Outfielder Dylan Rock arrived at Texas A&M via the transfer portal after three seasons at UTSA.

COLLEGE STATION — Dylan Rock realizes not everyone is blessed with a superb baseball name.

“It’s pretty cool,” Texas A&M’s smooth, tress-blessed outfielder said with a smile. “Really can’t beat a last name like Rock.”

Or the durable first name Dylan when it comes to roaming the outfield for the Aggies as the program’s resident heartthrob. Success and sensation seem to come easy for Rock, a George Ranch graduate whose latest tour stop is the College World Series in Omaha, Neb., with his A&M teammates.

Reality check: Rock has earned every “aah” from fans via his team-high 18 home runs this season. Repetitive hard work and enduring belief are two of the main reasons he’ll confidently step to the plate in the CWS for A&M (42-18), which faces Oklahoma (42-22) at 1 p.m. Friday at Charles Schwab Field in the opening game.

“Don’t stop loving the game,” Rock urged pint-sized baseball players who encounter frustrations and pitfalls along the way in Little League and beyond. “As long as you love the game, you can keep practicing as much as possible — and you’ll want to keep playing it even more.”

Rock also offered some advice to the players’ gallon-sized guardians: Don’t force the game on your children. You’ll know if they love it.

“It’s when those kids feel like it’s a job that they get sick of baseball and burn out,” he said.

Rock is a rock when it comes to sage baseball counsel — he has lived his advice as a decent but far from star high school player who continued chasing a dream. Rock wasn’t rated among the top 400 outfielders in the nation (he checked in at 401st via Perfect Game) exiting George Ranch five years ago and he held two Division I offers: UTSA and Northwestern (La.) State.

“I was OK — I wasn’t anything special,” he said with a slight grin. “But the older I’ve gotten, I’ve developed a little more.”

There’s a reason: He never stopped swinging, from junior high to high school to two colleges, though not in the most celebrated manner.

“I’ve always loved hitting off the tee — to this day,” Rock said. “I’ll hit off the tee for an hour or more. Just (continually) take reps off the tee, where some guys get tired of it.”

Webster’s defines a tee as “an adjustable post on which a ball is placed for batting.” Rock defines it as one of his main means of developing into one of college baseball’s top hitters.

“It gives a controlled setting of being able to work on mechanics and really being able to have more of a feel of what I’m doing with my swing,” Rock said of the value of tee time. “Instead of worrying about where the pitch is going to be in (batting practice), I already know exactly where the ball is going to be and I can just work on things I need to work on.”

Rock analyzes and scrutinizes plenty while working with a tee but tries setting aside that line of thinking in what’s become the Aggies’ most recognized — and vilified by opponents — approach to hitting in the batter’s box.

He takes his sweet time setting up and zeroes in on the barrel of the bat held about a foot in front of his face — as plenty of college players do now — before finally setting up and focusing on the opposing pitcher.

“Whenever I’m doing that, I’m really just trying to clear my mind,” Rock said of his methodical approach to hitting. “When I’m at the plate, the less I can think, the better I usually do. I sometimes overthink about my mechanics, and that’s when I get in trouble. I take a deep breath, clear my mind and center myself.”

A self-described late bloomer, Rock (6-1, 210) jumped on the UTSA offer out of George Ranch and wound up playing in 175 games over three seasons for the Roadrunners. Along the way, and with loads of tee work unending, Rock believed he could compete at college baseball’s highest level.

So did A&M assistant Nolan Cain, who watched Rock play for UTSA in three games against LSU last season when Cain was an assistant with the Tigers. A year ago, Rock entered the transfer portal with the belief he could excel in the Southeastern Conference or Big 12 and new A&M coach Jim Schlossnagle offered him the opportunity to play for the Aggies and in the SEC.

When Schlossnagle surveyed the tape of Rock at UTSA, he saw a strong, disciplined hitter no matter the level of play. Thanks in part to all that tee work.

“The thing I was most excited about when you looked at his walks and strikeouts, it seemed like he had a handle of the strike zone, and he had some strength,” Schlossnagle said. “Any time a guy swings at strikes and takes balls, that normally doesn’t change when you move from level to level. I thought he had the ability, especially given where our roster was and the guys we lost, to have a big impact for us.”

Rock in league play this season finished among the top 10 in batting average (.345) and home runs (13 of his 18) — a long way from ranking as the 213th best prospect in Texas five years ago.

“When I heard that coach Schlossnagle got the A&M job, I knew he had what it takes to win,” Rock said. “And I knew with his staff, they were going to be able to put together a team that had a chance to do this (at the CWS). Now we’re here.”

Brent Zwerneman is a staff writer for the Houston Chronicle covering Texas A&M athletics. He is a graduate of Oak Ridge High School and Sam Houston State University, where he played baseball.

Brent is the author of four published books about Texas A&M, three related to A&M athletics. He's a five-time winner of APSE National Top 10 writing awards for the Houston Chronicle and San Antonio Express-News, including in 2021 breaking the bombshell college football story of the decade: Texas and Oklahoma secretly planning a move to the SEC.

He netted a national APSE second-place finish for breaking the Dennis Franchione "secret newsletter" scandal in 2007, and his coverage of Texas A&M's move to the SEC from the Big 12 also netted a third-place finish nationally in 2012.

He's most proud on the sports front, however, of earning Dayton Invitational Basketball Tournament MVP honors in 1988.

Brent met his wife, KBTX-TV news anchor Crystal Galny, in the Dixie Chicken before an A&M-Texas Tech football game in 2002, and the couple has three children: Will, Zoe and Brady.