Scott Bandura is now a pro ballplayer, but he’s OK with being remembered as a Taney Dragon

Scott Bandura molded himself this season into one of the better hitters in college baseball and will leave Philadelphia later this week for Arizona to start his professional baseball career after being drafted Monday by the San Francisco Giants.

But everything always seems to come back to what he did nearly a decade ago.

He grew up in Mount Airy, played three sports at Springside-Chestnut Hill Academy, and was underrecruited by colleges because of his size before hitting a growth spurt and blossoming at Princeton. Bandura hit .363 this season, set the school record in total bases, and was named to the all-Ivy League team while studying economics.

He made himself a major league prospect, yet to most Philadelphians, Bandura — who turns 22 next month — will always be the 12-year-old catcher on the Taney Dragons, the 2014 Little League World Series team that captured the attention of the region.

“I’ve done so many different things that when I think about my baseball career, it doesn’t always go right to Williamsport,” Bandura said. “We didn’t know at the time the impact we were having on everyone, but the more time goes by, the more people still remember it, you can see how that was something that everyone was following. It’s pretty cool.”

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Bandura caught Mo’ne Davis’ shutout in the opening game, scored the tying run from first base two days later in a dramatic win, and played one night in front of 34,128 fans.

The Dragons — with players like Zion Spearman, Eli Simon, Erik Lipson, Tai Shanahan, Jahli Hendricks, and Jared Sprague-Lott — left Philadelphia a few weeks earlier as a group of friends who played baseball together all summer. They returned a few days before the start of seventh or eighth grade as celebrities.

The Phillies lost 89 games that season and finished in last place. The city wanted a baseball team to root for so it honored the kids at City Hall and paraded them down Broad Street. That’s why Bandura — who could one day be a major leaguer — will always be a Taney Dragon. And he’s OK with that.

“It was an awesome story with an awesome group of people and the players and teammates I had,” Bandura said. “It’s definitely cool that everyone remembers that. A lot of us are going to go on to do other things, whether in baseball or not, but everyone is going to remember that. So it’s awesome to have that place in Philly sports history.”

It was hard to imagine Bandura even playing college baseball, let alone being drafted by a major-league team, when he was a 5-foot-7 freshman at Springside Chestnut Hill Academy. He had a strong baseball IQ that he showed in Williamsport, but Bandura didn’t have much power at the plate. And then he grew nine inches before his junior year. Bandura hit 12 homers in 47 games this season as a 6-4 outfielder, while batting .363. He’s no longer undersized.

He missed his freshman year when the coronavirus pandemic canceled the 2021 Ivy League season. The Tigers scrimmaged each other every weekend and Bandura racked up 300 at-bats, more than he would have had as a freshman if the games counted. He spent the summer on a team in Washington with a bunch of former Taney players — Davis was even the team’s broadcaster — and hit .351.

It wasn’t a wasted year, but that momentum stalled when a hamstring injury limited him in 2022 to just eight games. Bandura worked last winter with Dan Hennigan, a hitting coach in King of Prussia, and entered this season feeling like he had something to prove.

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“I knew what I was capable of,” he said. “But I hadn’t been able to show it yet.”

Bandura played eight games in his first two years in college, overcame an injury, fine-tuned his swing, and kept churning. The kid who looked more like a bat boy than a prospect when he started high school put himself in position to get drafted.

“Everyone’s path is different,” he said. “If you want it bad enough and you’re willing to put the work in, you can get there. It’s important to not get caught up in what’s going on with everyone else. If I had gotten discouraged when all the other guys from our Little League year were committing to Power Five schools and getting drafted out of high school, then this would have never happened. But I always had a process and a plan to get myself to this spot. I just had to stick with it and follow it.”

Bandura played earlier this summer in the Cape Cod League — the premier college summer league — before returning home to be with his family for the draft. He started playing tee-ball as a 2-year-old at the Marian Anderson Recreation Center, where his father, Steve, started the Anderson Monarchs youth program. A professional career has been his dream ever since.

He carried that dream with him to the Monarchs and Dragons and then to Springside Chestnut-Hill and Princeton. Bandura went to the batting cage on Monday morning when that dream felt close and returned home in the afternoon to watch it become a reality. But before he could see it, his phone started buzzing with texts from friends congratulating him for being drafted.

The feed Bandura was watching on TV with his parents and sister was delayed, so that was how he found out he was going to the Giants. That’s OK. His dream was realized. He’ll start his climb toward the major leagues on a field in Scottsdale, Ariz., before being assigned to a minor-league outpost. In a few years, he could be a major leaguer for the Giants. And for some, he’ll always be a Dragon.

“There’s been some bumps in the road, but that’s been the dream since I could walk,” he said. “It has been a long time coming. To just see everything come together like that and have everyone around was really awesome.”