Jonathan Griffin: Becoming A Professional Baseball Player

Bryce Harper is the player that you love to have on your own team, but opponents can't stand him! He might have a swagger that annoys opponents, but he is one heck of a baseball player and this year he is breaking out to the superstar everyone expected! He is just 22 years of age and he is one of the most feared hitters in baseball. He has battled injuries to start his career because of what some have termed too much hustle, but this year he has put all together. He is hitting .331 27 home runs and 64 runs batted in the no question NL MVP at this point in the season. He might rub fans and opponents the wrong way but he is fun to watch play baseball I just wish as a Braves fan he was in a different division.

Greg Simpson sat in his dorm room that night and stewed about his rejection. When Simpson hit the Five Star courts the next day he was focused and determined to make a point. Despite being younger than everyone in the sophomore league, he dominated his rivals. He basically pillaged Five Star. When the week was over he was the league’s leading scorer, led his team to the championship earning the MVP honor and was named the top prospect in camp. To top off his week, Simpson threw down a monster dunk in the All Star game, an event that was witnessed by many of the top college coaches in the nation. At that point, Greg Simpson’s name was on the lips of every major college coach in the country. And he was yet to play a high school basketball

Jackie Robinson rookie season was one of his best years. He gave hope to players and people everywhere. Kids looked up to him because he changed the history of baseball. He was National League Rookie of the year. Jackie had 12 homers and had 29 steals. He had a .297 average. Jackie won MVP of the year and also won batting title with a .342 average the same year he won MVP. Jackie had become introduced into the Baseball Hall of fame in 1962.

Baseball statistics are meant to be a representation of a player’s talent. Since baseball’s inception around the mid-19th century, statistics have been used to interpret the talent level of any given player, however, the statistics that have been traditionally used to define talent are often times misleading. At a fundamental level, baseball, like any game, is about winning. To win games, teams have to score runs; to score runs, players have to get on base any way they can. All the while, the pitcher and the defense are supposed to prevent runs from scoring. As simplistic as this view sounds, the statistics being used to evaluate individual players were extremely flawed. In an attempt to develop more

Camden Selig’s road to success in college athletics hasn’t been a traditional one. He started off at Washington and Lee University majoring in psychology. He tried out for the baseball team but sadly got cut. During his time there he was a sports photographer for the yearbook and dabbled around sports on a small scale. He graduated with a bachelor’s degree and went on to Ohio University to get his masters in sports management. After he graduated, he didn’t quite know what he wanted to do. At first he thought he wanted to get into baseball. He had a passion for it and enjoyed the thought of having

He was also really good. What I thought was amazing is that he was a rookie of the year. A rookie of the year is like an all-star but they give to people who it is there first year playing in the MLB. Two years after his rookie of the year he won the National League MVP which stands for Most Valuable Person. As a final along the path of his career he won the most valuable thing you can collect. He and his team won the World Series.

He had to finish the season 6-for-9 to beat out Matty Alou and win the first of two close NL batting-title races.

He hit 600 home runs (5th most all time), won 10 gold gloves, and made 13 All Star Games. In almost 150 years baseball history, only the great Willie Mays can match Ken Griffey Jr. in these statistical categories. However, despite these extraordinary stats, Ken Griffey Jr. may be the ultimate “What Could Have Been” player. An incredibly promising career was derailed in the latter half by chronic injuries that robbed him of hundreds of games. If not for these injuries, Griffey was well on his way to becoming the Home Run King (Stark, 2010) and possibly the greatest player ever. Despite these setbacks, Griffey is still revered as one of the greatest and most popular MLB players ever. The savior of baseball in Seattle and the lone star to

Kershaw has achieved what many pitchers dream about many times. In 2011, Kershaw produced a appealing record of 21-5 with an Era of 2.28 and 248 strikeouts made it an easy selection to award Kershaw his First Cy Young Award. Kershaw, had achieved a triple crown, leading pitchers in wins, strikeouts and Era in 2011 to go along with a gold glove award. Clayton Kershaw is the youngest, three time CY-Young award winner, and first NL pitcher to win the MVP award since “Bob Gibson” in 68. Kershaw from 2011 to 2014 has had the lowest earned run average in baseball for four straight years. Kershaw is destined for the Hall Of Fame, as a batter, Clayton Kershaw had a higher on-base percentage as a batter [2.35] than opposing hitters against him [.231].Kershaw is a five time all-star from [2011-2015.] Kershaw has thrown two no hitters in his career, but has never made it to the World Series unlike Justin

Wednesday, March 1, was the 3rd game of the Chino Hills Varsity Baseball season. In this game, versus West Covina, Jacob Hobson took the mound in search of increasing Chino Hills’ record to 2-1. Jacob Hobson was excellent in his pitching performance on Wednesday by going to four innings, allowing no runs, two hits, and striking out 3 hitters. All three of Hobson’s strikeouts were on curve balls and had West Covina’s hitters out in front all game. Jacob Hobson was so successful in his start due to his mixing of speeds between his fastball, curveball, and change-up. The offense for Chino Hills was phenomenal by racking up eight runs on ten hits to give Jacob Hobson the win. The offensive star of the game was Gavin Woodward who went 4-4 with a

Freshman Colten Maples is just one of three freshman to make First or Second Team All-Conference. Maples batted .301 for the season and ranks second on the team and eighth in the country with 11 sacrifice bunts.

Charles “Chick” King was born on November 10th, 1930, in Paris, Tennessee. He lived in Paris most of his life until he was drafted to the Major League Baseball Association in 1951. He played for 11 years. Chick’s sport career started at Grove High School where he was an all- round athlete. He played football from 1947 to 1949 as well as ran track and played basketball. He was named to the all- state. He was also named to the all- county basketball team. After winning awards and playing greatly at Grove, he decided to attend the University of Memphis. He ran track at Memphis but mostly enjoyed the great game of baseball. That’s when he was drafted by the Detroit Tigers in 1951.

The article “The Clutch Gene” by Darren Fenster from Coach & A.D. this article is about “arguably the game’s most clutch hitter of all time.” “Ortiz was a .289 hitter with 17 homers, 61 RBI, and 51 runs scored in 85 postseason games.” He consistently was on the top of his game. In 2013, he suffered an Achilles injury while rehabbing he took every rep he could get and used it to make him better than he was before. He trained as if he was hitting against the Hall of Famer from the Yankee’s, Mariano Rivera. Rivera kept hitters to a “miniscule.177” but Ortiz managed to hit a .310 against him. How he could do this was because he trained to be ‘clutch’. To be ‘clutch’ you need three things, to always work with a purpose and a plan, mentally put yourself

In 2012, after being traded from the Mets to San Francisco, he managed to swat seven dingers while batting .323, garnering him another hefty contract, this time with the St. Louis Cardinals. His final year as a red bird saw him hit 32 home runs and 97 RBI’s, resulting in his most recent multi-million-dollar deal.

Many of the latest baseball prospects that have made it to the big leads have become some of the best baseball players around.