Garcia continues to chase his baseball dreams at Houston

Former Enterprise High School standout baseball player Santiago “Santi” Garcia decided to transfer to the University of Houston for his senior season this year as he continues to chase his dreams on the diamond.

Garcia graduated from Alabama State University last year, where he was one of the best players in all of the Southwestern Athletic Conference (SWAC) during his career there. Garcia was first-team All-SWAC in both 2019 and 2021 and all-region in both of those seasons. He was also the Preseason SWAC Player of the Year in 2020 and 2021. He helped guide the Hornets to two SWAC Championships, as well.

In 2021, Garcia boasted a .324 batting average with 11 home runs, 43 RBIs, 38 runs and 15 doubles at the plate. Defensively, Garcia was just as efficient earning a .986 fielding percentage with 136 putouts and eight assists from his position at catcher.

Ultimately, after such a successful career at ASU, Garcia decided to look for a new challenge for his final year of eligibility.

“I spent my four years at Alabama State and I’m eternally grateful to my coaches, the whole coaching staff at ASU, to allow me to live my dream of playing college baseball for those first four years,” Garcia said. “Ultimately, I wanted to try a bigger challenge and challenge myself against some bigger competition and playing on a more national stage in the process. Houston made me feel like they were family and it just felt like home to me.”

Garcia said that the biggest memories he built at ASU comes from the relationships he built there more than anything that happened on the field.

“Honestly, the relationships I built with the coaching staff and my teammates are something I’ll take with me forever,” Garcia emphasized. “There are guys that are still there that I talk to on a regular basis and even guys that were there when I was a freshman that I still talk to.

“All the success there was great and baseball brought me many blessings in that sense, but the things I’ll remember most was the relationships I built with individuals over the years there.”

Garcia worked his way into the lineup with the Cougars as the season went on in 2022 but said the goal is fairly simple at UH.

“(The season) has been going great, we hit a bit of a hot streak and we’re hoping to keep it going,” he said. “We’re trying to a win a championship here, that’s the ultimate goal and I want to do everything I can to help make that a reality.” 

Garcia was the hero in the first two games of the AAC Tournament last week with four hits in the opener to lead the Cougars to a 10-7 win over Wichita State followed up by a walk-off RBI single for an 8-7 win over Memphis to advance to the semifinals of the tournament.

Houston fell to East Carolina in the championship game on Sunday after deafeating UCF in the semi-final. Garcia had six RBIs in the tournament as a designated hitter and was named to the AAC All-Tournament team.

Garcia has dreams past college, both as a player and after his playing career, but said that his focus remains on this season.

“Anyone that plays this game has (major league) aspirations and as much as I would love to do that, to win a championship here I can’t focus on anything that’s further down the road like that,” he said. “You just have to take it day by day and ultimately, if God has that in store for me then I would love for it to happen.

“I’m not going to try and rush anything or think too far into the future, though. I just have to do my job and do whatever I can to help the Cougars win.”

Garcia graduated from Alabama State with a Bachelor’s of Science in Interdisciplinary Studies with a focus on coaching and psychology. He was a four-year member of the Dean’s List at ASU and was a member of the All-Academic Team in the SWAC in each of his four years at ASU.

“I would like to stay in baseball and become a coach, ultimately,” Garcia said of life after baseball. “That’s the reason I went down that path and I hope to stay in the sport in that regard, in the future.”

Garcia was a star catcher at Enterprise High School during his prep days as an all-state catcher. His senior year he was named captain and wore the No. 8 jersey the EHS baseball program began wearing to honor the eight victims of the 2007 tornado that ravaged the city. Garcia said the new facilities the school has built for the baseball and softball programs have made him proud.

“Coach (Matt) Whitton has sent me some pictures and I got a chance to go see it when they were building it,” Garcia said of the facilities. “It’s a first class facility and is very deserving for that program.

“I know how much work the coaches and the rest of the staff there at EHS put into it and how much the fans and the community enjoy coming and supporting the program. I know what it all entails, so I’m very proud to have been a part of that program and for them to have that makes me very happy, because it is something that’s been very deserving for a very long time.”