Nic Ready sits in his compact dorm room at Air Force Academy, looking at a massive trophy that doubles as a siren announcement to the Baseball Nation.

“It’s basically going to be a big paperweight,” he says.

Ah, Nic, you know better than that. The shiny silver trophy, a reward for winning Sunday’s College Home Run Derby, will remind you for the next six, or seven, decades of the night you reigned as home run king. Ready launched 55 home runs, a Derby record, to edge Clemson’s Logan Davidson for the title.

This barrage comes from a player lightly recruited out of high school. Only Air Force and the Ivy League duo of Dartmouth and Columbia chased Ready. This lack of interest made little sense then, and even less now. Ready, a senior-to-be, has collected 37 home runs and 180 RBI in 164 games (almost identical to the length of a Major League season) for the Falcons. He finished seventh in the nation (and first in the Mountain West) with 20 home runs in 2018.

“I always thought I was pretty good,” Ready says as he examines his new trophy. “Maybe I wasn’t in the right place at the right time. Maybe it didn’t look like I was going to pan out. I’m glad someone gave me a shot, for sure.”

Air Force’s Mike Kazlausky – better known as Kaz — is the coach who offered that shot, believing fiercely in Ready, seeing the promise other coaches missed. On Sunday night, Kazlausky watched the Derby at his home. It was, he reports, a wild night in Monument.

Kris, Kaz’s wife, couldn’t stand the tension of Ready’s long march to the title. Too nervous to watch, she ran out of the house and then back inside every few minutes. Mick, Kaz’s son, and Kaz’s niece, Air Force cadet Brooke Drabek, watched each of Ready’s home runs.

Including the final blasts that clinched the title.

“I was yelling at the TV,” Kaz says. “I was more nervous watching that than any baseball game I’ve ever competed in.”

When Ready finally triumphed, Kaz and Kris and Mick and Brooke were leaping and shouting praise at Ready, who could not hear them because he was 609 miles away in Omaha. They didn’t care. They kept shouting, anyway.

“There was some serious joy in my house,” Kaz says.

But there was no serious surprise. Kaz has long believed in Ready. When he recruited Ready out of Jesuit Prep of Dallas, he saw a college star, a smart, focused, dedicated infielder with strong baseball bloodlines.

Nic’s father, Randy, played 13 seasons (1983-1995) in the majors as a hustling, take-his-talents-to-the-limit infielder. He was not a home run hitter, collecting only 40 home runs in 2,110 at bats. Randy was a member of the staggeringly talented 1992 Oakland A’s, a team that featured Goose Gossage, Dennis Eckersley, Rickey Henderson, Jose Canseco and Mark McGwire.

Randy serves as manager of the Florida Marlins’ Double A affiliate Jacksonville Jumbo Shrimp. (Um, yes, that’s really the nickname.)

“Nic grew up at the ballpark,” Randy says. “Nice thing about minor-league baseball, you can take your kids to work, take your kids to batting practice.”

The Jumbo Shrimp played an early doubleheader Sunday, allowing Randy to watch the Derby with his coaching staff. He watched a young man with a compact yet powerful swing and a son who has pushed himself without ceasing to become a college star.

“Watching him do his thing, that was so impressive,” Randy says. “He certainly has proved himself at the college level, and I think he most definitely can play in the professional ranks.”

Competition was impossible to avoid in the Ready household. Nic is the fifth of six brothers, which meant he tangled with the challenge all little brothers face: How to defeat the larger males who share your home.

“It was a blast,” Nic says. “It was like growing up with friends your entire life. Funny thing is, we never really fought.

“But we were always playing something out in the front yard, trying to beat each other. There was lot of testosterone in that house at the same time, and lot of injuries too. A lot of cuts, a lot of scrapes.”

Ready hopes to someday fly jets and to someday play professional baseball, too. He’s a superb student, and our nation’s college home-run emperor. Don’t bet against him.

“That’s a dream of mine,” he said. “Being a pilot would be awesome, and so would the opportunity to play professional baseball.”

On Thursday, Ready will climb into a T-53 trainer plane – “a souped-up crop duster,” he says — to fly around the academy area and maybe soar all the way to Denver. No one else in the Derby will be controlling a cockpit this week. He did not attend a big-time baseball factory. He has no regrets.

On Sunday night, Colorado Springs resident and Air Force sports fan George Nehme watched the Derby on his TV. He, like Kaz and Randy, cheered with gusto for Nic.

“His focus on that moment was just amazing,” Nehme says. “Just watching his approach and his focus, you could tell that he’s taken a lot of time and effort in what he does.”

On Monday morning at 10:30, Nehme drove to the Springs airport to pick up his daughter, Gabby, and saw Ready, freshly returned from Omaha, carrying his shiny trophy. They took a photo together, George, Nic and that silver announcement of Ready’s baseball power.

Nic laughs as he returns to those happy moments of walking around the airport carrying his trophy/paperweight.

“It was definitely turning some heads,” he says, “and I definitely wanted to show it off a little bit.

“Why not, if you got it?”

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