Twelve Questions With Former Behrend Lion Chad Zurat

ERIE, Pa. - Former Penn State Behrend Baseball team standout and current professional baseball player in the Colorado Rockies organization Chad Zurat, took time to answer a few questions from his former head coach Paul Benim.

How has your spring training experience in Arizona with the Rockies been thus far?

It's been going very well, enjoying the weather and the opportunity to play baseball every day.

You mentioned you pitched in a game early in spring training. Do they limit your pitches, require you to throw certain pitches, or do they just let you go at hitters?

They limited pitch counts and wanted mostly fastball dominate outings, but we could throw our secondary stuff and they encouraged aggressively attacking the strike zone low.

Did you get to select a warm-up song last year? If so or if not, and you could, what might this year's beat be?

I wasn't able to choose one last year but of course I'm going to stick with "Feel The Beat" by Darude.

Pitchers often get a bad rap for being space cadets, different, unique, and just plain odd. Based on your experiences in pro ball, do you think that's appropriate or that pitchers are just misunderstood, and still can rake at the plate if given the opportunity?

This is a great question because pitchers have to be different then everybody else. Sometimes we only get a chance every couple of days to throw one inning and are expected to be unbothered by previous outings whether it's good or bad. We are very unique with each of our approaches to the game.  I have seen some pitchers that can swing it. I'm definitely not one of them.

Speaking of hitting. How is your bat playing now-a-days? Your bunting skills? Would Behrend coach Butch Kemling be impressed?

Let's just say my batting practice swing still drops bombs. However, any type of good hard fastball or curveball, I won't touch it. Coach Kemling would just laugh at me in the box.

What do you miss most about Behrend?

I definitely don't miss the snow, but I do really miss playing with all the former teammates.  Those were great times and great seasons. Nothing beats piling up.

What is your best memory about playing baseball at Penn State Behrend?

Well I have to mention two moments because they were great memories.  In the 2013 AMCC championship game, in the top of the eighth inning, I spiked a curveball that bounced off Buko's chest protector and kicked towards our dugout. The runner on third tried to score but Buko got to the ball, turned and threw a perfect ball to me and we tagged the runner out to end the inning. That leads into my other memory which was piling up on our home field on our pitchers mound.

Clearfield-Erie-Oregon, please rank them. Be careful, mom may read this.

Oregon is first, Erie is second, and Clearfield is last. Sorry mom.

On twitter (@czlong12) you mention you are a professional food taster, excellent listener of music and how you hate birds. Please elaborate.

Well I am willing to taste any kind of food especially if it is cherry pie. I love cherry pie and a good rack of ribs. My professional tasting opinion is Applebee's has the best ribs. You got to give them a try if you haven't before. I'm not sure anybody listens to as much music as me either. I'll listen to just about anything too. Birds, I just hate them. It just seems like they get so much louder in the mornings before my alarm goes off.

Who is the coolest famous MLB person you have meet?

Well this offseason I had the opportunity to work out with and get to know Matt Adams.  He's a great guy, and a tremendously hard worker.

Pitching in the minor leagues or sitting in accounting class with Dr. Chuck Brown? We could leave Chuck's name off this if it helps you answer.

For how much fun I had in cost accounting with Dr. Brown, I got to say I wouldn't trade pitching in the minors for anything.

Did you get to select #55 last year or #88 this spring? How do they go about assigning numbers?

I didn't get to select either number. Last year 55 was the jersey they issued me and the 88 was in my locker when I got here for spring training. I'm just happy to be able to put on the jersey, I do not care about what number it is.