At the moment, about 6 p.m. on a late May day in Easton, Andrew Rich had already delivered a career statistical combination unmatched in the 115-year history of high school baseball in the central San Joaquin Valley — 180 hits and 35 pitching victories in four years at Washington.
And, at that moment, they were irrelevant.
“Didn’t matter,” he said.
Washington High's Andrew Rich is The Bee's baseball Player of the Year for 2009.
Rich stood atop the mound, facing Selma pinch-hitter Michael Whitford in the seventh inning with the bases loaded, two outs, a 3-2 count and Washington finger-tipping a 2-1 lead in the Central Section Division IV championship.
The Panthers had won 99 games in Rich’s career, but nary a section title.
“If he gets a hit,” he said of Whitford, “what happened before wouldn’t have mattered because we wouldn’t have won the Valley championship.”
Washington sophomore catcher John Hobbs signaled fastball.
“That was the one,” Rich said.
The right-hander flung it as hard as he could and Whitford — who had two hits off him two months previous in a 4-3 loss to the Panthers at the same site — swung and missed.
“I don’t remember anything more,” Rich said. “Everything was a blur.”
Crystal clear, however, is a career that saw the UC Davis-bound athlete nearly catch Centennial’s Joe Ramirez (183) for the section career hits record, and also make a run at Woodlake’s Ron Robinson (46) for career wins.
But nobody can match Rich’s combination.
“It was only fitting that he was going to be able to decide his fate,” Panthers coach Mike Curran said. “A team’s whole season and Andrew’s amazing career and legacy came down to this one pitch. The next thing I knew, the kid that had been on top of his game for four years was finally on the bottom — of the dogpile! It was the one time in four years where I know he relished having to look up at everyone else.”
About Andrew Rich
Vitals: Washington, senior, pitcher/infielder
He’s qualified because: Three-time North Sequoia League Player of the Year closed a 36-win, 180-hit, four-year career by recording a 3-2, two-out, bases-loaded strikeout, securing the Panthers’ 2-1 win over Selma for the Central Section Division IV championship and, ultimately, the state’s final No. 1 ranking in the division by Cal-Hi Sports. He was a career .435 hitter for a program that went 100-29.
He said it: “The most astounding part about him was his desire to want the ball in pressure situations. What happened with him and the team this year, you can only find in a Hollywood script. You can always write a script that ends this way. You can always dream and hope as a kid that it ends this way. But if there was one kid that was going to make this mythical script and this boyhood dream come true, it was Andrew. And he did it.” — Panthers coach Mike Curran.
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