Halos Heaven interview: HH cult figure & Angels prospect Jordan Serena

A couple of months back, our very own Stirrups started following the daily accomplishments of Angels farmhand Jordan Serena.  After all, if a non-prospect named Tebow was getting daily love across the web, shouldn't an actual prospect?

The more we began to follow Jordan, the more intriguing of a figure he became.  After exchanging a few messages through social media, we sat down for a phone conversation I can only categorize as awesome.  Jordan is bright, direct in his answers, and friendly.  He's confident without being cocky and clearly loves baseball.

Here's a transcript of our chat:

Are you aware that you are a cult figure on Halos Heaven?

Ha ha, no, I had no idea.

Yes, you are part of a daily feature.  Everybody knows you went 1 for 4 last night and played left field.

That’s cool.

Did you even know we existed?

Not until now.

(I then told Jordan the story of how Stirrups proposed to make an actual prospect get as much coverage as Tebow, at least in these parts and gave him his batting line and position in last night's game)

That's pretty cool.

Growing up in Colorado, how much baseball were you actually able to play?  Did you play multiple sports?

I played three sports.  I played football and basketball as well; all four years of high school.  College was my first year playing just baseball.

As far as baseball in Colorado, we have cold Springs and you expect it to be cold when you start the season.  Tryouts are in February and there’s snow on the ground, it gets cold at nights in March and April.  The weather will get pretty nice through June and July then turns cold again in September.  By then you play football or Fall Ball, which can get really cold.

You learn to fight through it.  It is something you get used to growing up in Colorado, playing baseball.  And you spend a lot of time indoors.

So high school  then onto Columbia and a psychology degree.  You must have a field day with some of your minor league counterparts, right?

Haha, depends on who you’re talking to.  There are some guys who can hold their own but there are some guys who won’t even talk about certain things.  Some guys won’t even talk about science or some of the nerdy stuff I studied and I’ll bring up.

A lot of these guys went to schools with baseball programs and went to the best program for them.

Columbia was probably the best baseball program I was talking to as far as the program itself.  The fact it was an Ivy League school was a bonus.  Being able to get that education was great, though.

You have a very interesting Twitter feed, lots of baseball tutorials and some random topics.  Are the baseball videos for you, for kids who follow you, or a bit of both?

It is both.  In the off season I do coaching.  My brother owns his own baseball academy and I work with him.  We coach everything from youth baseball through high school and I really work with the kids on throwing; lots of throwing.

The baseball things you see there are coming from that side.  Also my own purposes to practice what you preach.  I definitely use twitter as a teaching platform for teaching stuff.

As for the random stuff, those are things I have a strong opinion about or fire me up.

You recently stated on Twitter that journalists opposed to the bean ball have obviously never played at a high level.  Was that more of a baseball insight or dig at a certain journalist?

I don’t hate on journalists but I think that tweet just came from when you’re on a team and you’ve had something happen on the field that’s just camaraderie, we’re supposedly at war with the other guys.

Take Machado and Pedroia, Dustin’s their guy and if somebody comes at his legs…if I had somebody do that to one of my guys I’d want to do something too.  We’re not trying to hurt anybody.

It just kind of comes off as when you say "there’s no place for this" that you haven’t been part of a team where you’ve felt like you needed to do something to defend them.  We’re not trying to hurt anybody and we don’t like giving free bases, it just needs to get done.

You hope you hit a guy in the hip and it is over.  You don’t want it bleeding over into other games and other series.

Were you very familiar California before you moved up here?  Most people move here thinking we’re one big beach.

Relatively familiar.  I have family who live up north.  I wasn’t expecting to be at the beach every day before the field.  There are so many people I know from here.  I like the area around here.  I live in Redlands and it is cool to be in the same state as our parent club.  I hope to be there some day.

Did you parents purposely name you after arguably the greatest male and female athletes of all time?

(Big laugh) The first name was after Michael Jordan, but they obviously didn’t pick the last name.  Serena is an old Italian name.  My older brother’s middle name is Michael.  My mom’s sort of in love with Michael Jordan.

So there you have it.  Hopefully we can do this as Jordan takes steps up the ladder.  A couple things are certain: I'm rooting for the guy and am making it a priority to catch a game in San Bernardino in the next couple of months.

Please leave comments below.  I'm going to forward the link to Jordan once this is published so he'll see them, too.