Baseball : Player of the Year

Bud Murray, the venerable coach at Hart High, announced he would retire this season after a combined 39 years of college and high school coaching, but he still had something to accomplish.

Murray had never won a Southern Section championship and, if he were to win one, he needed a team player who excelled on offense and defense.

Enter Jamie Shields, The Times’ Valley player of the year.

Shields, a junior pitcher, blazed to an 11-0 record, striking out 123 batters in 71 1/3 innings and posting a 2.35 earned-run average.

In a playoff victory over Royal, his fastball was clocked at 91 mph.

Just as impressive, if not surprising, were the hitting statistics for Shields, who played first base when he wasn’t pitching. Shields set school records with 11 home runs (a mark also reached by teammate Matt Friedrichsen this season) and 45 runs batted in, pretty good numbers for a player who hit only one home run last season.

“To tell you the truth, I didn’t think I’d do that well hitting,” said Shields, who finished with a .478 batting average. “I think I even surprised the coaching staff.”

Shortstop Tim Hutting of Hart, who led the Indians with a .526 average, saw the difference between last year and this year for Shields.

“I’ve grown up with him,” said Hutting, who is a cousin of Shields. “I’ve seen him develop. This year he absolutely broke loose. He had an amazing year.”

Shields was on the mound at the finish when the Indians (27-4) defeated Righetti, 10-9, to win the Southern Section Division II championship.

The Southern Section’s Division II player of the year, who could be a first-round draft choice next spring, shared the credit with his teammates.

“From my perspective, there’s not one starting player that’s better than the other,” Shields said.

“We’re great one through nine. I’m no better than anybody else.”

And as for winning the championship in Murray’s last season...

“We did the greatest thing for him, winning a championship and doing it his style--playing ball and not talking trash,” Shields said. “He’s normally a mellow guy, but I’ve never seen him happier these days. Every single day he has the biggest smile on his face.”

In the coming years, Shields is the one who could be smiling because of his immense potential.

“He’s going to be a lot stronger next year and that’s what’s scary,” Murray said. “He’s got a lot of room for improvement to increase his velocity because he’s a skinny kid. We’ve had better pitchers but not better throwers. He has the arm to be one of the best.”