8,800 Miles, 15 Hours and the Sacrifice Behind John Lemm's Career

It's 4 a.m. in Brisbane, and Sharryn Lemm is wide awake.

Sharryn doesn't have work. She doesn't have anywhere important to be. Instead, she sits in her lounge room with her husband, John, and spends the next three hours of her life entirely focused on an SEC Network+ broadcast of an Alabama baseball game.

The date does not matter.

Nor does the opponent.

What matters is that this exact scene has played out countless times this spring for a couple whose lives revolve around a 15-hour time difference and a sport that most people in Brisbane, the third-most populous city in Australia, couldn't care less about.

The Lemms are not most people.

For the Lemms, baseball is everything.

It's the sport that has consumed their lives for the past 14 years. Hours watching it on television. Days spent at ballparks. Weeks spent on the other side of the world just to watch games be played. But above all, a way to stay connected with their son, the younger John Lemm, who is currently a solid 8,800 miles away, living out his dream as the starting catcher for the Crimson Tide.

That dream seems improbable for an Australian kid who grew up with no ties to America or the game of baseball.

“He was playing soccer, and one of the moms said to us, 'Look, what’s he doing in the offseason?' Sharryn said. "We said, 'Nothing.' And they said, 'Well, come down if you want, they’re doing a tryout day at baseball.' So he went down there."

Lemm was a good baseball player from day one, but there was nothing to suggest a future. He was of average size, a solid athlete who also played rugby and cricket, just a kid looking to have some fun.

"He played it as a kid for two years, and sort of wasn't sure whether to keep going or try something else," Sharryn said. "And then one of the coaches spoke up and said, 'Are you coming back next season?' And he just sort of said, 'Yep, okay, I'm coming back.' And then the love of baseball grew from there. It absolutely became a love of his. It became an obsession."

That obsession only deepened when Lemm, who initially spent time at every position on the diamond, fell in love with playing catcher.

“He was thrown behind the plate because he wasn’t scared of the ball, and that sort of stuck," Sharryn said. "He really loved the challenge. He’d call his own games. He used to actually watch the MLB, and he had a book where he’d write down every pitch that a pitcher would throw and what the batter could hit and what he couldn’t. He wanted to learn, and he did a lot of his own self-teaching.”

As his passion grew, so did his stature. Lemm became the giant of the family, shooting up to 6-foot-3 thanks to a 12th-grade growth spurt. Suddenly, there was a real window for Lemm to go and have a baseball career. But that window wasn't in Brisbane.

It wasn't anywhere Down Under. The coaching depth, the specialization, the refinement, the repetition — it didn't exist in his homeland.

"We don't have specialty (coaches) over here," Sharryn said. "Before Johnny went to America, he had a scout over here say to him that if it doesn't work out hitting and catching, we could look at you as a pitcher because he could throw hard. But then he doesn't have the mechanics of a pitcher. He threw 92 off the mound, so they know he could throw hard, but he had never been taught how to pitch."

That number, 92, doesn't really belong in Brisbane. It belongs somewhere else. Somewhere louder. Somewhere the raw talent it represented would be unlocked.

The conclusion was undeniable.

If Lemm was going to keep playing, it would have to be in America.

That realization carried a cost that went beyond baseball.

“We’re not wealthy,” Sharryn said. “My husband works really hard so we can provide as much as we can for Johnny to be over there, because the exchange rate is awful. It’s like under 70 cents to the dollar. So Johnny’s focus once he got to the next level was, I don’t want you guys struggling.”

There were no guarantees that the investment would pay off. No certainty that the flights, the college expenses, or the weekly budgets stretched across continents would lead to anything at all. All that seemed to exist was the strain of sending a son all the way across the world and the pressure that comes with it.

"Just trying to prove that what they helped me do, that the potential they saw in me is actually working and coming through, that's probably the biggest thing," John said. "I don't want them to have all their eggs in one basket and then all of a sudden, it just didn't work out. So I just want to help prove them right. I want to make it worth it."

So at the age of 19, Lemm hopped on a plane, alone, to embark on his college career. He'd been to the States just once, on a family vacation to California. A scheduled high school recruiting visit was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic, so he truly had no idea what he was walking into when he set foot on campus at New Mexico Junior College for the first time in 2022.

How could any teenager possibly prepare for that drastic a change?

"Moving away to go to New Mexico was probably the hardest move that I've made," John said. "There was not much to do around that campus. You're either going to thrive there, or you're going to plummet. And I plummeted, bad. I got really homesick."

Lemm was away from home for an extended period for the first time in his life. Everything he had grown up with in Brisbane was gone. The people who understood him best were a world away.

And without that structure, everything felt heavier.

Lemm didn't even truly have baseball to fall back on. He redshirted his freshman year, and then was told that he would not play the next year either, as a Division I catcher was transferring in. It shouldn't be much of a surprise that, after one semester, he was ready to go home. He was set to call his baseball career a failed experiment.

It sure is fortunate that he didn't.

Lemm transferred that winter to South Suburban Community College in South Holland, Ill., at the behest of a friend and fellow Australian, Nick Johnstone. It wasn't necessarily a reset for Lemm, more so a re-entry. And something familiar, almost distant, started to return.

A rhythm. Building blocks. An atmosphere that encouraged growth. A team he felt comfortable being on. Even the first visit from his family.

Suddenly, Lemm was piecing things together. He blossomed into a .300 hitter. He developed plate discipline, walking as much as he struck out. He grew accustomed to American life, experiencing snow for the first time.

And he left, two years later, a legitimate ballplayer.

The next stop was Southern Illinois, where Lemm worked with a true catching coach for the first time. He reached a new level as a Division I player, being named to the All-MVC Second Team while bashing 19 home runs.

Baseball had stopped being an escape. It was a belonging. And the SEC was calling.

Lemm was hotly pursued in the transfer portal last summer and received offers from several prestigious programs. The connection he developed with the Alabama staff was what ultimately brought him to Tuscaloosa.

"He said, 'Mom, they (the coaching staff) are huggers.' So he got hugged by everyone, which meant a lot to me," Sharryn said. "As a mom who's overseas and just wants what's best for him and for him to be surrounded by amazing people, that really stood out to me."

Lemm believed he was coming in to be the full-time starting catcher. A wrench was thrown into that plan when Brady Neal, widely expected to go pro, made the decision to stay in Tuscaloosa. The fall was a grind, with Lemm, Neal and Will Plattner, who would go on to be named team captain, competing in one of the most stacked catcher rooms in the nation.

Here he was, heading into his final season of college baseball, with nothing guaranteed. No starting job locked down. No set playing time. No clear role on a team with so many new pieces. Uncertainty reigned once again.

Lemm cited the offseason as invaluable, noting that he learned from everybody in the room and continued his rapid development as he acclimated to the SEC level. He had access to elite facilities and unprecedented levels of tracking data, and pieced together a good, but not great, fall.

"Johnny had a solid fall," head coach Rob Vaughn said. "But we weren't looking up and saying that's our everyday catcher."

Fast forward six months, and that's exactly what Lemm has become. He's settled in as an indispensable piece of the roster, somebody that Vaughn can't afford to keep out of the lineup.

But even that growth carries echoes of everything that came before it. The same self-teaching. The same adjustment. The same distance.

"He's just gotten more comfortable in his own skin," Vaughn said. "He was kind of the guy when we started hitting at the beginning, where every time he had a bad swing, he would have a comment, or he would say something, and all of that is just a little bit of self-doubt or frustration or insecurity or needing us to reassure him. And that's about a 180 now. When you see him, he steps into the box and is incredibly confident."

That shift from doubt to certainty started long before Alabama.

It started when baseball was just a fun way for a young kid to pass the time.

It started in Brisbane.

Lemm has held down the five-hole spot as one of the most consistent hitters in the Crimson Tide lineup. The theme of his college career, from New Mexico to Illinois to Tuscaloosa, has been the same: growth, but always at a distance from where it started.

"He was a little bit passive early in the box," Vaughn said. "He took some pitches that he needed to do damage on, and I've seen a lot of growth in that area, where he's in the box on go more often. He still knows he can slam on the brakes when it's not there. But I feel like he's gone from kind of the guy that's a professional at-bat to a dangerous dude in the box."

So now, when Lemm is in the middle of an SEC at-bat, there is no sense that he is figuring it out in real time anymore. What once looked like uncertainty now reads as rhythm and intention. For a player whose entire career has been defined by learning how to adapt faster than the moment around him, that might be the biggest development of all.

As a .300 batter in the nation's premier conference, Lemm has become a name. Kids in Australia who are preparing to follow in his footsteps reach out to him for guidance. Lemm's heritage remains an integral part of who he is. From his walk-up song, "Down Under" by Men At Work, to the Australian flags visible in right field at Sewell-Thomas Stadium on any given day, to his heavy accent that is the frequent butt of teammates' jokes — often followed by a, "Can you speak English?" — he is still, in every way, an Aussie.

"Wearing the green and gold has always been a dream of mine," John said. "I've never been able to wear it, and I feel like I put myself in a position where I should be able to represent my country one day. Whenever I get that call or text that I can, it's going to be one of the top moments of my career."

In the meantime, there is plenty for Lemm to take care of in his new home. First, the rest of his redshirt senior season, where he is playing for a top-10 team with Omaha aspirations. Then, Lemm hopes, a long career as a professional player. But no matter how far this goes, be it Omaha, the MLB, the World Baseball Classic, or anywhere in between, the distance that has defined his career will never really disappear.

Because while Lemm is stepping into the box in front of thousands in Tuscaloosa, there’s still a lounge room in Brisbane where two people are watching every pitch, long before the sun comes up.

The distance is still there.

It just doesn't feel quite as far.

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