LOPEZ HAS THE 'SWEETEST OF SWINGS'

BRIDGEPORT — The sweetest of swings.

That’s what Scott Darwood saw as two boys casually played baseball during a P.E. free day last spring. One hit while the other pitched. Darwood, a Bridgeport High School P.E. teacher who once coached baseball at Liberty Bell, knows his swings. Surely, this batter had received some coaching.

            “The first couple times I saw him swing that bat I thought, ‘My goodness, somebody’s worked with him because he had the most level beautiful swing and best follow-through with the bat,’” Darwood said. “He just had this nice natural, balanced stance.”

            Then, the young man picked up a baseball and began pitching.

            “Man, this kid’s a natural,” Darwood thought.

That sweet swing and natural arm belonged to Cristian Lopez, a junior at the time. Yet he had never hit. He had never pitched. To Lopez, baseball was an unknown friend just waiting to be introduced. Darwood couldn’t believe it.

“I asked him, ‘Cristian, did you play Little League somewhere or Babe Ruth or something?’”

“No. I’ve never played baseball.”

“Not once have you ever picked up a bat and ball?”

“No.”

“Wow. Well, be expecting the high school baseball coach to be getting a hold of you.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re a natural.”

That coach was Jesse Macy. Darwood said he needed to bring Lopez over for practice.

“Jesse, I’m telling you, the years I coached at Liberty Bell, I only remember one or two kids that had that sweet of a swing,” Darwood recounted. “It blew me away when I heard that he never played baseball before because it looked like someone just worked on his mechanics, spent a lot of time on it because he has just such a fluid motion.”

Macy invited the junior to practice. Watching Lopez take ground balls and fly balls, the coach marveled at his raw talent that seemed somehow refined.

“When I first saw Cristian out there fielding, he just looked like a natural.  He was very smooth while fielding the ball, and his throws were accurate and had some zip to them,” Macy said. “I had a hard time believing he’d never touched a baseball, and just kept thinking, ‘What would he be doing if he’d been playing since he was nine or 10?’”

            That question has no accurate answer. Lopez’s introduction to the game came out of left field. Bridgeport lacks Little League and in fact, baseball is a back burner sport in a community where soccer reigns. Sometimes Bridgeport High School’s baseball squad only features 9-10 players and three seasons ago, there was no team.

A natural athlete, Lopez had previously run cross country and led Mustangs basketball in scoring. Yet while athletic talent is one matter, actually playing baseball is another. An infamous “game of inches,” baseball contains numerous nuances and intricacies that seasoned veterans are still perfecting. Not knowing how to throw a curve, Lopez embarked on a steep learning curve.

            “I had no clue about baseball. I didn’t know anything about it,” he said. “Before the first game, I learned how to play the game.”

His quick learning paid dividends. At the plate, Lopez took his natural right-handed swing and focused on driving the ball up the middle. Macy lauded the youngster’s plate coverage and knowledge of the strike zone. Darwood added that Lopez features an upright stance which leads to a level swing in which he transfers the bat solidly to his left hand in the follow-through.

That swing produced some gaudy numbers his senior year. Lopez hit .361 with on-base and slugging percentages of .477 and .500 respectably. He drove in ten and swiped as many bags.

            On the mound, Lopez also started from scratch. He had never thrown a changeup or curveball, so Macy taught him. The coach considered pitching Lopez’s biggest area of growth. During his junior year, Lopez pitched second in the rotation. This past season, he became Bridgeport’s ace, fanning 51 batters in 301/3 innings. He also picked off four base runners.

“He has a good selection of pitches, and he can throw them all for strikes,” Macy said, adding that Lopez’s increased velocity and command. “He is able to get movement out of his pitches without any extra effort.”

During a particularly busy sports day with three games being played simultaneously, Darwood found himself managing a soccer match while Bridgeport and Waterville battled on the diamond. Far across the complex, he heard something.

Ping.

That sound somehow reached his seasoned baseball ears.

“I remember telling everybody at the time, ‘Boy, somebody got a hold of that one,’” Darwood recalled. 

That somebody was Lopez, who had just smacked a triple.

             Lopez earned All-Central Washington 2B League honors in his first season. His stellar campaign helped lead the Mustangs to their first playoff appearance in seven years. While he received some initial grief, Lopez found delight in his baseball dalliance.

            “When I first did baseball, all my friends were like, ‘Baseball?’I did get made fun of, but I didn’t really let that get to me. It’s a cool sport,” he said. “I fell in love with it.”

            Though baseball proved a pleasant surprise for Lopez during his last two years of high school, the recent graduate has no sports plans in the future. Instead, he hopes to join the Navy. As he prepares to serve his country, the accidental baseball player will bring his optimism and altruism to the military and any other proverbial field where he finds himself.

“Cristian is a very coachable player.  He takes in what you say and does his very best to execute.  He is always looking to improve,” Macy said. “He is a positive personality that lifts the other players up. If something went wrong in the field, he never yelled or got upset with other players.  He looked to lift up his guys and get them ready for the next play.”