For Schuyler Mann, the road to pro baseball included a senior season in Crimson.

The 2005 Harvard captain and power-hitting catcher plied his trade for four years of highs and lows, rounding out his talents with polish and savvy.

His persistence was rewarded with a stellar season and an Ivy League Championship in June.

What Mann gained in craft, he lost in age. Many big league organizations appreciate the refined skills of top college seniors, but they frequently opt for younger, rawer alternatives.

It wasn’t until late July that Mann signed a free agent contract. The team: the New York Yankees.

“I hadn’t talked to any scouts in a while,” Mann says. “By that time, I’d basically given up any thought of baseball. As far as I knew, they weren’t signing people that late.”

When the Yankees came calling, Mann was at home in Corvallis, Mont., engaging in his favorite hobby, fresh-water fishing, and entertaining designs on joining the family jewelry business.

Mann’s good friend and agent, Takin Khorram, negotiated a deal.

“Two days later I was on the plane [to Tampa, Fla.],” Mann says.

In joining the Gulf Coast League Yankees, the team’s principal rookie league affiliate based in Tampa, Mann encountered a whole new ballgame. Strict measures, including 11 o’clock mandatory week-day curfews at the team hotel, made life outside of baseball nearly impossible. Only weekend afternoons by the hotel pool and bay fishing served to interrupt the daily grind of workouts and games.

Mann was one of the oldest members of the team.

“That was one of my apprehensions coming in,” Mann says. “That the other guys were guys out of high school, maybe a little less mature. Guys who don’t speak English. Coming from an Ivy League setting, it was a different kind of world.”

The Crimson captain wasted no time getting settled, knocking three hits in his nine at-bats before the season concluded in August. In the process, he made new baseball contacts and even used his Harvard-honed Spanish to “goof around” with the team’s Dominican and Venezuelan players.

“Baseball guys are pretty much the same everywhere,” he says.

For now, it’s back to fishing for the 22-year-old.