As Huskies’ hurler Mike Young can attest to, you’re never too old to begin a serious baseball career.

Considered a junior eligibility-wise, the 21-year-old is in his third semester as an NIU Marketing major and his first season as a starting pitcher for the 6-22 Huskies.

What’s amazing about this southpaw is that he never participated in high school baseball. Young did go through the motions of Little League and the summer baseball thing, but didn’t actually start school-related ball until his first year at Elgin Community College.

The Elgin native and Larkin High School product played one year at the junior college (1988). Upon transferring to NIU, Young never fancied a Huskie baseball career.

But when the opportunity knocked, Young was all ears. The left-hander tried out with the 200 other students, not expecting too much out of the situation.

“I came out knowing that everybody had a chance,” Young said. “I just thought it would be nice to play Division I baseball.”

Apparently, Joe “Spanky” McFarland thought it would be nice too, because Young survived the final cuts and earned a starting spot in the rotation.

Not much of a power pitcher, Young resorts to the recently acquired change-up, a curve ball and a 79 mile per hour fast ball.

Early on in this inaugural season, Young took his fair share of lumps, along with the 25 other walk-ons.

As the Huskies went winless in their first 19 games, Young suffered defeats in his first four outings. In his first 17 innings of work, Young surrendered 20 earned runs, but never once reconsidered the decision to try out.

“I never considered it a mistake,” Young admitted. “Even if we went 0-41 this season, it wouldn’t have been a mistake.”

Then came the team from Rockford College. Young took the hill and got rocked for five first-inning runs. But, McFarland stuck with the crafty pitcher.

The results: Young pitches six innings of shut-out ball and the Huskies go on to win their second game of the season, 8-5.

“I left him in there to see what he was made of,” McFarland said afterwards.

Young obviously proved something to himself that Friday afternoon because in his most recent outing at St. Joseph’s College, the 1-5 starter threw five innings, while yielding just one earned run.

That adds up to a lone earned run given up in his last 11 innings of work. Yet, Young realizes that continued success and a spot on next year’s team won’t come easy.

“I’m going to work over the summer on some more things and see what happens,” Young said. “There’s a lot of room for improvement—it’s just going to take a while.”