Tip to Redlegnation, Strasburg and Leake played on the same team as 11 year olds
It is gratifying to former teammates and coaches from their youth travel team that these extraordinary yet dissimilar pitchers emerged from the same wellspring, the San Diego Sting. They recall Strasburg as a pitcher a head taller than everyone else struggling to hold back tears while delivering blistering heat, and Leake as the catcher precociously calling his own game and showing off a rifle arm powered by daily long-toss sessions with his older brother and dad. Everybody called him Mikey and he rarely pitched.
The Sting was stacked. Brett Bochy, son of big league manager Bruce Bochy and a future closer at Kansas, played second base. Thomas Neal, a Double-A outfielder and top prospect with the San Francisco Giants, played shortstop. The first baseman was Xavier Scruggs, now a St. Louis Cardinals prospect who ranks second in the Florida State League in home runs. They all fondly recall the sweet innocence and steep competition of youth travel ball: crowding around a restaurant table filled with pizza and soda, cannon-balling into hotel pools at dusk, the memories of that day’s doubleheader lingering and the anticipation of another game the next morning.
“That was kind of like the start of everything,” Leake said. “That was a group of guys that developed relationships over time and had fun playing together. It’s something to look back on now and see how everyone has grown.”
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