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Two-sport player gives Dragons a boost

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By Marc Katz, Staff Writer 1:43 AM Wednesday, May 27, 2009

DAYTON — Whatever he was playing — baseball or football — is what Andrew Means liked to play.

“Whatever sport was going on at the time, that’s what I liked,” said Means, who played both at Indiana University. “I signed with the Reds to play baseball, but I wanted to see what would happen in the football draft. I didn’t get drafted, so I went back to baseball.

“I’m OK with that. A bunch of teams called me as a (football) free agent, but I still had my contract with the Reds.”

And the Reds last week assigned Means to the Dragons. He was in the lineup Tuesday night, May 26, even though he wasn’t going to be able to overcome three Wisconsin homers in a 7-2 Timber Rattlers victory over the Dragons at Fifth Third Field.

“We’re still in a good frame of mind,” said Dragons manager Todd Benzinger, who brought the team home from an 8-2 road trip. “We’ll return to good baseball on this homestand.”

One of the reasons is Means, who has played in six games and is hitting .263, including a hit against Wisconsin. Although he didn’t score, he made it to third on base-running skills.

“He runs like what he is, a Big Ten football player,” Benzinger said of the 6-foot-1, 215-pounder. “I’m coaching third, and when I see him coming, I back up a step.”

Means, from Avon Lake, near Cleveland, was a dual-sport star at IU, where he played the outfield on the baseball team and receiver on the football team.

He played three years of each sport, but had also had a football redshirt year he opted not to take after the Reds drafted him in the 11th round last summer and paid him fourth-round money (in the $200,000 range) so he’d sign.

He played one more year of football after a partial season at Billings, Mont., playing baseball.

“I went to spring training this year, then left to go home and work out,” Means said. “I also had a tryout with the Browns, and had a lot of interviews with other teams on the telephone.”

On draft day, he wasn’t called, until the draft was over.

“I had another year of football at Indiana, but I was going to play baseball if I wasn’t drafted,” Means said. “Several teams called me about signing a football free agent contract, but I didn’t want to do that.”

Dragons tales

Infielder Jose Gualdron (.205, 1 home run, 9 RBIs) was put on the disabled list with a strained hamstring and Taiwan native Yen-Wen Kuo was moved to the Dragons from Sarasota, where he was 0-for-3 in one game.

Kuo, only 20, will initially be used as a utility player (mostly second and short) and was not in Tuesday’s lineup.