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Blackwood makes belated mark at MC

Delayed baseball career working out nicely for QO grad

Wednesday, April 19, 2006

Click here to enlarge this photo chris rossi⁄the gazette Quince Orchard graduate Scott Blackwood is batting .390 with two home runs this season for MC-Rockville, after a two-year absence due to health issues.

Three years ago, Scott Blackwood arrived at Montgomery College after a sterling career at Quince Orchard High. But after a successful freshman campaign, his health took a strange twist.

‘‘I had two seizures in one day and the medication I was on, I was completely out of it,” Blackwood said. ‘‘If it was this time, I wouldn’t even remember this conversation. It was a fluke thing. It was at home. It just happened.

‘‘I had to withdraw from [his classes] so I couldn’t play. The following year, I tried coming back [last year] but the workload was just too much for me. I wasn’t ready for it so I ended up quitting that fall.”

That decision appeared to bring his promising baseball career to a close but ‘‘then about mid-summer, something just switched on so I decided, `Hey, I want to come back.’ So I did everything I could to come back and I’m back here playing here.”

Blackwood’s road back included enrolling in a pair of classes during the summer and the fall and then surviving a lengthy eligibility process through the National Junior College Athletic Association that lasted 10 games into this season.

‘‘Scotty brings an older guy who can shore up our infield,” Shaffer said. ‘‘Scotty’s a little sparkplug. He’s steady for us [and] he’s got some power for a small guy.”

Through the weekend, Blackwood was batting .390 (30 for 77) with two home runs and 11 runs batted in with 30 runs scored, four doubles and two triples in 25 games. Not bad for someone who sat out the fall and spent the early part of the season nursing a hamstring injury that limited him to playing time in only the front end of doubleheaders.

‘‘I wish things were going a little different now but it’s still fun to be out here,” said Blackwood, whose team may be pulled from the upcoming Region XX tournament if the Knights don’t start playing better. ‘‘I’m enjoying being out here every day. Honestly, I feel like could be doing better. I actually started out of shape. I could be doing a lot better.”

The same probably couldn’t be said about Blackwood’s best friend on the team, freshman catcher Gerardo Hernandez, who is having a season to remember at the plate, including team highs of 12 home runs and 50 runs batted in.

‘‘I’ve never seen anybody hit like that,” Blackwood said of Hernandez. ‘‘He’s hands are so quick. It’s unbelievable. Just the mentality to go out and mash.

‘‘From day one, we’ve gotten along. He’s a great guy [and] he knows the game.”

That budding friendship would have never been possible if not for a tryout held by the D.C. Dynasty, an AAU travel baseball team, last year in Hernandez’s native Venezuela.

‘‘They went to Venezuela to look for a player to play for that team,” Hernandez said. ‘‘They did a tryout and they chose me.”

He arrived in Washington, D.C., last summer and his first game on American soil was, as fate would have it, at Montgomery College’s home field and Shaffer happened to be in the stands looking for a starting catcher.

‘‘There were five or six of them we tried to get,” Shaffer said. ‘‘It was actually six. The other four signed with Major League teams. I needed a catcher. We went through the process and the lengthy paperwork and got him here to play.

‘‘Gerardo brings a lot of enthusiasm and a big bat and a lot of experience catching-wise. He’s been taught by a lot of good guys back in his country.”

Hernandez said he’s played baseball all of his life but didn’t get behind the plate until he was 13 years old after a back injury ended an aspiring career on the mound. It’s a good thing for Rockville, which rather see him at the plate then on the mound, having produced a .467 batting average (56 for 120) with 17 doubles and 39 runs in 40 games.

‘‘I’m surprised because I never hit very well,” Hernandez said. ‘‘I can hit but I was surprised because I hit very well right now.”

Things haven’t gone as well for the Knights as a whole, however, as they slipped to 10 games under .500 at 15-25 with recent losses to Region XX rival Westmoreland, Pa. Friday and Harford (15-12) Saturday. Montgomery College had dropped 10 of its last 12 games.

‘‘Up to about two weeks ago, we were playing pretty good baseball,” Shaffer said. ‘‘Everything we do that causes us problems is between our ears. We’ve got a lot of guys who don’t have a lot of experience playing-wise, but we’ve played 36 games. It’s not like we’ve never stepped on a field. They’re making mental mistakes they should not make and it’s not just two or three of them. It’s the whole team. When you do that, you’re going to struggle.

‘‘If we don’t pick it up, I’m not going to go [to the Region XX tournament]. It’s here but I’ll be nice and relaxed. I’ll take care of the field. Cut the grass. Drag the infield. Do all that stuff. We’re pretty far from that now. We have to turn a lot of things around to get to that point. We’re dropping games we shouldn’t lose and it’s all about the attitudes of the players we have and right now it’s not there.”

Cougars here, there and everywhere

The Quince Orchard program has been one of the most consistently good in the state in recent years, including winning a Class 4A state title last year. One of the offshoots of that success is college scouts know how to find their way to the Gaithersburg school. The result is former Quince Orchard players dot college rosters up and down the East Coast and beyond.

The farthest from home are left-handed pitchers Chris Maloney and Joe Mattes, who currently take the mound for Embry Riddle University (Fla.) and Southeastern Louisiana University, respectively.

Maloney, a 2004 Quince Orchard graduate, had helped his NAIA school to a 40-11 record (through Sunday) by going 4-0 with a 2.07 earned-run average. He had appeared in 15 games with five starts and his innings have gone from 11 2⁄3 as a freshman to 35 through the weekend.

As of Monday, Embry Riddle is in first place in the Florida Sun Conference and is ranked 14th in the country ‘‘but we hope to move up after sweeping the sixth-ranked team this weekend in a three-game series,” Maloney said.

The team’s regional tournament begins May 6 in Daytona Beach when the Eagles look to secure their fifth straight NAIA World Series berth. It fell to Oklahoma City in last year’s championship game.

‘‘The experience is more than I expected,” Maloney added. ‘‘I knew coming down to play baseball in Florida would be a great experience, but I didn’t realize the hard work, sacrifices and dedication it would take. I have great teammates from all over the country and the coaching staff is one of the best I have ever played for.

‘‘I’m enjoying the school very much. It’s not a huge campus but we do have about 6,000 students, and the area couldn’t be better. It’s great being able to take a five-minute drive to the beach on our days off and the weather couldn’t be better.”

Mattes, one of the heroes in Quince Orchard’s 4A state title run a year ago, hasn’t seen much time as freshman but he’s made the most of his two appearances, working a save and 3 1⁄3 scoreless innings of relief. He had struck out five and walked one for Southeastern Louisiana (14-19), an NCAA Division I program that plays in the Southland Conference.

Other former Cougars logging college innings at the NCAA Division I level are 2004 Gazette Player of the Year Brian Conley (Towson), Matt Collins (Towson), Tommy Johnson (Marshall) and Justin Handler (La Salle).

Conley, a sophomore third baseman, has completely reversed course from a sluggish freshman year that saw him bat .191, while serving mainly as a late-inning defensive substitution. This year, as a full-time starter he’s hit .321 (43 for 134) with nine home runs, 31 runs batted in, 32 runs scored and 11 stolen bases through Saturday.

His Towson teammate, Collins, who helped Conley and Gaithersburg Post 295 win back-to-back Maryland State American Legion titles, was batting .241 in 21 games after taking a redshirt season as a freshman. The speedy outfield had made 12 starts for the Tigers (12-26 through Saturday).

Johnson started the season on the bench, missing the first 19 games because of an injury, but he has returned to bat .421 (8 for 19) with a home run and eight RBI in nine games for Marshall (16-16 through Sunday). He marked his return by going 4 for 6 with a three-run home run in a doubleheader against James Madison (Va.).

As a freshman, the sophomore catcher batted .308 with nine doubles and 26 RBI in 43 games, including 32 starts.

Handler, a freshman shortstop, slid into a starting position this season and through Saturday, he was batting .213 (27 for 127) with three doubles and 10 RBI for Philadelphia’s La Salle (13-20).