Local big leaguer returning home

Special to The Jefferson Herald
CHURDAN — Nate Teut, the only high school graduate from Greene County to play Major League Baseball, returns to his hometown of Churdan on May 5 to speak on his career in baseball, his love of the game and his perspective on growing up here.

The Greene County Historical Society is hosting the program at St. Columbkille Catholic Church in Churdan, with an $8 lunch at noon. Historical society members should RSVP to their community contacts by Wednesday.

Lunch for nonmembers is available, too, for $10 and they can RSVP by calling vice president Nancy Hanaman at 515-436-7684.

The program at 1 p.m. at the church is free.

Teut, a 1994 graduate of Paton-Churdan High School who went on to play and graduate at Iowa State University, was a left-handed pitcher who had a nine-year playing career in professional baseball, most of it in the minor leagues.

In May 2002, he appeared in two games in the major leagues for the Florida Marlins, now renamed the Miami Marlins.

“Nate is the only Major League Baseball player I’ve been able to document that went to a high school in Greene County,” said Doug Rieder, of Jefferson, the sports broadcaster and writer who’s been working here for nearly 40 years.

After Teut’s playing career ended, he spent a dozen years in the business management of the Iowa Cubs, the AAA affiliate of the Chicago Cubs, in Des Moines.  He left the I-Cubs earlier this year and said he is close to finalizing a new position in central Iowa.

“You know, as much as I love baseball and all the years I’ve had in it, I also think about how I’ve never done anything else professionally,” he said. “So I feel like it’s a good thing now to see what else is out there.

“Another nice thing about doing something else would be that I’ve never had a real summer in 20 years, going back to the summer of 1995, when I played in a summer college league. Every summer since then, I’ve either been playing baseball or working in it.”

He and his wife Nicole, a native of Centralia in Dubuque County, live in Waukee and have a son Maddox, 10, and daughter Harper, 7.

Nate Teut was a sixth grader when his family moved to Churdan in 1987 from Bussey in southeast Iowa.

His father, Oran Teut, was superintendent of Paton-Churdan Schools, and his mother, Becky Teut, was a teacher.  The parents are now divorced, with Oran living in Tulsa, Okla., while Becky lives in Ankeny. Both are retired from their careers as educators.

Nate’s older sister, Tatum Buse, is now vice president of finance for Rockwell Collins in Cedar Rapids.

PCHS had its own baseball team when Nate was playing.  He began growing and filling out, on his way to eventually being 6 feet 6 inches and 225 pounds.

He simply overpowered most high school hitters.

“We were pretty good in baseball,” he said of his career with the Rockets. “In my senior year, we got beat in the substate finals. I’ve always thought we would’ve made it to the state tournament if I hadn’t run out of innings.”

The number of innings that individual pitchers can throw in a week is restricted in Iowa high school ball.

He also starred in basketball for the Rockets, and they too came up just short of the state tournament his senior year.

Teut made the Iowa State varsity team as a freshman in the spring of 1995 — in fast company.

“We were in the old Big Eight Conference back then, and I made my Big Eight debut as a freshman relief pitcher against Oklahoma State,” Teut recalled. “They brought me in with the bases loaded and no outs. I struck out two batters and somehow got out of that inning without giving up any runs.”

Three days later, he made his first start as a college pitcher against the University of Oklahoma, which had won the College World Series the summer before.

Teut had an impressive, three-year career at Iowa State, sufficiently so that in 1997, he was drafted by the Chicago Cubs — his favorite baseball team then and now.

His minor league stops were in Williamsport, Penn.; Rockford, Ill.; Daytona Beach, Fla.; Jackson, Tenn.; Des Moines; Calgary, Canada; Albuquerque; Des Moines again; Indianapolis; Nashua, N.H., and finally back in Des Moines again to close his playing career.

He spent most of 2002 with the Calgary Cannons, then the Florida Marlins’ AAA team, and it was from there in early May that he received the call-up to the major league club “for a spot start” against the Milwaukee Brewers.

Teut pitched well but was tagged with the loss and returned to Calgary.

He was called up again at the end of June and pitched in relief for the Marlins against the Philadelphia Phillies.

“As I look back on it, I wouldn’t change anything,” he said of his years as a player. “The only regret — and really it’s more of an unfulfilled dream than a regret — is that I never got to pitch at Wrigley Field in Chicago.

“I’ve always been such a huge Cubs fan, I would have loved an opportunity at Wrigley.”