Hijacked from Basketball Board... with a baseball twist

[SanDiegoSteve]

Originally Posted by Kevin Finnerty

I'm just saying that you did place high school in a category that made it sound free of any real challenges. I did a H.S. game at Jered and Jeff Weaver's school, and they had another pro prospect throwing 94 mph when I was there. There was another private school in the valley that had three D-I pitchers who were already signed as juniors. One 91-mph-throwing left-hander went to Florida State; another lefty, who throws 93, went to Loyola Marymount, and the third one, a right-hander who went 20-0 with a 1.00 ERA as a varsity starter, went to NY Stonybrook. All three may be in the big leagues someday, according to not just me, but the several scouts that followed them. Their games got pretty challenging, too.

High school is not necessarily high school in several parts of the country.

Exactly the point I've tried to make here for a long time: We see lots of pro prospects and they are the ones that actually make it to the bigs. We umpire in front of really big crowds, with many scouts in attendance, and some of the games are televised. They most certainly are featured on the news at night. I've been on TV plenty of times. And I've worked big crowds at Qualcomm Stadium before. I don't care how big or small a crowd is, or how important a player or a game is, I relish the pressure situations, yet have never worked a D-1 game in my life. There is plenty of drama here in SoCal at the high school level. Baseball here is like football is to Texas.