Any successful team is a many splendored thing, but baseball takes it to the nth degree.

Football requires many coordinated actions, but football players do not dash beyond the goalposts to retrieve the extra points.

In high-school baseball, the junior varsity completes its game and then prepares the field for the varsity. During the game, when a foul ball escapes the fences, a kid in uniform goes blasting out of the dugout at warp speed to find the ball and bring it back to the dugout or the plate umpire. They’re ball boys at Wimbledon doing the 100-yard dash.

The thing is, in baseball, as in Luckenbach, Texas, “everybody’s somebody.” It takes a village to win a baseball game.

The best and the brightest of Laurens County are being heaped with honors and scholarships.

This summer the S.C. Baseball Coaches Association is holding all-star games. Wilson Wages of Clinton is playing for the North “Select” Team, which crosses all classifications. Clinton’s Zach Fortman and Laurens’ Jackson Martin are playing in the Class 4A-3A game, and Red Devil head coach Sean McCarthy is coaching them.

McCarthy also won Ed Prescott Coach of the Year for the state, an award named after the former Laurens head coach.

Clinton won the 3A state championship and closed its season with 18 straight wins and eight in the playoffs. Laurens reached the Upstate finals in 4A after beginning the season 1-6-1. The Raiders went 17-5 the rest of the way. A reliable pattern of Tori Patterson’s teams is improving as the year goes along.

In the playoffs, Clinton came from six runs down to defeat Wren, 7-6, and Laurens came from five runs down to whip North Augusta, 8-6.

Building a wall requires many bricks.

For all the “alls” – state, region, county – the rest of the lads are just as responsible. They come off the bench to pinch-hit, courtesy-run and relief-pitch, just as they come off the bench to warm up pitchers in the bullpen and chase foul balls like mechanical rabbits in greyhound races.

Not everyone is a star, but everyone is a crucial part of a team.

My baseball novel, The Latter Days, is available here and at many other websites where books are sold.