‘Tour Team’ Finishes Up Swing at PNC Park
By Keith Barnes, TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Monday, July 26, 2010
Joe Cordell of Ambridge plays in an exhibition game for his traveling team Sunday at PNC Park. Christopher Horner | Tribune-Review
For the past month, Jeff Potter has taken his “Tour Team” of high school-aged players to ballparks all over Pennsylvania and Maryland.
When the caravan finally came to a halt for its final game, though, the cars were parked at the right-field entrance to PNC Park.
“This is it and it’s great stuff,” said Potter, an Odenton, Md., resident and Freeport native. “The kids have been looking forward to this and PNC Park is a natural. They played in some nice stadiums, but this is the first major-league park and they’re really thrilled to be here.”
Joe Cordell, who will be a junior at Ambridge in the fall, is one of the few players on the team to have previously stepped on the PNC Park grass. But until Sunday, he didn’t get to do it in a game.
“We were down here my freshman year, but I didn’t get to play. I was a freshman,” Cordell said. “It makes you feel good, makes you feel like you’re doing something right and makes you love the game of baseball.”
Potter, a 56-year-old self-published author, initially put the team together as a counterpoint against what he perceived as a push from youth baseball programs to be overly competitive. With this team he hoped to give the players a more grassroots ideology of the game.
He has the players swing wooden bats instead of aluminum or composites and concentrates more on improving fundamentals. He encourages players to give back to the game by teaching what they learned to younger players at clinics and nurturing an overall appreciation of the game rather than just the winning aspect.
“The coaches are really big on respect with things like going and shaking the umpire’s hand before the game,” said Chris Shurtz, who will be a sophomore at Ellwood City. “And things like, if you strike out and it’s a bad call, don’t swear and just go sit down and get them the next time.”
To have the chance to play for Potter, players raised $2,400, either from sponsors or out of pocket, to pay for their travels. In addition, both teams had to sell a set number of Pirates tickets for the organization to allow them to play on the field.
“We had to sell 1,000 tickets and for that we had the privilege of playing here,” Potter said. “But we looked at it as an opportunity to sell tickets to get people down here to Pittsburgh to watch the Pirates play anyways and we had no problem selling them.”
And, from all indications, Potter has had no problem selling his players on his philosophy. Shurtz is one of the younger players and attends one of the smaller Class AA schools, but what he gained this summer will only help the left-handed pitcher next season.
“It’s great to play with kids like this,” Shurtz said. “A lot of the kids and coaches have taught me a lot of things with my mechanics that I didn’t know.”
Players also learned a lot about what it’s like to be a part of a team that goes through the rigors of extensive travel. And they’ve had their share of pranks and misadventures along the way.
“One time we were in Reading with our cameraman and we lost our directions and were driving all over,” Blackhawk junior Nick Kaszer said. “Another time, we were in the cameraman’s convertible with the top down and it started pouring. He provides a lot of comedy for the team.”
With what the players went through in the past month, there will be stories to last a lifetime. And for Kaszer and Cordell, they can use what they learned against each other in their two WPIAL Section 1-AAA games in the spring.
“It’s going to be cool because we’re going to go to the field and we’re going to know each other and we’re going to smile and joke about it,” Kaszer said. “And I hope to take a lot of what I learned back to my team.”
