Baseball: OCC pitcher all about bottom line

Dominic Purpura has become what he always wants to be: King of the hill.

But the Orange Coast College pitcher wants the label to apply beyond the baseball diamond, where his heroics on the mound have helped lead the Pirates back to the four-team state tournament to defend their 2014 crown.

Purpura, a first-team All-Orange Empire conference performer, is 4-1 with seven saves and a 2.76 earned-run average this season, in which he has transitioned from the closer role to the starting rotation. Scantily recruited out of Nazareth Academy in La Grange, Ill., he is now deciding upon offers to pitch next season at Oregon, Baylor, Ohio State, San Francisco and San Diego State. He is projected to start Game 2 of the double-elimination state tournament at Fresno City College, where OCC (27-17) opens Saturday against San Joaquin Delta (39-5), ranked No. 1 in one national poll.

A crafty left-hander with supreme confidence, Purpura’s presence and ability have helped OCC win 14 of the 18 games in which he has appeared this season. He allowed one run in a career-long 6 2/3 innings of a Sectional playoff elimination game on Saturday at Santa Barbara City College to help the Pirates prevail and eventually advance.

But Purpura is arguably much more dynamic as a budding businessman, who already has his own company and an impressive profit margin trading stocks.

“I’m an entrepreneur,” said Purpura, who is 6-1 with nine saves and a 2.34 ERA in 34 career appearances at OCC. “I started my company, Wazood.com, when I was 19. And, since high school, I’ve been big on trading stocks and heavily into the stock market. Later in life, I want to invest in real estate. I want to be a jack of all trades.”

Wazood.com, which Purpura described as a Craig’s List for individual college campuses, is designed to create an online market place for students. It is currently operating at OCC, UC Irvine, Vanderbilt, Indiana and Carthage College, with plans for major expansion next year.

“Starting my own business from scratch, I have learned all about it and I feel like it has taken me farther than education can in terms of real business application,” Purpura said. “And I really feel like starting Wazood and trading stocks has helped me with baseball so much. It allows me to take my mind off it, if I pitch a bad game. And even if I pitch a good game, it keeps me from thinking about baseball, which is fantastic.”

When he is on the field, Purpura is all business. And the bottom line is winning.

“Dom is a great guy to have on the mound,” OCC freshman outfielder Stefan Panayiotou said. “We want Dom on the mound. He goes out there with an attitude that he is the best pitcher in the nation, and we back him up like he is.”

OCC Coach John Altobelli also has supreme trust in Purpura.

“He isn’t going to throw it by anybody, but he keeps the ball down and hits his spots,” Altobelli said. “He has proved time-in and time-out that when you give him the ball, you are going to get a pretty good chance of winning the game, because of his reliability. He’s a bulldog out there and he sets the tone for us.”

Purpura is enthusiastic about his pending opportunity to pitch at the Division-I level. And he believes he would be a quality investment for any MLB franchise.

“I would like to be drafted, no doubt,” Purpura said. “In high school, I was all-state and my combined record was something like 22-2. So, combined with Orange Coast, I’m 28-3 with 10 saves and I’m just now starting to get noticed by scouts. I feel like any pro organization I go to, I would continue to prove the doubters wrong, just like I have been proving everyone wrong. People say I don’t throw hard enough to be drafted, but I look at that as dumb. I get outs and I make people miss, and when the game is on the line, I’m going to throw strikes and be a competitor. I don’t throw 95 mph, but I don’t care who is at the plate; I can get them out.”

Purpura said professional teams could even get him at a discount.

“I would sign for a bag of potato chips and a plane ticket,” he said. “All I want is an opportunity.”

Purpura is excited about the opportunity that awaits him beyond OCC.

“I have huge plans, baseball-wise and business-wise,” Purpura said. “Baseball has taught me so much and I know that will be an unbelievable help to me the rest of my life. If I take my competitive edge into the business world, I’m going to put people in the ground. I’m going to just destroy the business world. I can’t even wait. Most people go to school and graduate and start working from the bottom up. I’m going to come in with the attitude that I won’t lose, and that’s going to carry me huge.

“The possibilities and ideas that we have for Wazood are endless,” Purpura said. “We are going to expand it in so many ways. We want to completely take over the college industry, and we can.”

For now, he’ll settle for working to help OCC’s bid to cash in with another state championship.