Matt White (baseball)

Matthew Joseph White (born August 19, 1977 in Pittsfield, Massachusetts) is a retired Major League Baseball pitcher. He made news in 2007 not with his pitching, but for his possession of a potentially-lucrative stone quarry in his native Massachusetts.

Baseball career

White attended Wahconah Regional High School in Dalton, Massachusetts and played his college baseball at Clemson. He was first drafted by the Cleveland Indians in the 1998 amateur draft. He has been through the Rule V Draft twice. In 2002, he was drafted by the Boston Red Sox. In 2003, he was drafted by the Colorado Rockies.

White has pitched in seven different organizations over the past nine seasons. He has three stints in the majors: he pitched three games for the Boston Red Sox in 2003 before being traded to the Seattle Mariners, for whom he pitched three more games in the same season. In 2005, he pitched one game for the Washington Nationals.

In seven major-league games, White has pitched 9²⁄₃ innings. He is 0-2, and has allowed 17 hits, eight walks and 18 runs, for a 16.76 ERA and a WHIP of 2.59.

In 2006 in the minor leagues, he played for the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre Red Barons, where he played 38 games, starting 13 of them. He had a record of 7-9 with a 3.58 ERA and 69 strikeouts. He also played for the Navegantes del Magallanes in the Venezuelan Winter League, where he went 2-4 in ten starts with a 3.40 ERA and 34 strikeouts.

White was a non-roster invitee to the Los Angeles Dodgers in 2007. In spring training, he only allowed one earned run in 7¹⁄₃ innings.^[1] However, he failed to make the major league roster and was optioned to the Las Vegas 51s, the Dodgers Triple-A team. He was 2-4 with a 3.83 ERA in 40 games out of the bullpen for the 51s during the 1st half of the 2007 Pacific Coast League season.

On June 25, 2007, he asked for, and was granted, his release from the 51s so that he could sign a contract to play baseball in Japan. He signed with the Yokohama BayStars.^[2] He was released on August 15, 2008.

On Jan. 2, 2010, The Uni-President 7-Eleven Lions of the CPBL(Taiwan) announced that they have signed White for the 2010 season.^[3]

Rock discovery

In 2003, White purchased 50 acres (200,000 m²) of mountain real estate in Cummington, Massachusetts from his aunt for $50,000, giving her the money she needed to enter a nursing home. His original intention was to build his home, but he found the land to be too hard. When he called a surveyor out to inspect the land, the surveyor found that the land was solid Goshen stone, a type of mica schist estimated to be about 400 million years old. Estimates have placed the low estimate of the find at 24 million tons. At current prices (he has been selling the stone for over $100/ton), it is estimated to be worth around $2.5 billion, minus extraction costs.

White has begun a small-scale extraction operation, Swift River Stone, and made $600,000 in 2006. He has expressed interest in selling the land, and believes he will get "several million dollars."

When a story broke on most sports news outlets about him on February 28, 2007, some of his teammates in spring training started referring to him in the clubhouse as "Mr. Billionaire."

In early 2009, White listed the 45± acre property with Boston-based real estate firm, LandVest, Inc., which specializes in the marketing of luxury residences, vacant land and resource-based properties, including timberland. The asking price for the property is available upon request.

References

1. ↑ The Official Site of Major League Baseball: News: Dodgers reassign 'The Billionaire'
2. ↑ Tanaka leads Eagles over Giants | The Japan Times Online
3. ↑

External links

• Career statistics and player information from Baseball-Reference, or Fangraphs, or The Baseball Cube
• Matt White available statistics from MiLB.com
• ABC News: Pitcher Discovers Rare Rocks, Hopes Dodgers Discover His Talents
• Fox News about Matt White's findings
• ESPN.com: White's rock quarry could net pitcher billions
• Sports Illustrated: The Billionaire in Triple-A