Pitch & Hit Club of Chicago Showcase presented by the Hoosier Bat Company

was one of the best showcases my son attended last year. terry sullivan and gordie spoke and the kids listened.

jarthur....memories!!! lol...sure do miss the old days when we attended your events....Maybe we'll come out in Oct. and see what the future holds!

By the way guys,,,,If you get invited to this event...GO

Current list of players is available at this link: Pitch & Hit Club Showcase

PBR is looking to go 2-0 in this prestigious event ... load me up again, jarthur. Grip and rip; no double-stealing necessary!

roster looks pretty good so far, how many kids are you bringing in?

I believe we will have just under 50 players. Some will double up as position players and pitchers. Here is the PR for the showcase: http://www.prweb.com/releases/2006/7/prweb417679.htm

looks good, any other players signed up??

how can you get an invite to this, does your coach need to nominate you? Thanks, would love to participate.

AD space is still open. We will shut down invites and sponsors in two weeks.

i see you got blair and crosby, hmmmmmmmmm, how did you manage that? this event has got the best names from the state by far. hope the weather works out like it has in the past. is coldstone sponsoring again?

Roster is comming along really well. A few players invited but unable to attend because of football(Jake, Nick, and Pete). Its a tough event to get everyone, but looking good so far.

Coldstone, no, but they did a great job a few years ago. Would love to set them up with my buddies venture, Lil slugger for a great combo. After the showcase my family and I will be heading to Vito and Nicks for some great pizza.

is it true that the state is looking to go to wood bats this year? im hearing different stories and this is a wood bat event.

It will NEVER happen.

The IHSA is asking for conferences this year to volunteer to be part of a wood bat study. Each team in the conference has to play all conference games with wood bats and non conference games with non-wood bats. They have to fill out paperwork and stuff like that. What will happen with it, who knows. Conferences have until Nov. to decide if they will take part in the study.

Jarthur- pretty interesting survey is there anything else you can tell us about what will happen with this study. What they are testing and so forth?

http://suntimes.com/output/prep/cst-spt-base25.html

I think Kyle was quite fired up in that pic.

Wood bat study, what will happen with this study? A betting man would say not much, but the IHSA will have baseline information to make a decision regarding bats. Its going to be interesting to see if any conferences agree to take part in this study.

A really great, well run event. Thanks to everyone involved for giving the kids an opportunity to "show their stuff." JS- you have my vote for Governor!

a great event. several new faces like Zawacki, he had to top out near 92. anyone get a gun on him? i only saw the last 6 innings, so anyone else have any other info?

He touched 94 once and 93 a couple times. He beat my team in Iowa 2 weeks ago and was 92 in the 1st and 92 in the 7th, ISU,-- you got a real good one!

If he's truly throwing 92 in the 7th inning, he won't see college.

I was fortunate enough to be able to coach some of the pitchers in this game and help out with the event. It was a great time for all of the players invited who got a chance to showcase their talents as well as get a chance to hear 2 great speakers. Highlight of the speeches for me was a stat from Sean McDermott from UIC who said "a person with a college degree earns 1.5 million dollars more over the course of their lives vs. that of a person with a HS degree." Once again reinforcing the fact that education can make you more money than athletics.

I believe that we had 50 or so college and pros in attendance. I think that most of the players were a bit nervous for the first few innings and then settled in nicely and started just playing the game. It was a beautiful day and a great event to be a part of. A Great job by JArthur and the rest of the guys from the Pitch and Hit club!

Players who I thought stood out from an absolutely stellar class of kids top to bottom were:

Cameron McConnell- I think he had 3 hits, 2 doubles, and the 1.9 is for real. He has a cannon for an arm behind the plate.

Kyle Kaminska- It’s nice to see a young pitcher who can locate and change speeds with multiple pitches. Had my team calling his change the “magical change”. I didn’t get to meet his dad but I think he was the guy towering over everyone (Was that you NC42dad?). It would be scary for hitters if Kyle gets up near dads range.

Brett Zawaki- It took 1 warm-up pitch for the dugouts and stands to start buzzing. Brett throws flame, 92-94 is what I heard and a tight breaking ball to accompany the gas. He generates so much force and torque in his body as he is not the biggest of pitchers.

The future of baseball in Illinois looks bright!

For more info on this or to learn more about the pitch and hit club go to www.pitchandhitclub.org

Justin Stringer
Do It Right Baseball
Lane Tech Baseball
www.doitrightbaseball.com
HSBASEBALLWEB SPONSOR

I think I was doing more sitting than towering! I brought Seiple's radar gun to entertain myself and to start my "training" for my next career after I retire. Ha Ha. Thanks for the kind words on Kyle- he has worked at this hard for many, many years. He has had good people around him. I'm glad he'll be close enough to home to go watch in '08. Go State!

Is PHC geared mainly to showcase upstate IL players, ie Chicago area?

94??????????? i didnt think he was throwing that hard, quite impressive otherwise. i did find this link which looks interesting http://www.ihsbaseballreport.com/editorial.php?edit_id=714

Very nice to place a summary of the day on the net but it seems like they might have the kids stats, times and game summary a little mixed up.

Ok, the gun I was looking at was wrong then...
but I saw it with my own two eyes
and Beenthere, he was pumping 92 in the 7th. He just kept on coming. It was pretty impressive.

Okay I read the article and I will bite. The 50 best baseball players in the state of Illinois. This is according to whom? Shouldn't it be the 50 best according to someone or has evryone agreed as to who the 50 best are at this time. I will say it looks like many fine players were there, but was there any backfilling or has Jake smolinski quit baseball, how about Macmurray, Hall, I am sure a few more can be named. They also didn't mention how many didn't show up at the event or how many were from areas outside of the chicagoland area. I am sure this will open up a bucket of worms but come on.

50 best players according to college and professional scouts...who recommend most of these guys. All those you mentioned (2bagger)...they were invited but could not attend. 50 colleges and pro teams represented this year...great job jarthur! I was honored to once again be part of this great event!

pitchdoc, excuse me for asking or questioning the remark. I guess i look back at some of the experts that last spring questioned someone when they brought up Austin wrights name and I quote, from been I think, a lefty soph throwing 90 would be known all over the world, but at the time most of the people on this board did not know him. It wasn't long ago that the experts didn't know Jake Smolinski and was an afterthought in the pbr stuff, I guess Rockford is a long way off. My point being is I feel great questioning the "experts" as I have never seen any politics in sports nor people being missed, apparently that doesn't hold true for you. I am glad you know the 50 best in the state of Illinois. Congratulations.

Chatter about player rankings and the inclusion of some and the exclusion of others seems to visit this site like the changing of the seasons. Now, it is someone taking umbrage with the PHC marketing their event as being for the top 50 players.

Later in the fall, we will hear, once again, chatter about the Super 60 Showcase held in Lake Forest at MVP. Who decides the top 50 or the top 60? It is and always will be, subjective and open to debate. Can't we all just agree that the players that were invited, the players that could attend are some pretty darn good players who can play this game. Sure, the football guys couldn't be there, others may just not be in shape or making college visits. Does it really matter?

Yes rosy, I already mentioned that there was many fine players at the event. I only questioned the news release. There are many fine players all over the state. Illinois is a huge baseball state.

Hope everyone involved had a great time and a quality experience. Great to see so many people out and about at our first Pitch & Hit Club meeting. Anything that the P&H Club printed said, "Select 50" not "Top 50". Big difference. We invited all the players the pro scouts wanted to see workout.

Also, if you look below the roster page in the booklet you will see all of the players who were INVITED BUT UNABLE TO ATTEND.

Hey Deuce

Never said anything about some radar gun ....

I don't think anyone there ran over a 8.0 in the 60.

And I know some kids were given credit for offense that didn't happen.

All this on the ihsbaseballreport.com

But I repeat, I appreciate the time and effort to update their website to get the kids as much exposure as they can. Just a few more weeks left and we will all be inside!!!!!

JARTHUR,

Great event once again! It's always someone out there who is not happy and wants to chime in about how some players were not at the event, so therefore, it was not reflecting the top talent in Illinois. It is not PHC fault that some of these kids that WERE invited, did not attend the event!

It was an outstanding job by you and your organization.
Keep up the good work.

Again, Is the talent only from Chicago? Looks like that was all that was represented, other than someone from WI. Just curious. I can understand that Pitch & Hit Club of CHICAGO only wants to promote kids in their area, just wondering. No ill feelings involved in the question.

Just a note on Zawacki as he plays for our fall team.

He has been consistently 89-91 most of the fall with many pitches touching 92-93.

In 3 innings at the Perfect Game Midwest showcase (the week prior to P&H) he was 93mph 6 or 7 times. He was in fact 92 in the 1st and 7th innings against Deuce’s team in Iowa (with some 93's in the middle). He flat out won the game for us by himself.

Not only does he work in the 90's he can really pitch. He's also a great kid, super teammate and a downright bulldog on the mound. His demeanor reminds me a little of Mike Bowden.

If he starts to show more consistency with his breaking stuff he might have a shot to be a pretty high pick in June. Either way congrats to Brett on showing well at the event

The reason he's a little "unknown" is that he missed his JR season at LaSalle Peru with an injury he sustained in basketball.

I heard that another one of my fall guys; Cody Scarpetta was also 88-92 at the P&H event. Congrats to Cody who is a Creighton signee.

baseball8, yes I chimed in as I thought this is a board that allows that. Sorry you didn't like my thoughts.

Southside:

There were players running over 8.0 60s.

For their sakes I hope they were pitchers. LOL.