Zags throw us curveball

And they say there are no surprises any more on signing day.

Recruiting services pretty much squeezed all the fun out of the bedroom farce that used to be the fall, winter and spring letters-of-intent roundups – and what little remained was siphoned off when oral commitments started dribbling in from high school freshmen.

New rule: You have to pick up your prom date before you pick a college.

Anyway, among all the expected dotted-line confirmations that were faxed in to Gonzaga, Eastern, Idaho and Washington State the other day was one signing out of left field.

Actually, out of the bullpen.

The Zags signed a 6-foot-5, 235-pound forward out of Phoenix College named Ira Brown, who will be a lot more famous in this upcoming incarnation in Spokane than he was in his previous one: as a pitcher for the Spokane Indians back in 2002.

“It’s kind of funny how it all worked out,” admitted Brown. “I loved Spokane. I told myself when I got done with my season there four years ago that I was going to come back and buy myself a summer house.”

Would he settle for helping fill Gonzaga’s house?

In its run to basketball prominence, the Bulldogs have lured their workforce from some unlikely places – Martinique, Brazil, Harrington.

But never the low minors.

If you spend any time at the local ballyard, you might remember Brown as a hard-throwing – if not always accurate-throwing – right-hander for the Indians of 2002, their last summer as a farm club of the Kansas City Royals. Brown had been taken in the eighth round of the 2001 draft out of Willis High School in Texas, and while his numbers here – 2-5 in 14 starts with a 5.43 earned run average – weren’t so hot, there were plenty of ERAs in the sixes, sevens and nines that season.

But by 2004, he and the Royals had parted ways, and he finished the summer with Shreveport in the independent Central League. That got him a spring training shot with the Seattle organization in 2005, but elbow tendinitis set him back and again he wound up at the independent level, with the Edmonton Cracker-Cats – don’t ask – of the Northern League, this time as a closer.

And a good one. In a late-season stretch, Brown appeared in 12 of 18 games, with five saves, a win and a loss – with stints lasting as long as four innings.

“It was a crazy deal,” he said. “Our manager would tell me I’d have the day off and I’d be in the stands dressed out in regular clothes. Then the game would get tight and he’d call me out of the stands, I’d put the uniform on and go in and close it. I had a blast.”

But it’s a long way from the Northern League to where Brown wanted to be. Living in Phoenix, he found himself joining pickup basketball games at a local rec center with Tyree Hardge, a guard at Phoenix College. Eventually, Hardge dragged him over to meet PC coach Matt Gordon who recognized “a big-time raw athlete” and set about convincing Brown to enroll.

“Last year, he averaged 17 points and 10 rebounds on pure athleticism,” Gordon said. “He’s one of the strongest kids I’ve ever seen in my life.”

But baseball still hadn’t turned him loose. His agent got him a look in a San Diego Padres tryout camp and although Brown said he hadn’t thrown in “two months or more, I was hitting 94 (mph) with ease and making guys look bad. They signed me on the spot.”

Yet just as quickly, Brown got sideways with Mal Fichman, a Padres instructor who among other things wanted Brown to start over in “low A ball again.

“I just thought I was older, more mature – and a much better player than that,” he said. “And I think by that time, my heart was with basketball, so it really wasn’t a very difficult decision at all.”

For the long and winding road that his baseball career followed, his basketball fortunes have ridden a bullet train. This fall, a number of high-profile schools – Cincinnati, Texas A&M, Nebraska and several in the Pac-10 – came calling. Brown said the romance with Gonzaga was only about three weeks old, but he was sold on his visit.

“To see a sellout crowd even at an exhibition game,” he said, “basketball doesn’t get much more amazing than that.”

By the time Ira Brown suits up for Gonzaga, he’ll be 25 years old, with five years of pro ball behind him. And he’s already played before crowds of 6,000 in Spokane, so he isn’t going to faint.

“I know what it takes, pushing yourself daily and preparing and getting in the mode of being a professional about things,” he said. “I know that’s something I can pass on to younger guys.”

If there’s a question about Brown, it’s a math problem. The Zags are tapped out on the NCAA limit of 13 scholarships. Two seniors will graduate. This week, the program signed four more players. Naturally, there’s a lot of time between now and the next time it all has to add up to 13, and it’ll shake out in its own way.

Maybe that’s where all the surprise of signing day has gone.