Summer leagues give boys dream to build on
Brian MacPherson
The Arizona Republic
C.J. Ziegler hit 15 home runs as a junior at Canyon del Oro High in Tucson, and the scouts didn’t come. He showed enough athleticism that Arizona State recruited him to play football, and the scouts didn’t come.
This season at Pima Community College, he hit .323 with eight home runs and walked almost twice as often as he struck out. The scouts still didn’t come.
That’s when he headed east, to the Asheboro (N.C.) Copperheads of the Coastal Plain League, one of more than a dozen summer leagues for college players.
“I really wanted to get out of Arizona and go play some competitive ball somewhere,” he said. “Right off the bat, I loved it. It helped get my name out there.”
Despite having a season that begins in January and stretches into June, these players scatter for the summer to leagues in all corners of the United States. The players, most 18 or 19 years old and many living away from home for the first time, stay with host families, often hold down jobs to earn extra money and party with new friends from all over the country.
“There was something wild every night,” said Diamondbacks outfielder Eric Byrnes, on whose Cape Cod League team the movie Summer Catch was based. “It was fun.”
Cape Cod and Alaska are home to the most prestigious of the leagues and attract the most elite prospects, but motivations of the players are as varied as the geography of the baseball.
For players such as Scottsdale’s Austin Yount, it’s a chance to hone skills and develop experience playing every day. For Arizona State’s Brett Wallace, it’s a chance to jockey for future draft position with scouts watching every swing of his wood bat. For Ziegler, the Coastal Plain League was an opportunity to impress scouts and coaches who had never seen him play.
Each summer, college baseball players scatter for the summer to leagues in all corners of the United States. The players’ motivations are as varied as the geography, but what they share is a love of the game and a willingness to do whatever it takes and go wherever the opportunity exists in pursuit of a dream.
Here are the stories of three Arizona players and their summer “jobs” as baseball players:
Opening some eyes
Despite his strong numbers at Pima Community College, a school lost in the shadow of Arizona’s Pac-10 teams, C.J. Ziegler received no interest from premier Division I programs.His .329 batting average with 13 home runs in 47 games for the Asheboro Copperheads of the Coastal Plain League opened eyes around the country. After considering Mississippi and College World Series runner-up North Carolina, Ziegler made the decision to transfer to Arizona.
The Coastal Plain League, founded in 1997, cannot boast the longstanding tradition of its more storied counterparts in Cape Cod or Alaska, but it is not without bragging rights. Detroit pitcher Justin Verlander and Washington third baseman Ryan Zimmerman, top candidates for Rookie of the Year, both played in the league.
Asheboro players also become minor celebrities in a town where the Copperheads are the main attraction (with only the local go-kart track as competition for entertainment value).
“In the past two weeks, I’ve had more people come up to me and say I’m one of their favorite players to watch,” Ziegler said, the awe evident in his voice. “I’ve had people come up and ask for my autograph on a single ball, saying that they’re going to watch me play on TV.”
A chance to learn
Austin Yount doesn’t need the extra exposure - as a former Arizona 4A Player of the Year, the son of former pro Larry and nephew of Hall of Famer Robin, his name is well-known in baseball circles.
Still, in his first year at Stanford, the Scottsdale Chaparral graduate pitched and led the team in earned-run average, but discovered a roadblock at shortstop, his other primary position.
He went to Alaska for the summer in search of an opportunity to learn the rest of the infield.
The Alaska Baseball League, more than a century old, has been a proving ground for stars such as Barry Bonds, Jason Giambi and Randy Johnson. It also simulates low-level professional baseball with bus rides of up to 12 hours.
On days he isn’t pitching for the Peninsula Oilers in Kenai, Yount plays second and third base, getting more opportunities to hit than he did during his first season at Stanford.
“We’re hoping to get him some at-bats and for him to play the position we project him to play next year,” Stanford coach Mark Marquess said.
Many players use the summer to focus on specific skills - defensive footwork at a certain position, throwing a slider for a strike, hitting with a wood bat.
“The main thing is to play,” said Diamondbacks third baseman Chad Tracy, who played in two different summer leagues while in college. “The more you play, the better you’re going to get, and that’s if you’re anywhere.”
It leaves little time for recreation, but Yount quickly discovered the joys of Alaska fishing. On one trip out in the peninsula, his older sister caught a 60-pound salmon.
“The fishing, that’s been a blast,” he said. “When we get back (from the Oilers’ current trip), the fish will start to run, and that’s supposed to be great.”
Tape-measure shots
It took three games for Brett Wallace to make history in one of the nation’s most historic amateur baseball leagues.
Just days after joining the Falmouth (Mass.) Commodores of the Cape Cod Baseball League, Wallace drove his first home run over the fence at Guv Fuller Field, a field that has hosted dozens of future major league stars.
The next night, the Arizona State first baseman went deep in the second inning and followed with another home run in the fourth. With that, he tied the league record for consecutive at-bats with a home run in the wood-bat era (the Cape League outlawed aluminum in 1986).
“It was just crazy,” Wallace said. “I just let everything go and started hitting. I didn’t even realize (it was a record) until they announced it over the loudspeaker.”
Wallace had a solid freshman year for the Sun Devils, and he went to Cape Cod to test himself against the nation’s elite.
“You want to show everyone you can get better if you play against the best,” Wallace said. “You always want to play against the best.”
Professional scouts also want to see how elite college hitters handle wood bats, as the extra weight and smaller sweet spot makes it a vastly different hitting experience than hitting with aluminum.
“Your mistakes get shown,” Wallace said. “If you get beat a little with metal, you still can fight it off to right field for a hit. If you get beat with wood, you break your bat, and everybody’s going to know.”
Then again, if a player excels with wood - as Wallace has done thus far, hitting five home runs - everyone will know, too.
“The Cape is where I first got on the map,” Tracy said. “That’s where I first got the exposure I needed to get drafted the next year. . . . I definitely would not have gotten to this level without doing it.”