FORT MYERS, Fla. – The big kid from Tobacco Road was feeling very much at home on Alligator Alley Saturday morning as 19th annual Perfect Game World Showcase got underway at venerable Terry Park on the edge of this Southwest Florida city’s historic downtown district.
The PG World Showcase was first held here in 1997 making it Perfect Game’s longest running national showcase event. It annually welcomes top high school prospects from all across the United States and this year – in conjunction with the PG World Uncommitted and PG National Underclass East showcases – also features young players from the Dominican Republic, Mexico, Venezuela and the Virgin Islands.
The significance of this melting pot of talent isn’t lost on class of 2016 top prospect Spencer Brickhouse, the 17-year-old from the small town of Zebulon, N.C., who goes to school in the small town of Bunn, N.C., and who has risen to No. 153 in PG national prospect rankings, No. 4 on the North Carolina list.
“It’s always nice to come down to a new place and play here in Fort Myers; I knew (the weather) was going to be nice,” Brickhouse said during a short break in the morning workout session. “This is the World Showcase so you know there’s going to be good competition and you want to come down here and see the best. … It’s just nice to come down here to Florida ahead of everybody and get some swings in and some practice in for the upcoming (high school) season.”
Spencer Brickhouse is a 6-foot-3, 220-pound athlete who is ranked the No. 1 first baseman prospect in North Carolina in the 2016 class but isn’t exactly married to the idea of playing that position on a full-time basis. He also catches, plays some third base and the outfield and will gladly go anywhere his coach asks him to play. “Hey, let’s do it,” he’ll just say with a laugh.
This is the fourth PG event Brickhouse has attended and he’s made a habit of being noticed at the previous three. He was named to the all-tournament team at the 2014 16u PG WWBA National Championship while playing with the Rawlings Prospects NC and earned a spot on the Top Prospect List at the 2014 PG Atlantic Coast Underclass Showcase. He gained another all-tournament selection at the 17u PG WWBA National Championship last summer playing with the Dirtbags All Black.
He was really at his best last spring when the Bunn (N.C.) High School Wildcats finished 19-3 in the 2015 spring season after a loss in the first-round of the North Carolina Class 2A state playoffs. Brickhouse was as sturdy as, well, a brick house, slashing a jaw-dropping .585/.711/1.264 (1.975 OPS) with nine doubles, three triples, seven home runs, 29 RBI and 31 runs scored; he stole 12 bases in 12 attempts.
That success has him looking forward to the upcoming 2016 campaign, his last as a high school athlete. “I think it’s going to be very fun,” he said. “I think it’s going to be a lot of lessons learned, of course – that’s the way baseball is – and it’s going to be nice to bet back out there.”
Brickhouse said that Bunn HS head coach Christopher Cullom keeps the players busy the year around, with a lot weight-lifting as the point of emphasis during the offseason. He played basketball for his school’s team up until a few years ago but decided to leave it behind to pursue baseball.
As he continues to mature physically, Brickhouse believes he will also continue to develop into a better ballplayer, and he feels making an appearance at a prominent event like the PG World Showcase can only accelerate the process. He tends to push himself harder at an event like this and last summer’s East Coast Professional Showcase in Tampa only because the competitors around him are playing at such a high level.
“I know I have to get better and I have to work harder because there is always going be somebody out there that’s better than you,” he said. “It gives me a lot of motivation to go in and get better (knowing) just because I’m the one of the better players in my county, it doesn’t mean anything. I still have to work, still have to get better and I still have to do all I can do.”
Earl Taylor is a prominent attorney based in Wilson, N.C., who has also coaches Legion ball and other amateur teams in the Greenfield, N.C., area, the afore mentioned home of East Carolina University.
Taylor has had a big impact on Brickhouse’s development as a baseball player, like he did just a year ago with Perfect Game alumni and current professionals Isaiah White and Dwanya Williams-Sutton. White was a third-round pick of the Marlins and Williams-Sutton went in the 26th-round to the Reds and both signed professional contracts after also signing with East Carolina.
“He took me out of small-town Bunn, brought me on a team that really exposed me to colleges and major league scouts; he really helped me out a lot,” Brickhouse said of Taylor. “He doesn’t really focus on the physical aspects of the game – he leaves that up to us – but he helps us become mentally strong. He’s very philosophical about baseball; he makes you think about things before you do it.”
Zebulon lies about 30 miles east of Raleigh, so Brickhouse finds himself smack dab in the middle of Tobacco Road, surrounded by esteemed and respected academic and athletic universities like North Carolina, North Carolina State and Duke. Brickhouse has signed with East Carolina University, another school of renown on Tobacco Road.
“With that program and (head coach) Cliff Godwin, I feel like he’s going to turn us into a winning ball team, and when I play baseball I want to win; I want to be in Omaha (for the College World Series),” Brickhouse said. “(Winning) is a big thing for me and (Godwin) will make you a better person, really.”
Brickhouse’s father Adrian and mother Laura are both graduates of the East Coast Polytechnic Institute (known as ECPI University) and have jobs in technical and engineering fields. Brickhouse carries a 4.5 grade-point average and takes a lot of pride in the academic side of his life.
“It is very important to me because as sad as it is, baseball will come to an end eventually,” Brickhouse said. “They can take away everything from you but they can’t take away your knowledge. You can be intelligent and you’ll be all right in life; you can figure things out. Baseball, it can’t be everything. It’s going to end eventually.”
It’s a sad reality that baseball careers – like all careers, it seems – do eventually come to an end. For some that end may come after high school graduation, others after four years of college ball and still others after professional tenures. Brickhouse readily admits that he’s spent time considering what might transpire in June’s MLB First-Year Player Draft but then also admits it’s something he can’t quite wrap his mind around.
But Brickhouse is a thinking man’s ballplayer and it’s a sure bet that any decision that is made will be well thought through. For now, he’s content to take in everything he can from this melting pot known as the PG World Showcase and take that knowledge home to Tobacco Road.
“When you go to an event like this you try to really learn from it,” Brickhouse said. “These people – the coaches here, the scouts here – have been in baseball a lot longer than I have so I want to feed off of them. I want to learn from what they’re telling me and work on it and make me a better baseball player.”
“It’s kind of hard to be around people who only look at (baseball) as a game,” he concluded. “When you get to this point, baseball isn’t a game. You’re in it to win it, now, you’re in it for the long run; this is a lifestyle now.”