Elite High School Baseball Player Dies, Prep baseball superstar, possible first-round MLB pick, dies of mysterious apparent suicide, One of the nation’s top baseball prospects, a bright student headed to Vanderbilt, was found dead along the side of a Tennessee road on Tuesday after an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound, sending shockwaves throughout the Volunteer State baseball community.
The Nashville City Paper and a variety of other Nashville-area news sources, Jackson (Tenn.) Riverside High ace Stephen Gant wasfound dead in Perry County shortly after the local sheriff’s office had been called about a man walking up and down the road with a gun threatening to commit suicide.
“We found the body of Stephen Gant about 30 feet from the roadway with a gunshot wound,” Perry County Sheriff’s Office Chief Deputy Nick Weems told the Sun. “We do believe at this time that it was self-inflicted; however, we will continue to investigate to look at other possibilities to make sure it was suicide.”
To call Gant’s death a stunning turn of events is a vast understatement. The senior was a Vanderbilt signee with what many anticipated would be a bright future at one of the nation’s most impressive college baseball programs. In all three of his prep seasons he had been named the Sun’s Baseball Player of the Year, a remarkable achievement in a tough Tennessee baseball region.
In fact, Gant’s arm was so strong that some had even penciled the senior in as a likely first round draft pick in the forthcoming MLB draft.