LOS ANGELES – It was easy to feel sincere appreciation as the players and coaches from California Club Baseball (CCB) Elite took in the surroundings at beautiful Dedeaux Field, the home of the University of Southern California Trojans that nestles in so unobtrusively on USC’s downtown campus.
“I’m excited to play at some real good venues – USC is a great ballpark and I’m hoping to play here in the near future and I want to get used to it,” CCB Elite 2015 catcher/first baseman/outfielder Nick Oar, a Stanford recruit, said Friday morning from just outside one of the dugouts Dedeaux.
Oar was on the USC campus with his CCB Elite teammates to begin play at the inaugural Perfect Game California World Series (Upperclass), a 16-team tournament that began its three-day run Friday. The 16-team PG California World Series (Underclass) is running simultaneously and the 32 teams will combine to play nearly 140 games at eight Los Angeles-area venues through Sunday.
CCB Elite – which like all the others has teams in both tournaments – is based in San Jose and is proudly representing the northern portion of the state at the two events (there are other Northern California programs in attendance, as well).
“It really makes a little more special playing here because we don’t get to come down here very much,” Oar said. “(The Southern California teams) are always really competitive and they play really high-beat, high-intensity baseball and I’m really excited to get out there and play it.
“There are always very high expectations when it comes to Southern California baseball; it’s renowned for being the best of the best.”
The PG California World Series isn’t just about Southern California versus Northern California, of course. It’s about teams from the south working just as hard to beat their next-door neighbors as they will work against a distant cousin from up north, all in an effort to claim Golden State bragging rights.
Many of the organizations competing here this weekend won’t send teams across the country to play in the upcoming PG WWBA World Championship in Jupiter, Fla., so this gives them an opportunity to bask in some bright October sunshine right here in their own neighborhoods. And as a solid turnout at USC Friday morning attests, the college coaches from the area love to have these guys playing right here at home.
“This is something that I thought has been overdue for a long time in the state of California; there is a lot of talent here,” CCB director and head coach Erick Raich said Friday. “I’ve always wanted to take a group out to Jupiter but it’s just so hard to get guys to take that much time off from school – missing five to six days of school is really tough. We’re kind of hoping this can turn into a West Coast or California version of Jupiter … to give these guys an opportunity in the fall to play against the best.”
CCB Elite opened play at the PG Cali World Series Upper with a 6-2 win over June Lake-based So Cal NTT, a game in which the Elite pounded out 10 hits and used a four-run sixth inning to pull away. Ben Skinner, Scott Ota and Josh Savea had two hits apiece, Skinner and Ota scored twice and Colin Runge drove in a pair of runs.
“I think it comes down to the little things: Who’s going to play catch, who’s going to put the ball in play and keep the ball on the ground,” Skinner said of the key to picking up pool-play wins even before the game even started. “It’s just really all the small things that go into winning a game.
“We’re here to win; that’s the bottom line,” he continued. “It’s going to be some great competition here, playing at some nice fields, but this a business trip; we’re looking to win this tournament.”
There is no question that this CCB Elite team was built to compete with the best of the best from within the state’s borders. The roster, filled exclusively with prospects from the class of 2015, includes 11 that have committed to NCAA Division I schools with 10 of them ranked in the top-600 nationally – four in the top-328.
Oar, from Pleasant Hill, and left-handed pitcher Kris Bubic from San Jose are both committed to Stanford and are ranked Nos. 243 and 317, respectively, in the 2015 national class.
“It was for the education, mainly,” Oar said of his decision to commit to Stanford. “You can’t really pass up a Stanford degree; even after I’m finished playing baseball I’m always going to have those connections at Stanford. And the baseball itself is really, really competitive … and I like the way the coaches teach; they’re really disciplined.”
Right-hander/third baseman Troy Miller from Aptos is ranked No. 276 nationally and with his commitment to Michigan is one of only two CCB Elite prospects leaving the West Coast to attend college. The other is Skinner, an outfielder/middle-infielder from Moraga and a top-600 prospect who is headed for Harvard and the Ivy League.
“The education was a big factor in my decision; it’s a great school and I’m looking forward to going there,” Skinner said of his decision to pack his bags and move to Boston. “And also, from the baseball aspect, it’s Division I baseball, I like the coaching staff, I like the guys on the team, I love the venue; there’s some great facilities there. I’m just really looking forward to getting there and being able to compete.”
And there’s no trepidation, not even the slightest bit, about moving roughly 3,000 miles away from friends and family to continue your education and you’re baseball career? “I’ve visited out there and I like it a lot out there,” Skinner said. “It’s definitely far from home but I think I can handle it.”
Other college commitments from prospects on the CCB Elite roster have been made to UC-Davis, Oregon State, Washington, Sacramento State and Pacific.
“They’re just the right group of guys,” Raich said of his players on this Upper team. “It’s a good group of players – we’ve actually had some guys come in for this event that maybe haven’t committed to a school yet or other guys wanting to up their draft stock – and it’s just been a fun group of guys.
“For us, it’s not necessarily always the best guys, it’s the right guys – that’s what we’re looking for,” he continued. “Guys that want to continue to progress and guys that are not happy with where they’re at; they’re always looking for the next step.”
Raich called the San Francisco Bay Area a “big hotbed for talent” and when he helped start the CCB program 10 years ago the impetus was to make sure those players got noticed – get the players’ names out there among the college recruiting and professional scouting communities and help them move on to levels of play beyond high school.
“There is a lot of good talent there,” Raich said. “Just with the growth of the area, it’s just a big, big metropolis of talent with the South Bay, the East Bay (and) the North Bay. There are just so many different dynamics of that area that there is just huge amount of talent there.”
This CCB Elite Upper team roster is filled with a lot of that talent and it is also filled with players that care about one another, which is always an instant recipe for success.
“We’re a team that plays for each other,” Oar said. “We pick each other up and whenever we mess up we’re always a team that (supports) each other. It’s a good group of kids that are really tight-knit.”
Expounding on that theme, Skinner called the team a “very tightly knit bunch” with individuals that like to hang out with one another away from the baseball field. Once on the field, that friendly demeanor can change in a hurry.
“When we get on the baseball field it’s all business; we’re here to win, like I said,” Skinner said. “We’ve got a lot of talent, a lot of potential and a lot of good players. It’s fun being down here bonding with the team, and also getting to meet new guys from other teams.”
Another thing Raich likes about the PG California World Series is its 16-team field. It is his personal feeling that some of the bigger tournaments with hundreds of teams can dilute the field, which eliminates an air of competitiveness in some of the early pool-play games. That’s not the case at the PG WWBA World Championship in Jupiter, of course, where every one of the 80-plus teams is elite.
“Sixteen, I think, is a real good number for getting quality teams and quality players out there,” he said. “I’ve always thought Perfect Game has done a really good job with their top events and we’re excited to be here.”
Excited enough that he hopes the PG California World Series can continue to prosper so he can gather his CCB Elite Underclass and Upperclass teams together in early October and continue to make the trip south.
“I love coming down to Southern California,” he said. “There is great talent down in Southern California and we always try to take our guys out of their backyard and get them up against some of the Southern California guys who are pretty good, too. In our area, you can be a big fish in a small pond and I always tell our guys that if you want to play at a four-year school or be a draft guy … you’ve got to see how you stack up against the guys nationally from all around the country.
“You have to get out of your backyard to be able to see how good of a player you are and how good of a group you are.”