Skyler Stromsmoe, Flying Squirrel

Professional baseball players come from an interesting array of backgrounds, and with some notable exceptions their stories remain a mystery to most fans. That is especially true down on the farm, which is littered with Stromsmoes.

A 27-year-old utility man currently playing with the Double-A Richmond Flying Squirrels, Skyler Emerson Stromsmoe is a long shot to make it to The Show, but his story reads like it came straight out of a sitcom.

Stromsmoe, on his name: “I have a Norwegian background. My great- grandfather moved to Minnesota and then homesteaded in Alberta. My grandfather’s name was Jerome Emerson Stromsmoe and I got my middle name from him. Skyler also comes from my family tree. My parents were looking back and saw the name Schuyler, and kind of abbreviated it.”

On where he’s from: “I grew up in Etizkom, Alberta [Canada]. It’s a really small town in the southeast corner of Alberta. When I was there it was about 60 people and now it’s about 40. My family has a ranch a mile and a half away, a purebred Hereford and Angus cattle ranch. Last summer was the 100th anniversary of the Stromsmoe Ranch.

“My hometown is very rural, but it has the Etizkom Museum, which is a world-famous windmill museum. There are windmills and an old-west room. It’s actually set up in the old Etizkom school, which closed in the mid-1980s.

“Etizkom is about 14 miles from Foremost, which is where I went to high school. I graduated with 16 kids; 14 of us were together from kindergarten through 12th grade. It was a K-12 school.”

On his baseball beginnings: “Not enough kids in the school wanted to play baseball, so I played for a rival school called Bow Island, which was about a 35-minute drive away. We played basketball and volleyball against them, but combined teams to make a baseball team. Basically, I played high school baseball under a rival team‘s colors.

“I played American Legion baseball in the Montana State League. We played teams from Great Falls, Helena, Bozeman, and Havre, along with a few from Alberta. I played for Medicine Hat, which is a city of maybe 50,000 people. That’s about 60 miles away, so there was a lot of driving. I have to give a lot of credit to my parents for taking me to all of those games and practices.

“Coming out of high school, there were a couple of small [colleges] interested. Prairie Baseball Academy, which is in Lethbridge, Alberta, was interested. They were looking at me a little bit, but I wanted to go south.”

On college ball in the States: “My coach had ties to this junior college in Kansas City, so I ended up going to Longview Community College, sight unseen. I was down there not knowing anybody and it was basically my first time out of Alberta. I was playing ball in a low-income-housing neighborhood, rooming with three of my teammates.

“I was a shortstop in junior college. When I got there I was the smallest — and had the worst arm — of the guys who were looking to play short. I thought it was going to be a long season, but it kind of weeded itself out. The guy that would have given me a run for the job dislocated his shoulder snowboarding.

“I had two good years and then got a scholarship to Southern Arkansas, which is a really good Division II program. The team is called the Mule Riders. Their coach came up and saw me play and I hit a home run, bunted for a hit and stole a base. He was probably thinking that he was getting this unbelievable player, a guy with power, and it happened to be the only home run I hit all year. Five games into my first year at Southern Arkansas, I broke a finger sliding into third base and got a medical red shirt.”

On getting to pro ball: “Between my fourth and fifth year of school, I played for the Plano Blue Sox, in the Texas Collegiate League, which is a wood-bat summer league. There was a Giants scout there named Tiny Thomas and he saw me play.

“After my senior season was over, I mentioned to my coach that the Giants scout had seen me play and maybe he could give him a call. He did and it just happened to work out that [the scout] was going to be going through Dallas, which is where my girlfriend — now my wife — is from.

“We had the tryout at her old high school baseball field. The grass was about shin high. She was videotaping as Tiny was rolling me ground balls from the grass to the edge of the dirt, and as I was hitting. We talked to him a little bit, sent the videotape in, and three days later he called. He emailed me a contract, I signed it, and they flew me to Arizona to start my professional career. That was in 2007, two weeks before the draft. I was a fifth-year free agent.”

On playing with the pros: “In the first start of my professional career, I faced Kerry Wood, who was on a rehab stint. I was up 2-0 on him, but he threw three straight strikes and struck me out. I was like, ‘What’s going on?’

“In 2009, we won the California League championship. I was on a team with Buster Posey and Madison Bumgarner. I also had an at bat against Randy Johnson in a spring training game. Things like that, I’ll always remember.

“When we were in San Jose, I used to play cards with Buster Posey before games and the loser had to shine the other guy’s cleats that day. There were times when he’d beat me and I’d shine his cleats, but there were also times I’d beat him and he’d be shining my cleats. I’d be like, ‘Hey Buster, you missed a spot.’”