When it comes to baseball, Chris Gaines isn’t used to standing on grass.
A rising junior at Huntingtown, Gaines earned the starting job at third base this past spring and had become accustomed to making plays on the infield dirt.
But as a member of Calvert American Legion Posts 85, 206, 220 and 274, Gaines is seeing the game from new vantage points—including the outfield.
“Some positions you really don’t want to play,” admitted Gaines, who hadn’t been an outfielder since his early Little League days. “But once you get there, it’s fun.”
“I can’t have a kid that just pitches, or just plays third,” Calvert head coach Tom Sydnor explained. “They understand that.”
Such is a tenant of Legion baseball, where exploring one’s versatility on the diamond is a staple. While fluctuating rosters often predicate those position switches, Calvert has also dealt with a more atypical Legion dilemma—their surplus of younger players in a league dominated by high school seniors and college freshmen.
As proven by a 5-2 loss against Clinton Post 259 Thursday, June 12 at Northern High School, those extra few years of on-field maturity—or lack thereof—can be the difference between a summer victory and defeat.
“We’re inexperienced,” Sydnor said. “These guys have played good high school ball, but as you saw today, we got taken out on the bases. They haven’t learned the game playing from behind.”
Inefficient base running certainly hurt Calvert; both hesitation and over aggressiveness resulted in rally killing outs throughout the game.
“The expectations in high school are ‘if I want a base, I take it,” said Sydnor. “We’ll learn.”
Not everyone for Calvert is battling youthful mistakes. Although much smaller in number than last year’s team, high school graduates such as John McIntosh and Jimmy Lubonski (both from Huntingtown) have lent a guiding presence to this season.
Their mentorship is compounded by the fact several current players for Huntingtown make up a sizeable portion of this summer’s Legion squad.
“It’s fun, because [I’ve] been playing with those guys all through high school and built a trust with them,” noted McIntosh. “Even though they’re young, we’re still learning from each other.
“Seeing them do good makes you feel good too.”
“When I got pulled up for state playoffs [in 2007], they were my role models,” recalled Gaines of his Huntingtown predecessors. “Now I get to play with them—so it’s a lot of fun talking to them and learning.”
E-mail William Logan at sports@calvertindependent.com.
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The Calvert Independent
