More on Mark Hallberg

There are quite a few signs out there pointing to the fact that Barron grad Mark Hallberg, who is in the Arizona Diamondbacks' minor-league system, has a legitimate shot to make it the big leagues. Mike Bell, his manager with the short-season, Class A Yakima (Wash.) Bears, had nothing but good things to say about his shortstop. His statistics place him among the best in the Northwest League, and come spring training, he should get a shot to test his abilities with a higher-level Class A club. Here is some more from the coversations I had with Mark and his dad, Monti, on Sunday that didn't make Friday's edition of the Leader-Telegram. If you missed the story, you can check it out here.

Mark Hallberg
On his experience playing at the professional level:
"It was a great experience. It's what I wanted to be doing. It was my dream, and I enjoyed myself this summer in my first season of professional baseball."
On how it felt to be chose in the MLB Draft:
"Obviously, I want to make it to the major leagues, so it's just a step, but it was a day that gave me an opportunity to show the people in professional baseball what I could do."
On how much the level of play increased from playing Division I college baseball:
"It went up a little bit. There's things that in professional baseball ... The pitching goes up a little bit, and also the adjustment with wood bats."
On whether he expected his quick rise from Illinois-Chicago to Florida State and now to the Diamondbacks' organization:
"I don't think you ever think that way. You just kind of take things as they come, so inside, deep, when I went to school at UIC, getting drafted my junior year was one of my goals. But the thing is, you got to prove to everyone what you can do on a daily basis."
On why he strikes out very few times, even at the professional level:
"I've pretty much been doing the same things I've always been doing. That's one of the things for me as a baseball player: I play good defense and do the little things right to help our team win baseball games. By not striking out, it helps our team by making the pitcher work."

Monti Hallberg
On the experience of watching his son rise to the professional level:
"For the last three or four years, it's been kind of like a dream. You wake up in the morning and think, 'Is it really a dream?'"
On the amount of work Mark has put into playing baseball:
"Mark's been focused. It's been his dream for a long time. He's worked at it. People think, 'Oh, he's just born to be a good baseball player,' but they don't see the hundreds of hours of work he's put into it behind the scenes."

So far, Mark Hallberg hasn't reached a level he hasn't been able to succeed at. Bell, his manager with Yakima, thinks it's only a matter of time until Mark gets his shot in the big leagues. Only time will tell, but as of now, there's no reason to think that he can't make his dream a reality.

-Justin Harings