Mar 27, 2007

J.C. Notebook: Boyd doing the heavy lifting for CSM

Sophomore slugger leads state in homers

By Vytas Mazeika / Daily News Staff Writer

In the hope of avoiding some form of retaliation, College of San Mateo baseball coach Doug Williams stepped outside of the weight room and leaned back against a wall.

Seconds earlier, sophomore third baseman Price Kendall was blindsided with shaving cream while giving out an interview, and the culprit was none other than the skipper in search of a corner to hide in. Baseball at CSM is anything but boring at the moment, what with a state-best record of 20-3-1.

"It's fun right now," said Kendall, who after wiping his face clean hit the weights some more on a rainy Monday afternoon. "Baseball is always good when you win a lot of games. And we just gotta try and stay focused, remember that at any time, on any day, teams are going to try and beat us."

With practice on the field canceled, the Bulldogs spent two hours in the weight room, capped off with one of the oldest practical jokes in the game.

"The team has a good feeling about itself," Williams said. "There's great camaraderie around these guys, they care about one another. But one thing I've been impressed with about this group, even today, it's raining, it's a Monday, and we had a very good practice. Our guys got after it in the gym. They weren't looking to just get by or go through the motions."

Time to introduce Logan Boyd, the state leader in home runs after he hit three more this past week, giving him eight for the season. He's partly the reason fellow team captain Kendall took shaving cream to the face, since the bulk of Monday's interviews revolved around Boyd and his impact on the middle of the CSM batting order.

"I always knew there was something special about this guy," Kendall said. "I know he had a lot of pressure on him, being that he's the guy this year. But you know what, he's always kept his focus, and as you can see, the last couple of games he's doing what he's capable of doing. He's our guy."

After a slow start to his freshman year, the 6-foot-1, 217-pound Boyd finished last season with a team-high nine home runs in just 94 at-bats. He did most of his damage off fastballs while hitting in the lower part of the order.

This season expectations were higher and Boyd was moved into the cleanup spot.

"Where typically your best power hitters are," said Boyd, who quickly discovered that meant fewer fastballs. "You get pitched backwards almost. On fastball counts, you see off-speed pitches. And I started off the year I think 0-for-my-first-12. I was just terrible."

No one was worried about another slow start. After meetings with Williams and assistant coach Brian Vogel, Boyd found his swing again.

"Once you get that first hit, things just start falling in their place," he said.

Son of Ryan Boyd, a southpaw who was once a second-round draft pick of the Baltimore Orioles, Logan was raised in Medford, Ore.

"Baseball has always been in my genes, and I've been swinging a bat since I've been 3 years old," Boyd said. "I've always wanted to play baseball."

A left-hander like his father before him, Logan decided there was too much wear and tear in pitching and concentrated on his hitting.

He smashed six homers as a junior and eight more as a senior at South Medford High, where he played first base until making the move to the outfield midway through his senior year.

Since he was 8 years old, Boyd has been friends with Tyler Heil. Both wanted to attend college together, but things got a little tougher when Heil went to Reno for his senior year of high school. That's where Heil, one of Boyd's three roommates, found out about CSM. It wasn't long before Boyd found out about the Bulldogs too through their Web site.

"I instantly fell in love with the field, the tradition they have here," Boyd said. "It just felt right for me."

At CSM he gets to play baseball from August through June, and whenever he's not on the baseball field practicing he's lifting weights to add more power to his swing.

"If you saw the one he hit on Saturday, he doesn't need any more," Williams said. "The one he hit on Saturday was as big a blast as we've seen around here in a long time, going back to the Mike Mooney and Scott Kirby days, when balls left the park and there was no doubt about it."

In Saturday's ridiculous 24-6 win over Hartnell, Boyd hit a third-inning grand slam that never got higher than 18 feet off the ground.

The line drive cleared the fence before the first baseman could turn his head around.

But that home run only tied Boyd for the state lead. It was the two-run jack in the fifth that put him ahead, a blast that disappeared three quarters up the eucalyptus trees in dead center.

Over an eight-day span that included four games, Boyd exploded to go 11-for-17 with four home runs and 14 RBIs, upping his average to .425 for the season.

"He's a real special talent, and he's really in a groove right now," Williams said. "When he gets into this kind of groove, it's something to watch."

Capable of playing all of the outfield positions, the physical side of the game was not what kept Boyd from making the jump to a Division I program out of high school. His strength is evident. Boyd admits it's a different aspect of his game that needed to be refined.

"Most of it was just mental for me, because physically I'm a big, strong guy naturally," Boyd said. "Mainly it was just getting over that mental hump, staying confident when things are going well and just having that upbeat attitude thinking every day that you're the best."

Boyd has proven he can now handle the ups and downs that come with playing baseball. That's why colleges like Oregon State and Fresno State have come calling, and who knows what will happen come the MLB Amateur Draft in June.

"I'm really in no hurry to make a decision," said Boyd, who got nibbles from D-II colleges out of South Medford and is now a bonafide D-I talent. "I'm just concentrating on CSM baseball, helping our team win another Coast Conference title and hopefully moving on in the state tournament."

"You wish you had more guys like that," said Williams, who mentioned intangibles like work ethic, grades, leadership and maturity.

The one thing his coach left off was power, because with Boyd, that's now a proven tangible.


E-mail Vytas Mazeika at vytas@dailynewsgroup.com.