TAMPA, Fla. — Christian Gaines, 12, can spend hours in the batting cage.
“He picks up on this game so easy,” baseball coach Tony ‘Red’ Morrison said. “Once I told him to do one thing, he’s like boom. Once I told him to do this, boom. He’s just a great kid to work with and a hard worker."
That hard work paid off big time, helping him take home first place in Major League Baseball’s 27th annual Pitch, Hit and Run national competition.
The seventh grader from Seffner Christian was one of five players to advance to the finals in Arlington, Texas, in the 11 and 12-year-old division.
“I had to start off at Bloomingdale in August,” Gaines said. “That was the first round. The second round, I had to go to the Trop and do the Pitch, Hit, and Run there. Once I found out I won that one, I had to wait until October to fly out to Texas.”
Leading up to the finals, which took place during the World Series between the Rangers and Diamondbacks, Gaines worked with Morrison, a former New York Yankee, who owns Tony Red’s Baseball Academy.
“All of a sudden, we started working forward to do things here — hit off a tee, do some throwing into the L screen,” Morrison said. “He said he wanted to go to the World Series and win this thing.”
During the event, each player gets to hit five balls, throw five balls at a target, and is timed for speed from home plate to first base.
“I wasn’t surprised that he was going to win,” Morrison said. “If you look at the kid and talk to the kid and how his heart is and where his mind is, the kid was going to win regardless.”
“I hope I inspired other people to do this competition,” Gaines added.
