Alex C. Hicks Jr./alex.hicks@shj.com | Order a reprint

The small scar below Joseph Moorefield’s left eye serves as a reminder of his rough-and-tumble past. The 6-foot-3 senior southpaw at Byrnes says he picked it up in a “childhood scuffle.”

Moorefield admits that up until a few years ago, he was running with the wrong crowd.

He never shied away from a fight or even an occasional beer.

“I was partying a little too much,” he said.

“I guess I was kind of ... a troubled kid. I was kind of that star player who never was on track, always hanging around the wrong people.”

The gifted hurler is back in command of his promising career these days.

Thanks to some tough love from Rebels coach Chris Carter, Moorefield is headed to Clemson on a baseball scholarship.

Things are going so well for him that a shot at a Major League career isn’t out of the question.

Moorefield credits Carter with helping him see the light.

“He pretty much straightened my life out when he got (to Byrnes in 2005),” Moorefield said.

“Baseball is my meal ticket, something I can do better than anything else. I’m not the valedictorian of my school or anything like that, and Clemson’s definitely not recruiting me for its engineering program.”

Be yourself

Moorefield’s tone is one of remorse and enlightenment.

He’s a young man who realized his lifestyle wasn’t much different from many teenagers, but he understood a kid with such a promising future had to conduct himself differently than his classmates.

Carter, who played at Clemson and was selected in the 30th round of the 1993 MLB Draft, saw a lot of himself in Moorefield.

“Joe was without a doubt a lost kid,” Carter said.

“I assured him of the people he was running with, he had the most to lose. He had the chance to be given an opportunity the other kids weren’t going to be afforded. The biggest loser was going to be Joe because the others had nothing at stake. I think he was trying to gain social acceptance from the crowd when simply being Joe Moorefield was good enough.”

Well-mannered and modest now, Moorefield addresses strangers as “sir” almost to a fault.

He often speaks to his coach in a reverential manner, calling him one of his heroes and a second father on the field.

“My parents did everything in the world to try to straighten me out, but I didn’t listen because I knew they would always love me no matter what I did,” Moorefield said. “Coach Carter said he’d take baseball away, and I hated him for it. I was still cocky and felt he needed me.

“He made me realize that if I wanted to play baseball, my grades and behavior would have to come first. He had the power to take the game I love away from me. He told me that they could go on without me. I think he was trying to open my eyes, and that’s exactly what he did.”

Moorefield’s 2008 numbers certainly suggest so.

He’s 5-0 with a mind-boggling 0.54 ERA. He’s allowed just two earned runs and 11 hits in 26 innings, while striking out 43 and walking only eight.

He pitched a complete-game, four-hit shutout in Monday’s 5-0 win against Boiling Springs, striking out 13 and walking just two.

Straight shooter

Carter remembers the first time he saw Moorefield as a lanky youngster.

Instead of introducing himself, Moorefield was there to confess to his new coach that he hadn’t been taking care of business in the classroom. Carter said change didn’t happen overnight.

“At first, he thought the things I had to say to him were suggestions,” Carter said.

The Byrnes coach refused to sugarcoat anything.

He knew if Moorefield wanted to play at a Division I college and get drafted, the road ahead was not going to be easy.

Moorefield got a glimpse of the other talent that was out there and suddenly realized that while there may not be many 6-foot-3 left-handers with four pitches — including a fastball in the upper 80s — in the Upstate, there were plenty nationwide.

Talent realized

The hardest part of making a big change in his life was delicately parting with the circle of friends he’d known his whole life.

“The guys I was running with I’d known since I was 3 or 4 years old, and I couldn’t just never talk to them again,” Moorefield said. “I couldn’t completely separate myself because I’d feel like a (jerk). It was like, when I see you, I’ll see you. I’m not going to party anymore. You do your thing, I’ll do mine.

“I can’t ever forget where I came from, but I began to realize how much ability I had, and (Coach Carter) kind of brought that into perspective. Probably between 10th and 11th grade is when I decided there’s a possibility I can get drafted and make a living playing this game or at least get college paid for. I never realized before I could do that.”

That realization has apparently reached reality.

Playing ball at Clemson appears to be a done deal, and the June draft could provide other options.

Moorefield says he has received correspondence from several major league clubs with questionnaires, tests and information on local scouts. He acknowledges it will take “a lot” to lure him away from Clemson.

“But it’s definitely a question I’ll have to answer when that day comes,” he said.