T-Bones sign former first-round pick and KU basketball player Henry

The Kansas City T-Bones announced they have signed outfielder C.J. Henry a former guard for the University of Kansas basketball team, to a contract for the 2015 season.

Henry, 28 (05-11-86), a native of Oklahoma City, Okla., is 6-foot-3 and 225-pound outfielder who spent 2013 with Evansville of the Frontier League.

He hit .332 with 71 hits, 29 RBIs and 38 runs in 57 games. He missed the 2014 season because of an injury, but played this offseason in the California Winter League, which finished its season last Sunday.

“We expect C.J. to come in and compete for a regular-season roster spot,” said T-Bones manager John Massarelli. “He is a hitter who can get on base, as he proved in Evansville. Defensively, he’s an athletic outfielder who has versatility to play in the infield, also.”

The New York Yankees selected Henry in the first round of the 2005 MLB June Amateur Draft out of Putnam City High School. He spent four seasons in the New York and Philadelphia minor-league systems, reaching high-A with the Yankees in 2008.

Henry is best known in the Kansas City area as a former guard for the University of Kansas basketball team, and older brother of Xavier Henry.

After starting his collegiate basketball career at the University of Memphis, C.J. Henry transferred to Kansas for the 2009 season, where he averaged 3.1 points per game in a limited role. He then finished his basketball career at Southern Nazarene, an NAIA school in Oklahoma, in 2011.

The T-Bones open the 2015 regular season at home on May 22 against Lincoln.


– Story from Matt Fulks, T-Bones senior director of broadcasting and media relations