested chatting with Myers about Monkey Ball. So, there we were, doing just that, standing in the tunnel separating the dugout from the clubhouse. Life is unpredictable sometimes.

“Monkey Ball, it’s a video game that came out with GameCube,” said Myers, who made two appearances for Triple-A Las Vegas at the end of the season and then went on to the Arizona Fall League. “Basically, the original games are stages. You’re a little monkey in a ball. You roll around the stage and there’s obstacles, tilts and stuff, and you have to get to the goal.”

Perhaps echoing his cerebral approach on the mound, Myers particularly excels at the Monkey Ball games within the game.

“There are a bunch of mini-games,” he said. “You go online and try to get the top score you can. With Monkey Target, you’re still the monkey. You go on a big ramp. You open up, you got wings, you control your way through the air, and you land on a target. So, that’s what I was No. 2 in the world at doing.”

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No. 2 in the world! It’s no surprise, then, that Myers generally dominates when he plays Monkey Ball against his teammates. He does concede, however, that there are those “who sometimes beat me.”
“Danny Bautista, he’s pretty skilled at the game. Jake Watters [recently traded to Tampa Bay], he played a lot with me because we were roommates. He got decent. But it was Jose Dicochea who might have been the second-best player.”

Myers talks about Monkey Ball with a mix of enthusiasm and sheepishness, no doubt surprised that he was being asked questions about it in the first place. Lest anyone come to the conclusion that he was some sort of Monkey Ball savant, he ultimately decided to downplay his accomplishments.

“Shoot, man, it’s not a super mainstream game so I can’t take too much credit because there aren’t too many players. But the kids who grew up on it, like I did, and then got it again? I can beat those guys.”