Behind the Biscuits: Tatem Levins
Growing up in a city as passionate about their sports teams as Philadelphia, it just seemed natural that Tatem would love sports. Tatem did grow up to love sports, in fact, he fell in love with two sports both swimming and baseball. While Tatem explains that his love was more for swimming, he did eventually decide to focus on baseball.
Tatem not heavily recruited out of high school to play college baseball, but he did finally get his opportunity. For three years of his college career Tatem played college baseball at La Salle University in Philadelphia.
“I always had a passion for baseball growing up, and when La Salle gave me the one offer to go to college and play that, I couldn’t pass that up. Being almost a walk-on there, my ambitions were pretty big going in. I wanted to play my freshman year and things happened for a reason and I ended up playing a lot. Those aspirations became a reality, and I kind of just took it and ran,” explains Tatem.
However, Tatem’s time at La Salle came to an end after his junior season when the University decided to cut their baseball program. Needing somewhere to play his senior year, Tatem entered the transfer portal and ended up on the other side of the state at Pitt.
“I was one of the fortunate ones that got to move up a level and go to the ACC and compete with those guys. It was a beautiful city I love the campus there,” says Tatem.
Tatem’s dream continued as he got a call one day from someone he thought was an insurance agent. Come to find out, it was not in fact an insurance agent, it was however an MLB scout from the Seattle Mariners.
“The Mariners weren’t really on my radar when I was going into the draft. I knew there were a few teams looking at me and there was a potential I was going to be picked. I actually saw a 267 number pop up, which is my area code where I’m from. I didn’t really recognize it as one of the scouts or guys that I was talking to. I picked up thinking it was going to be my insurance or whatever for my car, and it ended up being one of the area scouts for the Mariners who I never talked to before that. They gave me an opportunity to play professional baseball,” explains Tatem.
