Before the Mic, There Was the Mitt: Three Country Stars Who Were Legit Baseball Prospects

Before they were selling out arenas and stacking up number ones, these three country stars were swinging bats, throwing pitches, and chasing a completely different dream. Baseball was not a hobby for Conway Twitty, Morgan Wallen, or Jason Aldean. It was the plan. Country music was the backup.

Conway Twitty: The Phillies Had Him. The Army Got Him First.

Harold Lloyd Jenkins was born in Friars Point, Mississippi, in 1933, and grew up in Helena, Arkansas, where he discovered two obsessions: music and baseball. Both consumed him equally through high school, and by the time he graduated, he had developed into a talented enough player that the Philadelphia Phillies offered him a contract. He figured his destiny was decided.

Then fate intervened twice. First, the Army drafted him for service during the Korean War before he could sign with Philadelphia. While stationed in Japan, he kept both dreams alive by playing on the Army baseball team and forming a band called the Cimmarons that won the All-Army Talent Competition in 1954. After his discharge in 1956, the Phillies came calling again. By then, however, a young man named Elvis Presley had changed everything. Jenkins headed to Sun Studios in Memphis instead, took the stage name Conway Twitty from a map combining Conway, Arkansas, and Twitty, Texas, and went on to record 55 number one singles, a record that stood for decades. 

The Phillies never did get their man. Read his full bio on our website.

Morgan Wallen: One Elbow, One Wrong Turn, One Career

Morgan Wallen grew up in Sneedville, Tennessee, the son of a Southern Baptist pastor and a schoolteacher. His mother said he never played with toys. It was always sports. "As soon as I was old enough to move and walk, I went straight to sports," Wallen recalled. "It was basketball, baseball, football, any kind of ball."

Baseball eventually won his focus. At Gibbs High School in Knoxville, he developed into a standout pitcher and shortstop, good enough that college scouts were paying attention by his junior year. Going into his senior season, scholarship offers were beginning to materialize. Then came the elbow.

Wallen tore his ulnar collateral ligament during his senior year, the same injury that sidelines major league pitchers and requires Tommy John surgery. The college dream was gone overnight. "I was devastated," he said simply. "I was supposed to play in college, got hurt, and I went through a period where I was trying to figure out what I was going to do."

What he did was pick up a guitar and start writing songs. His mother signed him up to audition for The Voice in 2014, where he introduced himself as "just a normal small-town kid" who worked as a landscaper and had no idea how to get into music. Three number one albums and more chart records than any artist in country music history later, the elbow injury is the best thing that ever happened to country music. Get his full story on our website.

Jason Aldean: He Wanted the Braves. They Didn't Want Him. Nashville Did.

Jason Aldean grew up in Macon, Georgia, playing baseball at Windsor Academy, a private Christian school, where he became an all-district leadoff hitter good enough to attract college recruiters. He received scholarship offers and could have played college ball on a free ride. He turned them down. Not because he thought college ball was beneath him, but because he was a terrible student who had barely survived high school and had absolutely no interest in four more years of it.

What he really wanted was to be drafted by the Atlanta Braves. When draft day came and the phone did not ring, Aldean made his decision. If he could not play baseball professionally, he was done with the sport entirely. He turned his full attention to music, started playing clubs around the Southeast with his father working as his booking agent, moved to Nashville at twenty-one, and began the long grind that most country careers require.

He has never stopped loving the game. When Robin Roberts asked him in 2013 whether he would trade his country music career to play baseball, he had to genuinely think about it. "Hmm. I don't know. Maybe for a couple innings," he said. Then he looked out at the stage setup in center field at Fenway Park, where he was headlining that night, and came back to reality. "To get a chance to play these stadiums as an artist is not bad. It's not what I had in mind, but it'll definitely work." Explore his full bio on our website.

Three prospects. Three forks in the road. Three very grateful fans of country music.