Smith Wants to Return to Football

Keith Smith, who spurned a football scholarship to Arizona last summer so he could sign with the Detroit Tigers, said Saturday he is giving up baseball and will try to play college football.

“I think that I’ll play football again,” said Smith, a 1994 Newbury Park High graduate. “It was really tough to give up. I like playing baseball, but it just wasn’t for me right now.”

Smith, who watched the Newbury Park girls’ basketball team beat Santana of San Diego in the state regional championship game at The Pond of Anaheim on Saturday, had been scheduled to report to spring training in Florida this past Wednesday.

Smith said he was not unhappy with the Tiger organization, which paid him a $200,000 signing bonus after making him a fifth-round pick last summer.

“I think, like all the other kids who have gone through what he’s going through right now, there is a good chance that as he figures out what he’s given up and weighs the pros and cons . . . he might decide to come back,” said Dennis Lieberthal, the Tiger scout who signed Smith. Lieberthal also said that Smith would be able to keep the bonus money plus a $50,000 college scholarship.

“I like baseball,” Smith said, “but it takes a special person to just do baseball, baseball, baseball every day. My first love is football.”

Smith said he was still interested in playing football at Arizona, but “I don’t know if they still want me.”

He said he is about to begin the process of finding a new school.

Smith, who graduated last spring as the leading passer in California history, said he agonized all winter about the decision.

“It was such a hard situation, it’s unbelievable,” he said. “(Last summer) a lot of people were telling me to go to school or telling me to play baseball. I just wasn’t doing it for myself.”

Smith had been making progress in baseball. After signing with the Tigers in June, he started at shortstop at rookie-level Bristol (Va.) and hit .252. He was promoted for the final two weeks of the season to Class-A Fayetteville, N.C., where he hit .200.