Baseball will break your heart from time to time. The game can make you feel joy one minute, then sorrow the next. Washington State senior pitcher Joe Pistorese knows this, and he still plans on playing until someone tells him he can’t anymore.

For Pistorese, love for the game and passion to compete push him beyond any obstacle.

The greatest athletes love to compete. Pistorese said his favorite athlete is Muhammad Ali due in part to his passion for the fight. Ali was a phenomenal athlete, but it was his attitude that cemented him as one of the most iconic figures in sports history.

“It’s more of a mental thing,” Pistorese said. “His competitiveness and his stature and his confidence was always just so amazing to me, so that’s a guy I always looked up to.”

Pistorese said his parents always joke that his first word was ball, and say their boy was born to play baseball. He has been playing the game for as long as he can remember, beginning in the backyard with his family.

For the longest time he played simply because he loved the game and he was good at it. But by the time he was a sophomore in high school, he realized his talent could help him get a college education.

He was born in Seattle but grew up in Montana, where he became accustomed to the country life. That was a big part of his decision to come to WSU, as he said enjoys the balance between city and country life.

“Pullman was a perfect in-between of a little bit of a mix of city and people but at the same time not anything too crazy,” he said.

Coming out of Flathead High School in Kalispell, Montana, Pistorese had a chance to go straight to the pros. The Chicago White Sox selected him in the 44th round of the 2011 draft, but he chose to go to college after recognizing that he had some growing up to do.

WSU Head Coach Donnie Marbut has seen that growth first hand over the last four years, and admitted that he thought Pistorese was a little immature when he first arrived in Pullman. But Marbut credits him with putting in the necessary work to grow as a person and as a pitcher.

“He’s grown tremendously in every single way,” Marbut said. “He’s made more strides as a person, as an athlete, and as a student of anybody that I’ve known since I’ve been coaching.”

As one of the few seniors on the team, Pistorese has become a leader on a squad that features so many young players. Freshman pitcher Ryan Walker is one of the freshmen taking cues from the upperclassmen. He admitted that he was a little intimidated by Pistorese at first, but he warmed upto the senior after watching how hard he worked and how much he believes in his team.

“He’s showing me how I should act during the game, how I should be thinking and feeling out on the mound,” Walker said. “It’d be cool to be him one day.”

Both Walker and Marbut agree that Pistorese’s greatest trait as a baseball player is his competitiveness. Walker said that Pistorese is always believes he is going to win no matter what the score is. And Marbut, who is in his 12th season as a WSU coach, had some very high praise for his starting pitcher.

“He’s the most competitive pitcher I’ve ever coached, and I’d like to tell you it’s close but it’s not,” Marbut said. “He’s in a whole different world when it comes to competitiveness in-between the lines.”

Pistorese has plenty of reasons to feel confident in his game. He has pitched four complete games so far this year, which ties him with a group of other pitchers for third in the nation.

He recently set the WSU all-time record for innings pitched with 331. His coach believes he is going to go nine innings and win every time he is on the mound. And now that the Cougar offense has been producing more runs, he really does have a shot to win every game he starts.

Just like the rest of the team, Pistorese is still growing as a ball player. He recognized that the Cougars have a long way to go to reach his goal of making the regional round of the NCAA College World Series. Even with the end of the season on the horizon, Pistorese said he still takes things one day at a time and tries to compete his hardest in every game.

And that is how he would like to be remembered when his time at WSU comes to an end. When he leaves Pullman to pursue his future goals, which will most likely include a shot at playing in the pros, he wants people to remember him as someone who was competitive and loved the game of baseball.

Coach Marbut believes Pistorese will be remembered for that and more.

“He’s going to be remembered as a very, very good teammate, loved by everybody if not all,” he said. “And just was a serious, serious competitor and a person who made a lot of growth and improvement in all phases of his life.”