With the blink of an eye, years go by so fast covering high school athletes. It seems like only yesterday Jake Bauers was a senior at Marina High collecting 48 hits with a .571 batting average. Thirteen years later, Bauers has a beard, tattoos and in his seventh major league season as the first baseman for the Milwaukee Brewers.
The last time I saw him was the Division 1 championship game at Dodger Stadium. His team lost 1-0 to Harvard-Westlake and Jack Flaherty at Dodger Stadium.
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Fast forward to Tuesday afternoon. He’s in the visiting clubhouse at Petco Park preparing to face the San Diego Padres, the team that drafted him in the seventh round in 2017. He’s as level headed and as comfortable as he was living in Huntington Beach. He has 21 home runs this season. Not bad for someone who didn’t get to play varsity baseball until his junior season.
Wearing No. 11 on her cheek at Marina games was his girlfriend, Lauren Carr, now his wife and mother of his two children.
“Same one,” he said of his biggest fan.
Not playing varsity until junior year is now considered a little unusual for top players, but Bauers said it’s nothing to think deep about.
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“We had a good team,” he said. “Maybe it was frustrating at the time. In hindsight, it doesn’t really matter. If you’re a good player, you’ll keep playing.”
The Brewers can call themselves the best team with the most Southern California natives. Trevor Megill, a high school teammate of Bauers, joins Joey Ortiz (Garden Grove Pacifica), Brice Turang (Corona Santiago), Garrett Mitchell (Orange Lutheran) and Christian Yelich (Westlake) as the SoCal group.
“We got a lot of guys from Southern California,” Turang said. “It’s cool. A lot of guys played against each other in high school.”
The Brewers also drafted in the last two years the Ebel brothers from Corona, Brady and Trey, so when they make visits to Dodger Stadium, it’s a big deal.
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“Crazy,” Turang said of the Southern California players getting asked for tickets.
Bauers, 30, certainly hasn’t lost his passion for fun. He was playing two Brewers in a video game before heading out to the field.
He said people change as they get older.
“Years of experiences, you gain perspective if you’re willing to look at yourself,” he said.
Turang was asked what high school kids today need to do to reach their journey to major league baseball.
“You have to practice every day. This doesn’t come easily,” he said.
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This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
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