Bradley Clark hopes to dazzle scouts in tonight's All-American High School Baseball Classic.
By MIKE READLING
Published August 6, 2004
A lot of soon-to-be high school seniors spend their summers playing baseball. A sandlot game here, an American Legion game there.
Others go on vacation, possibly visiting an unfamiliar state or relatives somewhere up north. Others work, hoping to earn some extra money for when the school year starts.
Bradley Clark is your typical high school senior, except he has taken this summer to the extreme. Hillsborough's Clark spent the past two months playing baseball far from home and it almost has become like a job.
On May 28 he flew from Tampa to Cincinnati, where he moved in with a host family and began playing with a Connie Mack team in and around Ohio. He has not been back to Tampa since.
Clark said the coaches of the team, which is comprised primarily of players shipped in from other states, saw him play at a tournament last year and invited him to stay for the summer. As that team was qualifying for the Connie Mack World Series this month in Farmington, N.M., Clark was chosen for what has turned out to be his latest stop in a summer tour of baseball fields.
Tonight at 7:30 Clark will be one of 40 players from around the nation playing in the AFLAC All-American High School Baseball Classic at Cal Ripken Jr. Stadium in Aberdeen, Md.
The selection earned him a weeklong stay near Baltimore where the East and West teams had batting practice at Camden Yards, took in an Orioles-Mariners game Wednesday night and met Cal Ripken Jr. The teams also visited the Johns Hopkins Hospital Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center, the beneficiary of proceeds from the game.
"It's a real honor to be chosen," said Clark, who played junior varsity at Sickles as a sophomore, then American Legion for Hillsborough last year. He didn't play baseball during the school year because of an elbow injury.
This is the second annual All-American game. Last year's game was held in Fort Myers and featured three players who were drafted in this year's Major League draft, including No. 1 overall pick Matt Bush and No. 9 pick Chris Nelson.
The outing is expected to attract more than 200 college and major-league scouts, which Clark said was one of the more interesting aspects of playing.
"It's pretty exciting," Clark said, noting he has his sights set on the University of Florida and Alabama. "I'm hoping to get those colleges to look at me."
He should be easy to spot.
Clark is 6 feet 6 and weighs 200 pounds. He said his fastball was clocked this summer at 94 mph and he throws an 84 mph curveball and 82 mph changeup.
He was 10-0 with a 0.82 ERA for Hillsborough's "B" Legion team last summer. He also played the past two seasons in the PONY League's Colt World Series, earning a third-place finish and the championship last year.
