When Atlantic Christian (now Barton) College ran short of catchers during the 1989 baseball season, David McDonald volunteered to help out. The freshman was a shortstop who had never caught a day in his life, but he wanted to get on the field and wasn’t getting many opportunities as a part-time middle infielder.
He started out by warming up pitchers in the bullpen before moving behind the plate, where he found his first game to be a harrowing experience.
“It was nerve-racking,” McDonald recalls. “Every time a guy swung the bat, I would close my eyes. It was the craziest thing. It’s such a different position. Even growing up, I had never caught. I had always been on the infield. It’s totally different going from that side of the field to catching. Everything’s coming at you, and it took me a couple of games just to avoid closing my eyes every time they swung.”
For a guy who had never played the position before, McDonald caught on – well – in the blink of an eye.
“The way he picked it up – I didn’t think it was possible for anybody to learn the position as quickly as he did,” said head coach Todd Wilkinson, now Barton’s director of athletics. “He became just a tremendous defensive catcher in all areas. He could receive, he could block, he could call the game.
“And his ability with his throwing release and accuracy was phenomenal. This was back when teams would really run. Mount Olive, St. Andrews, Coker – they would steal a lot of bases, but they couldn’t with David catching. He would shut them down.”
Wilkinson attributed McDonald’s quick transition to the position to the fundamentals he had already developed.
“He had been a shortstop, so he had great hands and reflexes,” Wilkinson said. “His throwing action that he already used at short was the same action he needed to use from behind the plate. He was not a tall guy, so he had this body that kept him balanced and sitting in a nice, low stance. I don’t think I ever taught him any footwork. He already had it. He had that instinct.”
Those fundamentals, McDonald said, were ingrained very early in his life, even well before a prep career at Havelock High School.
“My dad was military and my mom was Japanese, so I actually started my career in Japan playing little league over there,” he said. “That’s where my baseball roots were formed. They play it a little bit differently over there. They are a little bit more strict. Growing up in that Japanese environment, they take it very seriously, and they are all about the fundamentals – catching, throwing, running the bases. Even at a young age, that’s drilled into you. Our coaches were old-school. You ran out everything, you hustled. They taught the fundamentals so well.”
Not surprisingly, Wilkinson used the same term to describe McDonald’s play at ACC.
“David was old-school,” he said. “He played hard, played smart, put the team first. There was nothing flashy about him. He just knew how to play the game. He knew how to compete. He understood the game. He was willing to do whatever it took to help the team succeed.”
By the beginning of his sophomore season, McDonald had become ACC’s full-time catcher, and by the end of that campaign he had become an all-conference selection after batting .321 with a team-high 20 stolen bases. He also threw out more than 70 percent of would-be base stealers in his first season behind the plate.
After a junior season in which he batted .301, he capped his career with a superb senior campaign that saw him hit .357 with 37 RBI and 17 stolen bases. McDonald struck out just four times in 199 at-bats, and behind the plate continued his strong defensive play with a .965 fielding percentage.
McDonald was named the 1992 Carolinas Intercollegiate Athletic Conference Player of the Year and the Barton Kiwanis Male Athlete of the Year, and was an NAIA Honorable Mention All-American after first picking up all-conference, all-region and all-area accolades.
“On top of being an outstanding defensive catcher, David was our leadoff hitter and a great offensive player who could hit any fastball from anybody,” Wilkinson said. “He was known for that first-pitch fastball, rifling it right back at the pitcher. He had that knack for getting hits.
“He filled a weakness on some teams that had some abilities in some other places and turned it into a Hall-of-Fame strength. I mean, he had never caught before, and he became one of the all-time best to ever play the position at Barton College.”
In 2015, he joined former teammates Jeff Bock, Mark Raynor, Chuck Wilson and Stony Wine as members of the Barton College Athletic Hall of Fame.
“I was very honored to be selected,” McDonald said. “The Hall of Fame is the top of the top. It’s a club you definitely want to be in.”
“I had a great career at Barton, got a great education, met a lot of great people there,” he added. “I was very fortunate that Barton offered me a lot of opportunities, not only in sports, but outside through education as well.”
