Local youngster hits, pitches, runs to finals
Like most young baseball players, Cole Young had a dream of one day competing on a major league field. That dream came true sooner than he could have imagined.
Young, a 10-year-old Franklin Park resident, will compete in Major League Baseball's Pitch, Hit & Run finals at the Minnesota Twins' Target Field on July 14.
After advancing through the local competition at Hampton's McCully Field Complex in April and the sectional competition at McKinley Park in May, Young took first place in his division in the team competition June 28. Young went against kids from western Pennsylvania and West Virginia.
“It was fun,” said Young, who will be a fifth-grader at Bradford Woods Elementary School in the fall. “I've seen a bunch of Pirates games, but I've never been on the field.”
The pitching portion consists of attempting to hit six targets from 45 feet. Hitting is done from a tee, and points are scored for distance and accuracy. For running, contestants are timed as they go from second base around third and to home plate.
Young accumulated a score of 1,131 points at the team competition. He scored 375 points (nailing five of six targets with each hit being worth 75 points) for pitching, 440 for hitting (a straight blast of 220 feet with each foot awarded two points) and 316 for running, after being clocked at 8.34 seconds.
Twenty-four players will compete in the finals. There are eight divisions separated by age and gender, with three competitors in each division. In Young's division of 9- and 10-year-old boys, he will be up against Nationals' representative Clay Grady of Suffolk, Va., and Twins' representative Brayden Sawyer of Grundy Center, Iowa.
Young is the only Pennsylvania resident to make the finals.
There were more than 4,000 competitions held across the country and approximately 625,000 participants, according to Major League Baseball. Rick Young, Cole's father, said there were about 30 competitors in his son's division at each stop.
The finals take place at 2 p.m. local time in Minneapolis before the Home Run Derby. After his competition, which will not be televised, Cole Young and the other finalists will be on the field to shag balls during the derby.
“That's going to be really cool,” he said.
Young and his father also get an all-expenses paid trip to Minnesota. Also watching will be Cole Young's brother Blake, 15, and mother Jo Anne.
To prepare for the competition, Young has been throwing at targets set up in a street hockey net to simulate the pitching competition. Going for distance off the tee requires more of an upward swing to get air under the ball. He doesn't want to make that a permanent part of his swing when he plays for his local Brad-Mar-Pine team, where he instead focuses on a more level stroke intended to produce line drives.
Neither swing seems to be hurting. A day after finishing first in the hitting competition at PNC Park, Young crushed a pair of home runs in each game of a doubleheader for his Brad-Mar-Pine squad.
Young said he isn't nervous about the finals. His father said he simply wants his son to go out and enjoy the moment.
“We're just going to go up there and take a deep breath and see what happens,” Rick Young said.
Ed Phillipps is a freelance writer.
