Great Scott Leading Another Hit Parade

One scout says Bill Scott’s swing is like Vermont maple syrup, sweet and fluid.

Another compares it to a foreign sports car, compact and powerful.

Everyone agrees Scott is the real thing, the best pure hitter in the area.

In his senior year, the Alemany slugger is eclipsing even the eye-popping numbers he posted in the previous three. Scott is batting .641 with five home runs, raising his career average to .458.

He has improved every year, batting .318 as a freshman, .471 as a sophomore and .500 last season. The steady pounding, plus cracking the books, has earned him a scholarship to UCLA.

Scott has a 4.0 grade-point average in honors classes and wants to attend college, making some pro scouts hesitant to draft him in June. Yet if the right offer comes along . . .

“College is very important to me, but I’d love to play pro, too,” Scott said.

Scouts often give their director and general manager a description of a prospect’s playing style by comparing him to an established major leaguer. With Scott, Paul Molitor’s name comes up most often. Same short stride, quick hands, a swing with no wasted motion. And same pleasant yet intense disposition.

The only question mark is his arm. Scott had shoulder surgery after his sophomore season and has taken more than a year to get his arm strength back.

“My arm doesn’t have as much endurance yet as it did, but I can throw harder now than before the surgery,” he said.

Scott is playing left field after playing first base last season. He has been the designated hitter the past few weeks while recovering from a sprained left ankle.

No injury has kept him from taking his turn at-bat.

“Early in my career I had a good swing and got good pitches to hit,” he said. “Now I’m better in the sense that I can hit the curve with power as well as the fastball.”

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Freshmen usually don’t do squat at the varsity level, but two in the area are doing just fine from a crouch.

Unmask the catchers at Newbury Park and Notre Dame and, surprise, the blue-collar backstops are baby-faced ninth-graders whose youth belies a wealth of experience.

Newbury Park’s Joe Hamer is batting nearly .400 with good power. He also has a quick release. Notre Dame’s Matt Cunningham has quick, soft hands and a strong arm.

Neither is overwhelmed by playing against seniors because their development has been accelerated for years. Hamer played on the Cleveland Indians’ scout team as an eighth-grader, and Cunningham was the only freshman on the Houston Astros’ scout team last fall.

Pressure isn’t an issue either. Hamer will play in his fourth consecutive AAU national tournament in August. Cunningham caught for the Northridge Little League team that won national championships in 1994 and ’95.

There are several excellent senior catchers in the area. Hamer and Cunningham have yet to reach that level. But time is on their side.

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Ranking just behind catcher as a particularly demanding position for a freshman is shortstop. Yet two ninth-grade shortstops have provided consistent defense since being promoted from the junior varsity early in the season.

Matt Fisher, another of the former Northridge Little Leaguers, makes routine plays look routine at Chatsworth, and Ryan Donahue has shown range and an accurate arm at Thousand Oaks.

Donahue wasn’t in the varsity plans even after Ryan Cope, the team’s best infielder, transferred to Westlake. But a rash of errors forced Coach Bill Sizemore to promote Donahue, and the freshman has shown the maturity to handle on-the-job training.

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Cope, who is batting .667 in Marmonte League play and .442 overall, plays second base at Westlake because junior Scott Dragicevich, perhaps the area’s most consistent infielder, is the shortstop.

Along with sophomore third baseman Kevin Howard, they form an infield that next season will be the best in the area. All three are college prospects, and all three might play shortstop at that level.