Excel Baseball Academy

Excel Baseball Academy was opened in the fall of 2003 by Matthew Maniscalco and Josh Beshears following their respective college baseball careers and their first professional seasons. Maniscalco graduated from Mississippi State before playing with the Tampa Bay Rays organization, and Beshears graduated from Berry College before playing professionally with the Kalamazoo Kings.

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Excel’s first facility was a 2,100 square foot building located on Barry Street in Oxford. It was there that Beshears and Maniscalco’s goal of training aspiring players through first-class professional instruction came to fruition. The original building featured a sandy dirt mound, holes in the batting cages, and a garage door that had to be opened in order to pitch 60 feet, 6 inches. 

Excel closed the first summer while Beshears and Maniscalco went off to play their 2nd seasons of professional baseball and reopened in the fall of 2004 in a new location on Roberts Street. It was then that Steve Gendron, a former teammate of Maniscalco’s at Mississippi State, joined the Excel family. Gendron had just completed his college baseball career at Mississippi State and started his first season with the Florida Marlins organization. Excel would call the Roberts Street location home for almost 6 years, spanning from 2004-2010.

In 2007, Excel began offering year-round instruction after all three instructors retired from professional baseball. In 2008, Excel launched a new branch of the business, Excel Strength, under Gendron’s direction to further develop the athletes’ strength and agility. In the same year, Excel started its first summer showcase team, the Excel Blue Wave, featuring aspiring 17u players from various high schools in central and north Alabama. 14 of the 16 players composing that roster played college baseball, including nine D1 players, five SEC signees and two MLB draft picks. Then in 2009 Excel added a second team, the Excel Blue Sox; and the Excel Blue Rays were added the following summer.