It was a beautiful Sunday afternoon for baseball at Nashville’s E.S. Rose Park.
The temperature reached 60 degrees as parents, fans and girlfriends poured into the small college ballpark to catch the 2022 opening series’ final game between the University of Toledo Rockets and the Belmont University Bruins.
Batting at clean-up, but leading off in the fifth for the Bruins is the 24-year-old graduate student who wears No. 28 on his back.
As the 6’ 3’’ veteran walks up to the batter’s box, Elvis Presley’s voice echoes throughout the park from the stadium speakers — “We can’t go on together / with suspicious minds / And we can’t build our dreams / with suspicious minds.”
In his last two at-bats, the third baseman from Franklin, Tennessee walked and flied-out, making him 0-1 on the day.
Seeking redemption as he steps into the box, he focuses and goes through his pre-pitch routine.
Working from the wind-up, Toledo pitcher Jordan Power delivers as No. 28 begins to swing but suddenly pulls back.
In the zone, strike one.
He steps out of the box, takes in a deep breath and slowly lets it out.
After Power’s next three pitches result in balls, ahead in the count, the batter gets ready to swing away.
The Rockets know exactly who they’re dealing with, though. They shift their infield as the outfield, consisting of Scott Mackiewicz, John Sevello and Zach Swartzenberger, stands ready to vacuum anything their way.
From the batter’s box, No. 28 glares at Power and finally allows his swing to follow through.
“There’s a ball hit toward left centerfield, long way to go for this one for Mackiewicz and he won’t get there,” Belmont faculty athletics representative Rich Tiner announces over the radio broadcast.
“That ball’s gone!”
At the smack of the bat, the crowd erupts.
“Over the 375 sign, Logan Jarvis makes it a 3-0 ballgame.”
Logan Jarvis.
The man who had a huge athletic ambition when arriving at college, but also found a whole slate of new opportunities.
“When I got here I kinda thought, ‘Man, I’ll come in here. I’ll tear it up. And I’ll be gone in three years,’ which is like, looking back, super naive and super egotistical, but it was really the path I wanted to take,” Jarvis said. “I wanted to be drafted after my junior year and be on my way to the big leagues.”
“And, man, my freshman year, I got here and just found out there was a lot for me to learn.”
Playing his senior season at Franklin High School in 2016, Jarvis found himself listed as a high honorable mention in the 2016 Rawlings-Perfect Game preseason All-American list just before he battled the then-Rebels to a 8-1 playoff victory against Dickson County High.
Ranking No. 20 in the class of ‘16 state prospects, Jarvis decided to further his career in Nashville as a Belmont Bruin.
But it wasn’t just his game that influenced this decision.
Not only was his father, Dave Jarvis, the head coach of the team, but he also had a second passion in mind.
“I didn’t know if I wanted to study music, but I didn’t want to do anything else,” Jarvis said. “Getting ready to take the ACT, I had to mark what major I wanted to pursue, you know, and there were probably 68 majors, or something like that, and I didn’t like any of them.”
“I really, sincerely did not want to do any of those things and that was the only one where I was like, you know, ‘Music-related? Ok, that would be cool,’” he said.
Growing up near Music City, Jarvis took an interest in music from a young age and regularly wrote lyrics and poems throughout his childhood.
But when his high school buddy began working for radio and television personality Bobby Bones on “The Bobby Bones Show,” Jarvis was fascinated by the opportunity.
“That kind of woke me up to the fact that I was living right here, like, it’s right on my doorstep if I want to be involved in this world,” Jarvis said. “So one of my friends in high school, we would be sitting around and he’d always be playing guitar, and I had him show me a few chords. I was like, ‘Man, I need to learn how to do this.’”
So with the music filling his mind, Jarvis puts extra care into choosing the right walk up song for game days.
“When I’m picking walk-ups, I like to pick country ones, for sure. I try to pick a song everybody hasn’t heard 10,000 times already and if I don’t get tired of it, that’s probably the one I’m gonna pick,” he said.
His first one was “Missing” by William Michael Morgan.
His second? “Dancing Queen” by ABBA.
Other years consisted of country songs by Cody Johnson, Morgan Wallen and his friend Hayden Coffman.
But this year, it’s Elvis.
“So I started reading a book about him during COVID and I’ve been reading it ever since. I just think he’s a fascinating guy and so I’ve gotten into his music, too,” Jarvis said.
Apart from studying music in college, Jarvis had his fair share of performing as a bass in his high school choir with his little brother Jackson and two of his then-teammates.
“Chamber choir, as it was called, so shout-out to Ms. Fehrman for even letting us be there because we did not belong at all,” Jarvis said. “We were complete distractions, but I guess we gave her enough for, like, a bass and tenor section.”
Jarvis praises his parents for raising him and his brothers to always show respect for their teachers and authority figures.
“Ms. Fehrman, I remember she had all three of the brothers in her class at one point, me and my two brothers, and we talked about how all three of us at times would cross the line, but we all knew where the line was,” Jarvis said.
For Jarvis, that line runs through Middle Tennessee.
“I loved being from Franklin then, and I love being from Franklin now. I don’t think it’s a perfect place, but I think it was the perfect place for me to grow up,” he said.
It was in Franklin where Jarvis developed a deep passion for baseball.
“Twelve-year-old state championship, I don’t think I’ll ever forget it,” Jarvis said. “It was all of the kids from our neighborhood. All the kids that grew up playing ball together at our fields in Grassland, all together for the last time.”
“After that, it was travel teams, high school ball. Everything started coming into play, you know? Puberty? It was like a million different distractions. So, that was the last time that we all played together and we won it all,” he said.
On that team, Jarvis, along with his neighborhood buddies with whom he still speaks to this day, traveled to the Cal Ripken regional tournament to compete on the national stage.
“Baseball was just something I really started gravitating towards. I think when I kinda got bored with school when I was younger, I was kinda like ‘man, I wish I was playing baseball right now. I wish I was watching baseball. I wish I was with my dad at the field right now.’ Probably fourth or fifth grade that really started picking up and once I got to middle school, I could be on a team at the school and I was all about that,” he said.
Finding success on the ball field, Jarvis quickly made a name for himself.
Receiving exposure apart from school ball, he led the Knights 16U baseball team to immediate success and quickly found himself listed as the No. 2 ranked third baseman prospect in Tennessee.
Then came college ball, where he fell into a slump his first year.
Jarvis was benched for most of his freshman year — the 2016-2017 season — behind junior third baseman Ben Kocher and senior Drake Byrd.
“I learned there was gonna be an adjustment period and worked on that a lot as a freshman and started playing better by the end of the year,” he said.
As a pinch hitter in the bottom of the ninth, he recorded his first collegiate hit with a single to right field against the University of Memphis on May 3, 2017.
After a few more hits over the next couple of weeks, Jarvis finally made his first college start against Jacksonville State University as a first baseman.
The start wasn’t permanent, though, as sophomore Chas Hadden reclaimed his spot for the remainder of the season.
Then sophomore year came around.
“I burned my hand, so I didn’t play at all,” Jarvis said. “And by the time I was a junior, I was like ‘man, my whole plan is not looking like it’s gonna happen.’”
Jarvis’ big dreams of playing professional baseball were, yet again, threatened during his junior year: the team brought in junior third baseman Chandler Adkins from Dyersville Community College to start in front of him.
“He did play in front of me that year,” Jarvis said. “And then my fourth year, he really just began to pour into me, you know, he had me coming over to his apartment all the time. He took me home at Christmas break and had me hang out with his family and I remember him telling me one night that if I basically do what I’m capable of doing and just believe in my own ability, that I could be the best player on our team.”
Jarvis paused.
“It was just really selfless of him that he would say that to me, hoping that it could make me a player that could, maybe, be playing in front of him,” Jarvis said.
That season, Adkins battled injury but still played, as Jarvis found himself starting at a mix of infield positions.
After winning their first game of the season against the University of Kansas but falling short in their next two, the Bruins caught fire and won the next five.
Belmont dropped a 0-1 decision against the University of North Alabama, but Jarvis and the team were about to embark on something special: an eight-game winning streak in which Jarvis hit for an outstanding .468 in his 32 at bats, recorded 11 RBIs, scored eight runs and homered twice.
Nothing could stop Jarvis and the red-hot Bruins.
Nothing, except COVID-19.
Jarvis’ long anticipated eight-game hit streak and the Bruins eight-game win streak both came to a sudden end in March 2020 when the season was canceled.
Onward to 2021, Jarvis finally claimed his spot at the hot corner, putting up several Ohio Valley Conference accolades and establishing himself as a top-dog in the Belmont line-up.
Leading the Bruins in several categories with a .346 batting average, .474 on-base percentage and 53 RBIs, he earned first team All-OVC and was top-10 in nine statistical in-conference categories.
Jarvis also found himself ranked No. 21 in D1 Baseball’s top-50 college third basemen in the country.
After the 2021 season came to a close, Jarvis graduated and traveled to Colonial Heights, Virginia, with a few of his Belmont teammates to play for a Coastal Plain League team called the Tri-City Chili Peppers.
“Oh, man, the best part of that experience was living with Jack Capobianco and Tommy Crider,” Jarvis said. “ We leaned on each other and learned a lot about each other.”
“Cementing those relationships, those friendships, it’s not just that we play together at school. When we’re living that close together, I think we’ll be friends forever,” he said.
Now, with grad school and his final season in full swing, Jarvis would still love the opportunity to take his talents to the next level — but he doesn’t stress too much about it.
“I mean, I’m 24, so I’ll just say the gap is kind of narrowing on that opportunity and I understand that, so at this point, man, I’m just trying to enjoy these days,” Jarvis said. “Enjoy my friends, our coaches, it’s a special time to be here.”
Jarvis majored in music business and later attained a bachelor’s degree from the Mike Curb College of Entertainment and Music Business in 2021.
Now he’s studying sports administration, but he still finds the time to do what he loves most.
“Probably my biggest passion outside of sports is writing songs, like, that’s one of my favorite things to do. I loved music business school.”
Coach Jarvis, who has coached his fair share of musicians throughout his 25 years at Belmont, such as Judah Akers from Judah & The Lion and Brian Kelley from Florida-Georgia Line, is extremely proud of his son.
“Anytime that I’ve talked about Logan, the thing that comes to mind is not baseball, no, it’s the man that he is. I’m just really proud of who he is. I know his mother and I are very, very proud of the way he goes about his business, the priorities that he has in his life, the time and energy of the things he invests in,” Coach Jarvis said.
“He has interest in baseball, he has interest in coaching, potentially, but he has a lot of interest in music and the music business. So, we’ll see where he ends up landing, but he’s been able to kind of feed, grow and nurture all of those interests here in his time at Belmont University.”
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PHOTO: Logan Jarvis bats during Belmont’s home game against Austin Peay on Saturday, March 26. Sarah Maninger/Belmont Vision
This article was written by A.J. Wuest.