Pasco's Dominic Brown is clutch on the mound and at the plate.
By GREG AUMAN
Published May 14, 2004
DADE CITY - The team bus had stopped in Dunnellon, where the only undefeated team left in Florida was waiting for Pasco, and coach Ricky Giles walked over to sophomore Dominic Brown, casually handed him the game ball and told him that, oh, by the way, he would be the Pirates' starting pitcher. Brown, a 6-foot-6 sophomore left-hander, had started more games than any other Pirates pitcher this season, but he expected senior Sonny Glover to get the nod. Was he surprised? Sure. Nervous? Perhaps. Intimidated? Not at all.
"I wanted to pitch," said Brown, who has shined on the mound and at the plate in his first varsity season, never more than on Tuesday night. "It just made me more excited, because I knew the scouts were going to be there, so I knew I had a chance to impress somebody."
Consider them impressed, and marking their calendars for spring 2006, when Brown will be a senior.
"Dominic Brown was a horse," said Giles, who talked to coaches from Florida and South Florida who came to see the top-ranked Panthers but left talking about the lanky lefty. "The scouts were asking me how old Dominic was, thinking he was a senior. I told them he was a sophomore, and they couldn't believe it. He's only going to get stronger."
Brown struck out nine and left after 62/3 innings with a 2-1 lead. When Dunnellon rallied to force extra innings, Brown had a two-out double to leftfield, scoring Glover for the winning run. He also caught the final out, a pop fly to leftfield.
At the plate in the eighth, as it has been all season, Pasco's opponent saw Brown coming and still couldn't stop him. With Glover at first base, Giles heard a Dunnellon coach yelling and saw him shift his outfielders a shade toward rightfield.
"I heard him saying, "Don't let him pull it, don't let him pull it!"' Giles said. "I thought to myself, "Uh-oh.' I got talking to Dominic, and sure enough, he hit it opposite field, hit the bottom of the wall. It wasn't even close at the plate, and he almost walked to second base."
Brown said he didn't consciously try to hit the ball to left, but he was happy when it came off his bat the way it did.
"It was just an outside pitch, and I put it where it needed to go," he said. "The last few games, I've been pulling the ball a lot, but I wouldn't say I'm a pull hitter."
Tuesday's outing wasn't that surprising, considering how Brown has stepped up against tougher opponents. He beat Land O'Lakes and held his own against the Sunshine Athletic Conference Pitcher of the Year, Zephyrhills' Joe Duffau, losing a 1-0 duel.
Without Brown's pitching and clutch hitting on Tuesday, he'd be practicing on a different field as part of drills in spring football, where he's expected to turn heads as the Pirates' top receiver this fall. His build and athleticism make for easy comparisons to all-state receiver Johnny Peyton, who will play at USF this fall, so the biggest question surrounding Brown is which sport will be his ticket to success at the next level. It might be baseball, as scouts found out Tuesday, but it'll be another two years before they'll find out.
Brown can focus on his batting tonight, as Pasco travels to Orlando, hoping to pull off another improbable upset against No. 3 Bishop Moore. He'll likely bat cleanup, and said Tuesday's win showed the Pirates shouldn't be underestimated.
"It's all heart," he said. "You have to have heart to beat a team like Dunnellon, because they were pretty good."
