Baseball is still fun if you look in right places

Last Friday, I covered my first baseball game of the season: King’s Academy, making its Bay Division debut this season, at Hillsdale, which has developed into a solid Bay Division member. High school players don’t rely on the “three outcomes” that have taken over the pro ranks — the belief that a strikeout or walk is as good as home run and everything between doesn’t matter.

Instead, high school teams rely on that old baseball saw: just play the game.

Hillsdale’s 5-2 win was simply fun to watch and it highlighted all that can be good with the game of baseball. There were a pair of pitchers who relied on pitching to contact, and, as Hillsdale’s starter Scott Leighton said, “trust my defense.”

The teams combined for 12 hits and just one error, which easily could have been a baker’s dozen of knocks.

But what pitching to contact does is what pro teams fail to do nowadays: put the ball in play. The defense was in constant motion throughout the game. Whether it was Hillsdale turning an around-the-horn double play, or King’s Academy’s starting pitcher Garrett Plata, a lefty, picking off a Hillsdale baserunner on a 1-3-6 play — pitcher to first baseman to shortstop.

Offensively, the game was a pure joy to watch. There were three squeeze bunt attempts in the game. When’s the last time you saw a Major League Baseball team put down a bunt, let alone a squeeze attempt?

King’s Academy executed a perfect safety squeeze in the first inning — a play in which the runner at third breaks for the plate after the bunt is put down. Hillsdale, on the other hand, failed on its suicide attempt — one in which the runner breaks for home as the pitcher delivers to the plate.

Hillsdale did, however, get down two sacrifice bunts and also saw Antonio Paolinelli leg out a bunt single in the sixth.

King’s Academy executed a perfect hit-and-run in the first inning, which led to its first run of the game and, just to satisfy all those who dig the long ball, Hillsdale’s Will Garratt launched a towering, three-run bomb to left in the bottom of the first inning.

Because home runs are so hard to come by at the high school level, successful teams rely on a form of the game was that was acceptable for more than 100 years: good pitching, good defense, putting the ball in play and manufacturing runs.

Maybe professional baseball’s powers-that-be should take in a few more high school contests to see how fun the game can still be.

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I’ll be honest — King’s Academy athletics don’t get a lot of run in the Daily Journal. The Knights, out of Sunnyvale, play a bulk of their games in the West Bay Athletic League — which is comprised of teams from San Francisco to San Jose — and are a supplemental member of the Peninsula Athletic League in football and baseball. Obviously, there are not a lot of San Mateo County athletes going to King’s Academy, so the Knights don’t generate a lot of local story lines. 

But that doesn’t mean there the Knights don’t have interesting stories. Take King’s Academy baseball. An afterthought when the WBAL and the PAL baseball leagues merged beginning in the 2014 season, the Knights have shown that they can field a squad that can compete at the highest levels in the PAL.

Following a 13-1 Ocean Division-championship campaign in 2018, the Knights were promoted to the Bay Division for the first time for the 2019 season and have already proved worthy of the promotion.

Two weeks into their maiden Bay Division voyage, the Knights have garnered a pair of splits with Carlmont and Hillsdale.

“We were close to getting to the Bay Division three years ago,” said King’s Academy manager Greg Mugg. “We’ve been knocking on the door.”

The Knights’ rise can be attributed, in part, to Mugg. A former Mt. Eden-Hayward standout, Mugg earned a baseball scholarship to San Jose State after two community college seasons at Ohlone-Fremont and Laney-Oakland. Since taking over the program in 2015 after four years as an assistant, Mugg is 30-22 in PAL Ocean play.

No matter how good a coach, all good teams need talent and the Knights seems to have an abundance of it this season. They have eight players in their third varsity seasons and a dozen more playing their second season of varsity ball.

Now that the Knights are in the top division of the PAL, the challenge is to stay there.

“We want to establish ourselves in the Bay Division,” Mugg said. “We want to be a mainstay.”

Nathan Mollat can be reached by email: nathan@smdailyjournal.com or by phone: 344-5200 ext. 117.