InSIdE ThIS ISSuE Cherry Hill 10-U rolling into tournament season PAGE 2
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JULY 10-16, 2019
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A year into his pro baseball career, Eastern High alum Jack Herman is excelling in A-ball
By RYAN LAWRENCE Sports Editor
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With his team trailing the Lakewood BlueClaws by three in the top of the fifth inning – and one batter after a teammate tried to ignite the Grasshoppers by stretching a double into a triple, only to make the first out of the inning at third base – Jack Herman went to work. The Berlin native and left fielder of the Greensboro Grasshoppers slashed a single to left. Herman wasted little time sliding safely into second with his first stolen base in A-ball, and immediately advanced to third on an errant throw. Minutes later, he was scampering across home plate with his team’s first run. An inning later, the Pittsburgh Pirates’ South Atlantic League affiliate scored six times to take control of the game in a come-from-behind win. Before the Grasshoppers boarded their bus in Lakewood Township, New Jersey, bound for Hagerstown, Maryland, three days later – about a four-hour ride – Herman rewarded friends and family who drove up Route 70 with a going-away present: he reached base three times, including
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hitting a home run, in the Grasshoppers’ 10-1 victory. “It’s pretty surreal,” Jack Herman’s father, Ken, said from his seat in Section 109 at FirstEnergy Park. Exactly 12 months removed from high school, when he helped lead Eastern Regional High School and Olympic-Colonial to Diamond Classic and Carpenter Cup tournament titles as a senior, Jack Herman is excelling in his first full summer of professional baseball. “I’m not surprised, because I just think the world of Jack not only as a player but as a person,” Eastern High coach Rob Christ said. “The Pirates think highly of him. Frankly, despite the fact that he was drafted in the 30th round, I’m not surprised by that, either. I’m surprised so many teams missed out on his talent level.” It takes a special talent to be drafted by a major league team, period. But the odds of making it from 30th round pick through the grueling minor league journey all the way to a major league ballpark aren’t favorable. In the 10-year period between 2002 and 2011, 30th round picks are hitting .083: only 25 of the 300 players selected in the 30th round reached the big leagues. But, among those 25 are current big leaguers Jake Diekman (Phillies, 2007) and Hector Santiaplease see DREAMS, page 4
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SOUTH JERSEY SPORTS WEEKLY — JULY 10-16, 2019
BASEBALL
Little Big League Cherry Hill National’s successful summer season culminates this month with a national tournament in Alabama
In your hands, every week.
By RYAN LAWRENCE Sports Editor
They throw strikes. They make routine catches. They put the ball in play. They take extra bases and force the defense into making miscues. No, this isn’t the recipe of success for South Jersey’s most consistent high school baseball team. (Although it certainly could be). This is the way a close-knit group of 10-year-olds from Cherry Hill play the game: fundamentally sound, with a dash of aggressiveness. Cherry Hill National, the host team in last week’s 2019 10-U state championship tournament, is in the midst of another successful summer season. After taking on all comers near and far this spring, Cherry Hill National will test itself against the best in the country later this month: a 14-hour bus drive in two weeks culminates with the beginning of the 12-day Cal Ripken Babe Ruth 10-U World Series in Phenix City, Alabama. The tournament begins on July 30. Head coach Jeff Christmann’s team has been playing together for five seasons, since the kids were 6 years old.
Your Towns. Your Teams.
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Cherry Hill National’s 10-U team entered July with a 39-6-1 record, eager to repeat as district, state, and region champs and ready for a national tournament later this month in Alabama. Pictured are (front row, left to right) Jason Audino, Roman Faiola, Hayden Baker, Brayden Falcone, Cole Williams and (back row, left to right) Dante Matarese, Brody Connors, John Eddis, Jr., Mikey Fekete, Mason Rosenberg, Gabriel Yates and J.D. Christmann, Jr. “The boys work hard - they’re dedicated and focused,” Christmann said. “It’s a great group of boys that are very competitive. They’re disciplined, focused, determined. That’s why you see the banner in the outfield.” The banner just below the scoreboard at Mead Park at Lafferty Field reads: “9-year-old 2018 District, State, and Regional Champions.” The now 10-year-olds were hoping to pull off that trifecta and then some, with the upcoming trip to Alabama looming, as they went to work in last week’s state tourney. Since the team began to play together in 2015, Christmann estimates it’s won close to 40 tournaments. Cherry Hill National entered this month with a 39-6-1 record in 2019. Since the start of
2018, they’ve won the aforementioned trifecta on their scoreboard, the 2019 Big V Foundation Chick-Fil-A Green Monster Showdown championship in Leesport, Pa., the 2018 Legends Ballpark 9-U championship, the 2018 Diamond Nation Harley Davidson 9-U championship, and the 2019 Woodbury Spring championship, among others. The kids from Cherry Hill National are basically playing in competitive tournaments every weekend in the spring and summer. Their program gets started each season during the first week in January, when they begin a two-month instructional season at Tri-State Arsenal in Mt. Laurel. Come April, it’s tournament season. “I grew up in Central (Penn-
sylvania), I went to high school in Lancaster, did wrestling, baseball, football, and I had some of the best coaches, Pennsylvania Hall of Fame coaches,” Christmann said. “We traveled a lot, we played the best. You learn from that. When you play the best, you end up being the best. That confidence level, which I think has been really important for the boys to realize and understand, that they can win and they can beat the best teams on the east coast. It’s as simple as that, and we’ve done that.” Also notable in Cherry Hill youth baseball: Cherry Hill National’s 8-U tournament team will host the 2019 Cal Ripken Invitational World Series, drawing the best teams from the country, from Aug. 8-15 at Mead Park at Lafferty Field. ■
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JULY 10-16, 2019 – SOUTH JERSEY SPORTS WEEKLY
Cherry Hill’s Cole Williams takes a cut.
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Cherry Hill’s John Eddis Jr. takes a throw as Delran’s Delran’s George Willard delivers a pitch as teammate Jackson Veneziano slides into second base. Stanley McGraw and Cherry Hill’s Brody Connors get set.
Cherry Hill, Delran, Marlton, and Medford were among the teams in action last week at the 10-U state championship tournament in Cherry Hill. ALL PHOTOS RYAN LAWRENCE/South Jersey Sports Weekly
Cherry Hill’s Brody Connors delivers to the plate. Medford’s Dillon Molz lets loose on a pitch.
Marlton’s Alex Odud gets set to throw a pitch.
Delran’s Jonathan Abrams delivers Cherry Hill’s Brayden Falcone Cherry Hill’s Mason Rosenberg Medford’s Jack Potter to the plate. breaks for home on a sacrifice fly. gets ready to swing. waits for a pitch.
Cherry Hill’s Dante Matarese prepares to hit.
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SOUTH JERSEY SPORTS WEEKLY — JULY 10-16, 2019
DREAMS
continued from page 1
RYAN LAWRENCE/South Jersey Sports Weekly
Greensboro hitting coach Chris Petersen on Eastern graduate Jack Herman’s first full summer in professional baseball: “I like the fact that he’s so aggressive yet that he’s willing to learn and make adjustments in a game. He’s very open minded. We have good discussions in the dugout, good hitting talks. He’s growing and getting better every single day.”
go (White Sox, 2006), who have appeared in 650 major league games. So it’s not impossible. “It’s a little chip on the shoulder,” Herman said before a game last month in Lakewood. “I still got drafted, which (obviously) I’m lucky for, but getting drafted in the 30th and telling people I was signing (and turning down a college scholarship) I had a bunch of people telling me, ‘What are you doing?’ or ‘You’re crazy.’ But it’s my life and my decision, some people don’t know what I’m going through. So it’s kind of, they don’t know what’s coming. I’m going to show them what it’s all about.” One calendar year into his pro career, Herman is showing pretty well: he entered July 1 hitting .262 with a .368 on-base percentage and .953 OPS (onbase plus slugging percentage) this season at Greensboro. Herman, who doesn’t turn 20 until September, has six home runs in just 22 games with the Grasshoppers. A year ago, in his first taste of pro ball in the Gulf Coast League, Herman hit .340 with a .924 OPS and nearly as many walks (23) as strikeouts (24) in 37 games. “Honestly, I don’t know,” Herman said of his success last summer in the GCL, where games are played in the middle of the day under an unforgiving Florida sun in July and August. “Going into my first year of pro ball, I didn’t know how I was going to fare going against 90, 95 (miles-per-hour) every day, especially with some Dominican kids that don’t know where it’s going. It was about staying hard-headed with our practices, our (velocity) machines, all the machine work. I just got right there and figured it out. ... It toughened you up. It was seeing pitches, getting some experience.” Herman has continued to bring the same, stick-to-theprogram mentality in his first month in A-ball. Despite being just a year removed from high school, Herman has an advanced maturity as a hitter. “I like the fact that he’s so
aggressive yet that he’s willing to learn and make adjustments in a game,” said Greensboro hitting coach Chris Petersen. “He’s very open minded. We have good discussions in the dugout, good hitting talks. He’s growing and getting better every single day. We’re talking about his chase rates, where he’s swinging and missing on balls and he’s noticing it. … His openness is going to take him a long way. He’s got some serious pop, some strength. With that is going to come a lot of trust in his swing.” The climb from high school field to major league clubhouse is steep, with several steps through the minor leagues to master during the journey. But in one year’s time, Herman has already graduated out of rookie ball in the Gulf Coast League and bypassed Shortseason A-ball (the New York Penn League) to be among the younger players in the South Atlantic League. Could he make it to High-A next summer? How about getting onto the Double-A radar before the start of 2021? “Ooooh, I don’t know,” Herman said. “I kind of don’t like to think that far ahead. Being here right now is even a surprise to me. I mean, I know I’ve played well this year but I wasn’t expecting to be here. So coming here I knew I had to perform and show up.” Herman is doing just that midway through the 2019 baseball season. With the Pirates helping him get started on his college education through offseason, online courses, it’s safe to say Herman doesn’t have any regrets about signing a pro contract as a 30th round pick instead of playing collegiately at the University of Maryland. “From life experiences of my own, you only get so many opportunities in life,” Ken Herman said. “Who is to say you to go college and then you don’t get drafted again? … Everybody has an expiration date and you don’t know when yours is coming. So enjoy it while you can. Opportunities, you have to take them when you’ve got them. He could catch lightning in a bottle, you never know.” ■