A High School Baseball Dreammaker

 

Jose Garcia is a young and talented reporter at the Arizona Republic, the newspaper of record not only in Arizona but in the greater Southwest. His primary responsibility encompasses high school sports, most specifically, in the spring, baseball. As such, his readership in a major metropolitan area like Phoenix is not as broad as for reporters on the beat of, say, the Arizona Diamondbacks, the Phoenix Suns, the Arizona Cardinals or the Arizona State University football program.   But it is a readership that matches – and surpasses – the others in a passion for the subject. Garcia is representative of reporters very much like him across the country. They are writing about young athletes who most often aspire to athletic opportunities beyond high school, who have enjoyed greater than normal success and who enjoy the love and support of those who read about them so passionately. In that regard, Garcia always is dealing with issues that to someone are potentially very sensitive. This readership, in fact, is as intense as they come. At stake are dreams that are still intact.

 

In his job, Garcia covers games, looks for interesting and unusual features and frequently profiles young players and their accomplishments both on and off the field. He chronicles larges schools of more than 4,000 students and far smaller schools of a few hundred. He offers his opinions and analyses and tries to cram as much information as possible into a physical space on the printed page that could never be large enough to satisfy everyone in the Republic’s universe.

 

One of his most important – and surely his most sensitive and scrutinized – assignments comes at the conclusion of each spring when he selects the official all-star teams for the Republic, one for each of the state’s five classifications (1A and 2A are combined) and the pre-eminent All Arizona team, which in these parts is as esteemed as an All America team. The All Arizona team anoints the best of the best in a state that takes its high school baseball every bit as seriously as Texans take high school football. Nearly all of the best male athletes in Arizona are playing baseball in high school.

 

The team is comprised of three pitchers, four infielders and three outfielders (regardless of position), a designated hitter and a utility player. The only politics that matter are the politics at play in Garcia’s mind, the debate he has with himself as he weighs the information he has gathered from the state’s high school coaches, an array of college coaches and professional scouts, his colleagues at the Republic and what he has seen on the field with his own eyes.

 

Especially in a growing state such as Arizona, many of the players Garcia selects are talented enough to make a quick jump into professional baseball or top 50 Division I baseball programs. Many of the players he does not select have similar opportunities, or at least have hope for similar opportunities. It is part of what makes this aspect of the job so difficult. Off this year’s team, two already have signed pro contracts (Scottsdale Desert Mountain’s Hayden Parrott with the Detroit Tigers and Phoenix Cesar Chavez’s Eligio Sonoqoi with the Tampa Bay Devil Rays),  eight will be playing college baseball next season, including at schools such as UCLA (Scottsdale Chaparral’s Charles Brewer), Arizona State University (Phoenix Brophy Prep’s Raul Torrez), Cal State Fullerton (Glendale Deer Valley’s Khris Davis) and the University of San Diego (Scottsdale Chaparral’s Jason Jarvis). Three more are high-profile juniors, including one (Scottsdale Horizon’s Tim Alderson) who has been mentioned prominently as a potential first round pick in the June 2007 Amateur Draft.

 

Garcia’s reputation is on the line and the quality of his selections can quickly be measured. His approach to this part of the job is all business all the time because he knows the impact of the selections.

 

“We want to get it right,” Garcia says. “People measure us significantly by these selections, and we know what it means to them and to their families. That is why we are so thorough in gathering the information and recommendations we use in making the selections.”

 

For the players who go on to substantial professional and collegiate careers, a place on the All Arizona team remains an important honor, but one that might blend with many other important honors, such as those bestowed upon Paul Konerko of the Chicago White Sox and formerly of Chaparral High School after last year’s playoffs and World Series. Konerko will tell you that the All Arizona selection is a meaningful marker on the path of his development as a top-level baseball player.

 

For others, it is the pinnacle of their athletic achievements, recognition for some remarkable accomplishments in a high school career that otherwise fades with time. “Our selections are based on what they do on the field now, not on what they might do later,” says Garcia. “That’s part of what makes it special. These are the guys we judge to be the best of the best for that particular season.”

 

Garcia has to wonder sometime what will become of the players he selects. Last year, Dylan Johnston of Chandler Hamilton tore up Arizona high school pitching and subsequently was selected in the fifth round by the Chicago Cubs. As of July 17, he was hitting .200 with no home runs for the Peoria Chiefs of the Class A Midwest League. J.J. Hardy came out of Tucson Sabino High School in 2001 and is now in his second season as the starting shortstop for the Milwaukee Brewers. Ike Davis, a year out of Chaparral High School, was the Pac 10 Freshman of the Year at Arizona State. All Arizona teammate Matt Hall of Scottsdale Horizon, battled to get on the field for that same Arizona State team.

 

Even now, Garcia is thinking from time-to-time of next year’s selections and giving careful considerations to candidates that include not only the three juniors from this year’s team, but also players like Brophy’s Matt Newman, who is well-known on the national scene, and Horizon’s Kevin Rhoderick, who already has played an important role for one national team and has committed to play beginning in 2008 at the University of Georgia. Both were impressive earlier this summer at Joplin, along with Chaparral shortstop Jake Schlander, who has major interest now from the likes of Stanford and the University of San Diego. But there will also be players yet to emerge. Tomorrow’s stars, currently unknown. Part of Garcia’s job is to help identify them.

 

All of that is why he works so hard to get it right, which is as it should be. It should be known, too, that Garcia’s greatest respect is evenly distributed among all of those he watches on the field and in the dugouts doing their best to get a little better every day. It is part of the American dream and part of what makes baseball, even at the high school level, such an enduring part of American life. Jose is lucky enough to be able to make a small part of some of those dreams come true.

 

This column represents the thoughts and opinions of the author and are not necessarily those of Perfect Game.