Poly Baseball Stats
We will be posting our team stats on MaxPreps, and you can click on the link here to view the stat page..

MAXPREPS POLY BASEBALL STATS LINK

Andrew Ramos, Head Coach

Graham Davis - Head Coach
Coach Davis is in his second year at Poly, having led the Junior Varsity team to a 13-12 (8-4 in Moore League) record in 2010. Born in Culver City, he was a four year letterman at Venice High School as well as a representative for the Los Angeles 16-u team in the Reviving Baseball in the Inner City (RBI) World Series in Detroit in 2004. Played for the White Sox scout team for four years before joining the coaching staff as pitching coach for the 16-u teams. Coach Davis is currently finishing up a degree in Journalism at Long Beach State, where he is also the Editor-In-Chief of Dig Magazine. He currently resides in Downtown Long Beach.

Danny Knight - Assistant Coach
Coach Knight was born and raised in South Carolina. After high school, he joined the U.S. Navy (1990-1994) and was stationed in Long Beach and San Diego. Coach Knight served two tours in the Persian Gulf. He has a degree in Business Administration and Business Management which he received from the University of Phoenix. He lives in Long Beach and has two boys that currently play at East Long Beach Pony where he has coached the past eight years.

About Long Beach POLY Baseball..... “A Class-First Program”

Mission Statement

Dedicated to establishing a “Class-First” program, the Long Beach Poly High School Baseball Coaching staff will provide a meaningful learning experience for every student-athlete in the baseball program.  Coaches will embrace their responsibility as role models and mentors.

Student-athletes will have high expectations as they prepare themselves to go to college, improve their baseball skills, and become more productive citizens.  Above all, they will be excellent teammates.

CLASS

Every member of the Long Beach Poly High School Baseball Program will conduct themselves with class.  On the field and off the field, in the classroom and in the community, we will represent Long Beach Poly with the highest regard for its tradition.  We will consider it an honor to be complimented for our sportsmanship, humility, and classy behavior.

CHARACTER

Besides serving as pitching and hitting instructors, coaches will serve as coaches of confidence, citizenship, and character.  Players will not only sharpen their athletic fundamentals, but also shape the integrity and values that will secure their success in the future.

SUCCESS

We intend to be a competitive force that contends for Moore League titles and advances to the playoffs every year.  There are many types of success.  This program wins not only when we win baseball games; we win when we send players to college and we win when he help develop productive citizens who make a difference in the communities where they live.

Long Beach Poly Baseball Website is Here...
We are proud to launch the official LB Poly Baseball website, with the goal of keeping the Poly Baseball community informed and excited about Jackrabbit baseball.

This site will be the place for all of the latest team news, game schedules and results, player and game action photos, team rosters and player info, coaches detail (including a journal by Coach Hess), group events, league standings, etc.

If you have any suggestions or comments on what you would like to see on your website, please contact Lynn Fischer (VP-Website Coordination) with your thoughts.

Go Jackrabbits!

Photo Gallery
Here is where you will find our gallery slideshows. Check back often for more thrilling Jackrabbit baseball photos...

WHERE ARE THEY NOW?
Keep up on the status of Jackrabbit Alumni, and Coach Hess Alumni here. If you have any info on past Poly players, please send them to us for posting.

In N.L.C.S., Paths Cross Again
by Billy Witz, Staff Writer - New York Times - 10/13/2008

LOS ANGELES — When Ryan Howard, the Phillies’ menacing slugger, sauntered into the batter’s box last Friday in Philadelphia, the Dodgers rookie reliever James McDonald did not flinch. He did not show any nerves when Jimmy Rollins or Pat Burrell strode to the plate.

But when Chase Utley grabbed his bat and dug in, McDonald, a right-hander who made his major league debut last month, took a deep breath and steadied himself. He might as well have been looking at Babe Ruth.

“I remember standing on the mound telling myself the guy I idolized is sitting right here in front of me,” McDonald said Saturday. “And now I’ve got to pitch against him? I was a little nervous.”

Actually, McDonald and Utley had never met; their brief engagement in Game 2 of the National League Championship Series is as close as they have come. But there is a link that goes back years.

Utley, the son of a personal-injury lawyer, was born with a natural swing, was raised in an old-money neighborhood and has grown into a bona fide star as he approaches his 30th birthday. The Phillies lavished an $86 million contract on him last year, making him the major leagues’ highest-paid second baseman.

McDonald, 23, was raised in an extended family of professional athletes, grew up in a gritty urban neighborhood and only recently figured out where he fits best on a baseball diamond. Any riches that come his way would be welcome. He still lives at home.

For Utley and McDonald, the bridge across this social, economic, professional and cultural divide is the high school they attended, Long Beach Polytechnic.

They are not alone.

Poly High is more like a polyglot, where a mix of black, white, Latino, Asian and Pacific Islander students from across the socioeconomic spectrum embrace the mantra “Home of Scholars and Champions” that adorns the front of the campus.

The school, its exterior painted an industrial shade of beige and closed off with rod-iron gates, does not appear out of place in its central Long Beach neighborhood, where bars on windows are part of the architecture.

Inside the walls is another world.

Poly’s magnet programs draw some of the district’s best and brightest students, and the school often leads the state in students admitted into the University of California system. The football team, which has sent more players to the N.F.L. than any other program, headlines a strong athletic program.

It s a place where book smarts and street smarts share the same hallway. And a place that has not changed measurably in 20 years, when leading cheers for the football team (which had a backup named Calvin Broadus, a k a Snoop Dogg) was a cheerleader named Cameron Diaz.

“You can find kids that come from the poorest neighborhoods, but you have a kid in your class whose dad is a millionaire,” McDonald said. “At Poly, you experience every race. It’s not a culture shock when you get out in the world and go places.”

One thing Poly is not is a baseball factory, at least not in recent decades. Since 1988, Poly has had 17 former football players drafted by the N.F.L. — more than some colleges. Its boys and girls basketball, track and cross-country teams are among the best in the region, too.

As for baseball, Poly has produced several major leaguers, including the Hall of Fame outfielder Tony Gwynn. But it has lagged behind most of the other five public high schools in Long Beach, which has a rich baseball history.

When Poly rode McDonald’s pitching to the section semifinals in 2002, it was the furthest the school had advanced since 1968. Even with Utley and Milton Bradley — two major league All-Stars this season — on the same team for two years, Poly was unable to take one of its league’s three playoff berths.

“The football program ruled the city,” Utley said. “Obviously, the baseball program wasn’t the best in the city. I wouldn’t consider us second-class citizens, but we didn’t get the attention the football team got.”

Utley said he never considered taking advantage of Long Beach’s open-enrollment policy to attend one of the schools on the east side, whose teams are fed by strong youth programs. Many of his friends were going to Poly, so he wanted to as well.

For McDonald, the choice was even more personal.

His father, James Sr., was a basketball star at Poly, earning a scholarship to Southern California and then parlaying his athletic ability into a stint as a tight end with the Los Angeles Rams. His uncle Ben McDonald played basketball at California-Irvine and then in the N.B.A. for four years. Another uncle, Donzell McDonald, played in the Pittsburgh Pirates’ minor league system.

“When I first got there, everybody would say, ‘Oh, you’re Big James’s son, I’ll keep my eye on you,’ ” McDonald said.

Last Friday, when Utley stepped in against McDonald, Bobby Darwin was among those watching intently.

It was upon the recommendation of Darwin, a longtime scout, that the Dodgers drafted both players — Utley with their second-round pick in 1997 and McDonald with their 11th-round choice in 2002. Utley, who weighed barely 160 pounds, opened many eyes his senior season when he began ripping balls out of Blair Field, a municipal stadium with major league dimensions and heavy ocean air.

“He had the best left-handed swing I’ve ever seen on a high school kid,” said Bill Powell, who coached youth baseball in Long Beach for four decades and was at Poly for Utley’s senior season. “That includes Mr. Gwynn.”

Utley gave the Dodgers every indication he would bypass college, so they spent their first draft pick, the 76th over all, on him. But Utley had second thoughts, and he ultimately opted for U.C.L.A. Three years later, the Phillies chose him 15th over all.

“All I can say is we should have signed him,” Darwin said. “Every time I see him, my heart just drops.”

Darwin cheers up when the discussion turns toward McDonald. “He was long, lean, with big hands and a great arm,” said Darwin, thinking back to when they first met. “He had the perfect pitcher’s body.”

But McDonald did not pitch until the end of his junior season at Poly. The Dodgers drafted him the next year, but he attended a junior college for one year, then signed. And he then spent most of the next two seasons in the outfield with a sore arm.

“I was always thinking about pitching when I was in the outfield,” McDonald said. “I loved pitching and realized that’s where I wanted to be.”

McDonald, who was called up in September, said he was stunned when he was added to the playoff roster. But in nine and one-third innings in the regular season and postseason combined, he had yet to allow a run through Sunday. Against the Phillies, he pitched three and one-third innings of two-hit relief, striking out five. As for Utley, McDonald walked him.

“I didn’t want to let him get a hit,” said McDonald, considering their shared footsteps. “If we ever do meet, I don’t want him to having bragging rights on Long Beach.”

Chase Utley and the California dream
by Robyn Norwood, Staff Writer - Philly.com (The Inquirer) - 10/12/2008

LAKEWOOD, Calif. - There were only a few cars in the lot at the Lakewood Batting Cages when Chase Utley took the field for the first inning of the National League Championship Series on Thursday night in Philadelphia.

In Southern California, a late-afternoon fog was rolling in from the ocean, and the ping of metal bats and the "thwap!" of a pitch hitting the tarp on the backstop drifted from the same chain-link cages where the Phillies second baseman honed his swing as a youngster.

"I used to ride my bike there all the time," said Utley, who grew up in neighboring Long Beach, as he readied for Game 1 at Citizens Bank Park.

"I started showing up so much they put me to work, just cleaning up and doing little things around there, and they would let me hit for free. I used to spend a lot of time in that place."

Several times a week from the time he was around 10 until he was 14 or 15, Utley would arrive at the cages and stay for hours.

"I'd load him up with quarters," said his father, Dave Utley, an attorney who represents injured longshoremen who work at the busy Port of Long Beach. "He'd burn through his quarters and they'd have him go in the cages and pick up stray balls, menial stuff, work behind the counter selling popcorn, and they'd let him hit some more.

"I'd go in and it was like, 'There's the dad of the kid we can't get rid of.' "

The kid from the cages will be back in Southern California today for Game 3 of the NLCS at Dodger Stadium, about 28 miles northeast of his boyhood home. If there is not a hero's welcome, it is because he is playing against the Dodgers, and because it is hard for an athlete to stand out in Southern California, an area that produces so many stars. The most famous baseball player from Utley's high school, Long Beach Polytechnic, is Hall of Famer Tony Gwynn. Billie Jean King went there, too. Tiger Woods grew up in nearby Cerritos and played on Long Beach's public courses as a boy. Olympic beach volleyball star Misty May-Treanor went to Long Beach State.

As the Phillies fell behind the Dodgers, 2-0, in Game 1, Dominic Gawel, 9, stood in the 40-m.p.h. cage at the Lakewood Batting Cages taking swings as his father, Joe, watched.

Across the street from the modest 20-year-old facility, a jet engine roared as a plane took off from a runway at Long Beach Airport. Maybe now you know why Utley can concentrate at the plate.

Inside, on the wall above the change machine that dispenses batting cage tokens - $1 for 12 pitches - an autographed Utley baseball card is signed, "To Lakewood Cages!" Behind the counter, Kevin Tyler, who owns the cages along with his father, Darrel, and brother, Roy, fiddled with his computer until he found a way to watch the game.

When Utley stepped to the plate in the sixth and hit a sinker that didn't sink out of the park for a two-run homer that set the stage for the Phillies' 3-2 victory, Tyler celebrated and the phone started ringing.

"My father just called me and said, 'Hey, did you see Chase?' " Tyler said. "That was good stuff.

"To be honest, I never saw him as, 'This is the kid who's going to make the bigs,' " Tyler said earlier. "It's hard to look at a little guy that age and say they're going to be the guy, that this guy is so loaded with talent. His later years in high school, he definitely developed into a great hitter.

"He's a very nice person, down to earth, and one of those people you knew would stay the same."

When the ball left Utley's bat, it set off another celebration about 10 minutes away at his parents' home in Long Beach.

"There was a lot of yelling that went on right then," Dave Utley said. "It had been real quiet before, but we let out a pretty loud hoot when Shane Victorino got on base, and I'm not sure we had calmed down before the next pitch."

Denny Mayfield, a former neighbor who was Chase's first T-ball coach, watched the game with the family.

"Denny used to run a Wiffle Ball game across the street that had only two bases, home and the tree," Dave Utley said. "You could hit the ball into the street and that was OK, but if it hit a car, you were out, and the other way you got out was if somebody threw the ball and hit you.

"You could ask for 'mercy' but you paid for it because they made fun of you. Denny likes to claim whatever toughness people perceive in Chase comes from never wanting to cry 'mercy.' "

But it was Dave Utley who turned Chase into a lefthanded hitter. Batting righthanded in the front yard, Chase would pull the ball and his father would have to chase it down the street. Dave made his son try batting lefty so the ball would hit the garage and he wouldn't have to run after it.

"It's true," Dave said. "Maybe it was for the wrong reasons, but it worked out."

More than two hours away from the Utleys' house, in Boron, Calif., his coach at UCLA, Gary Adams, had just pulled into Domingo's Mexican Restaurant to watch part of the game as he drove from Utah back to his retirement home near Tehachapi.

"I ordered a margarita and about two minutes into it, he hit the home run, and I ordered my enchilada and taco," Adams said.

"They kept talking about Chase was 3 for 17 even after he hit the home run. Maybe this will dispel some of that. Pressure doesn't matter to him. In fact, his best games at UCLA were pressure games."

Adams was the one feeling pressure in 1997, when Utley, who had signed with UCLA, was drafted by the Dodgers in the second round.

"Hoo boy, that was tough," Adams said. "College baseball coaches have to go through that, but when he was drafted by the Dodgers, I thought, 'Oh, no, here we are. The local team. It will be tough to hang on to Chase.' "

Dave Utley said the Dodgers aggressively recruited Chase Utley in hopes he would sign their contract offer and forgo UCLA. Then-Dodgers manager Tommy Lasorda and then-owner Peter O'Malley were involved.

"The Dodgers pulled out all the stops," Dave Utley said. "Tommy Lasorda called, and he doesn't want to talk to me, he wants to talk to Chase. He invites him to a game, takes him to the dugout. Tommy's laying it on about him and his future and introduces him to Mr. O'Malley, a gracious, gracious man."

Adams put the family in touch with the mother of former UCLA player Troy Glaus, Karen Jensen, an accountant who shared what Dave Utley called "very sophisticated financial analysis" about how to consider the cost and risk of not signing and playing in college instead. The Utleys bought an insurance policy on Chase's career in case of injury, and he chose UCLA - ultimately putting the three-time all-star in a Phillies uniform instead of a Dodgers uniform after he was drafted in the first round by the Phillies in 2000.

So let the crowd in Dodger Stadium roar.

Utley, who built his swing to a soundtrack of Boeing 737s , doesn't mind the noise.

Dodgers' McDonald mighty from bullpen
by Steve Dilbeck, Staff Writer - Los Angeles Times - 10/11/2008

PHILADELPHIA - OK, so this might seem hard, trying to find a silver lining in the Dodgers' 8-5 defeat to the Phillies on Friday that left their clubhouse so quiet clubhouse you could hear a season drop.

Have no fear, there actually was something to brighten their day, something fairly unexpected, but not in an 0-2 series hole kind of way.

Dodgers fans, meet James McDonald, a lanky right-hander so obscure most probably didn't realize he was on the roster. This would be understandable since he did not make his major-league debut until Sept. 17. And had pitched only a total of six innings.

But the Dodgers were impressed enough by what they saw late in the season to add him to their postseason roster, and Friday it appeared a wise decision.

McDonald, a Long Beach Poly High product, made his first playoff appearance in the third inning. With the bases loaded. And a Citizens Bank Park crowd of 43,883 on their feet.

"I wasn't nervous exactly, more like excited," McDonald said. "This is where I want to be. The place I expected to be."

He struck out his first batter, Pat Burrell, to end the inning. McDonald went on to throw 3 1/3 shutout innings, allowing only two hits and striking out five.

"First bit of action in the postseason, the bases are loaded and he gets this guy out," Torre said. "He struck out Burrell and went onto pitch three more innings, going through everybody.

"I was very impressed. I think we found out a little bit about that young man tonight." It's not that McDonald being a success is some complete surprise, though the timing of it is a bit astonishing.

McDonald was the Dodgers' Minor League Pitcher of the Year last season, splitting time between Double-A Jacksonville and Single-A Inland Empire.

This year he split time between Jacksonville and Triple-A Las Vegas, going 7-4 with a 3.26 ERA and was once again named the team's Minor League Pitcher of the Year.

The 6-foot-5, 195-pounder was originally an 11th-round draft pick out of Golden West Community College, and has spent his five-year career as a starter. Right now, though, the Dodgers need him as a reliever. And Friday, appearing comfortable on one of baseball's biggest stages he delivered, unfazed by the pressure.

"I'm the type of guy who shoots for the stars always," McDonald said. "The goal was to be in the big leagues, though maybe I didn't expect to be right here."

McDonald seemed to grow more at ease as his innings went by, retiring his last five consecutive batters as the Dodgers tried to climb back into the game.

"J-Mac did what he can do and gave us a chance to get back in the ballgame," said pitching coach Rick Honeycutt. "There was no nervousness on that stage. He looked very composed."

McDonald, 23, said after getting through the Phillies for his first couple of innings, he was still as excited to walk to the rubber each time.

"Every time I go out on the mound, I feel that excitement," he said. "We're all competitors, and I don't want to lose."

Fellow rookie Clayton Kershaw also pitched 1 1/3 shutout innings, not allowing a hit and walking one.

"(McDonald) and Kershaw both came in and threw strikes and attacked hitters," Honeycutt said. "It's great experience for them, and it kept the team right in there."

IMPORTANT LINKS
We will post valuable links that will enhance your enjoyment of this website and your Poly baseball expereince.

IMPORTANT WEBSITE LINKS

MaxPreps - LB Poly The official MaxPreps site for Long Beach Poly Baseball MaxPreps - Moore League The official MaxPreps site for Moore League Baseball MaxPreps - Wilson The official MaxPreps site for Wilson Baseball MaxPreps - Lakewood The official MaxPreps site for Lakewood Baseball MaxPreps - Millikan The official MaxPreps site for Milliken Baseball MaxPreps - Jordan The official MaxPreps site for Jordan Baseball MaxPreps - Cabrillo The official MaxPreps site for Cabrillo Baseball MaxPreps - Compton The official MaxPreps site for Compton Baseball LBPostSports.com - LB Poly The BEST place for local Long Beach sports coverage available anywhere LA Times Sports - Preps The Los Angeles Times Sports Section - High School Coverage BaseballResource.com Baseball Resource - Promoting Baseball in Southern California Chase Utley - Stats Baseball Reference - Long Beach Poly Alumni - Chet Utley Milton Bradley - Stats Baseball Reference - Long Beach Poly Alumni - Milton Bradley James McDonald - Stats Baseball Reference - Long Beach Poly Alumni - James McDonald Long Beach PONY Baseball Long Beach PONY Baseball at Whaley Park Official Website Lakewood Batting Cages Visit our good friends at the Lakewood Batting cages for extra batting practice.