SAN DIEGO – The 14th annual Perfect Game All-American Classic played Sunday night at the San Diego Padres’ Petco Park certainly wouldn’t have won any baseball beauty contests. The West Team collected 11 hits and took advantage of six East Team errors on its way to a 13-0 victory, the most one-sided result in the country’s premier amateur baseball all-star game’s history.
But, as it’s been said, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. While a handful of observers might have watched and saw the baseball equivalent of a child’s finger-painting portrait, 2018 Michigan first baseman /outfield prospect John Malcom thought he was viewing baseball’s Mona Lisa.
“I absolutely loved it,” Malcom said Monday morning. “It was my first time actually seeing it live and just seeing the players and how much fun they were having, it was just a great experience. It is definitely my goal to play in that game next year.”
John Malcom was speaking Monday morning from Cunningham Field at Fowler Park on the University of San Diego campus while preparing to take part in the Perfect Game Underclass All-American Games showcase, which this year grew to nearly 150 players competing on six teams.
Many of the top prospects from the classes of 2018 and 2019 are on hand, and they came from states from coast-to-coast. John Malcom, who is here with his father, Johnny Malcom, calls West Bloomfield, Mich., home, and is thrilled to be taking the field alongside of or in the opposite dugout from top guys who call the high school baseball hot-beds of California, Texas, Florida and Georgia home.
“Being from the North, many people don’t think we can compete compared to the kids down South,” John Malcom said. “Every chance I get, I try to represent Michigan to the best of my ability. When you get to (an event like this) you can see the competitive drive in all the players, and it’s just a fun experience. …
“With some of these top players, you can see their work ethic and how different players go about their business,” he said. “You can really pick up little things from different people’s games.”
He is a 6-foot-4, 200-pound left-handed swinger and thrower who is about to start his junior year at Detroit Country Day Upper School in Oakland County, Mich. Encouraged by his dad, Johnny, an engineer in the wireless communications industry, and his mom, Latisha, a physician, John Malcom has already accepted a scholarship offer from baseball and academic powerhouse Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn.
“This is all part of the process,” Johnny Malcom said Monday from the sun-drenched main concourse at Fowler Park when asked what brought he and his son out to this event. “If we did basketball, it would be like doing AAU and other things that are part of that process. This is one of the things he wanted to participate in looking ahead, hoping that next year he can be down on (the Petco Park) field just like those guys (Sunday night).”
John Malcom began playing with Georgia-based Team Elite two years ago and the experience has opened numerous doors for the kid from Michigan. The association with Team Elite led to increased opportunities for exposure in front of college recruiters and pro scouts, and he was able to play in four high-profile PG WWBA and PG BCS Finals tournaments with Team Elite this summer.
He honestly believes he would not have received the scholarship offer from Vanderbilt had he not been wearing a Team Elite uniform on some of PG’s biggest stages; he earned all-tournament honors at this summer’s 17u PG WWBA National Championship playing with the Team Elite 16’s Prime.
“I feel like playing down South has helped me progress as a player as far as competitiveness and just from seeing good pitching,” John Malcom said. “I think I’ve grown as a player a lot over the past year and I can’t wait to see where I go from here.”
It is often fun to turn back the clock a few years, and it’s especially fun in the case of John Malcom. On June 21, 2013, while playing in the 13u PG BCS Finals in Fort Myers, Fla., for Team Mizuno, the then 6-foot-3, 190-pound John Malcom took part in the event’s Home Run Derby. He hit a pair of home runs in the Derby’s first round and broke a three-way tie with two more in the second round to take home the title. A slugger was born …
“I remember going there as 13-year-old, and I was so nervous,” John Malcom said with a wide smile while recalling that memory. “It was my first time around all these Southern kids and I was like, ‘Man, these guys can hit!’ I just went out there swinging has hard as I could, just having fun.”
A lot has happened over the last three years. Now that John Malcom is becoming a veteran at the Perfect Game showcase and tournament events he is able to get his mind in the right place pretty much on his own. His dad recalled instances in the early years – like at that 1u PG BCS Finals Home Run Derby – when it was necessary to offer almost daily encouragement with words like, “Just do your best, that’s all you can do,” but these days there’s more honesty involved.
“We’ll go to a batting cage and just sort of make a game out it,” Johnny Malcom said. “I might talk to him about some little things it looks like he’s doing wrong and me ask me if I’ve seen anything he’s doing wrong, but he knows. I’ll just say, hey, let’s go to a batting cage and we’ll work on it.”
John Malcom first appeared in the class of 2018 national prospect rankings on March 5, 2015, in the No. 41 position. Since that initial ranking his standing has remained fairly steady, dropping as low as No. 60 (7-6-15) and rising as high as No. 24 (11-15-15); he dipped to No. 40 in the most recent rankings released June 29, 2016.
The country’s top Division I schools started to take notice in earnest in the summer of 2015 and started to get some nibbles from major conference powerhouses. When head coach Tim Corbin and the Vanderbilt Commodores came calling, he didn’t feel the need to look any further.
“I always wanted to go there, just seeing how Corbin interacts with his players,” John Malcom said. “I’ve watched them on TV and every year they’re competing for the national championship, and that was just the place I wanted to go to. When we visited, it blew away all my expectations. The whole staff was very welcoming and I really enjoyed it.”
When John and Johnny are on the road like this, they like to take side trips, too, just to provide temporary diversions from the daily grind of baseball. So naturally, when they were Long Beach last week for the underclass Area Code Games, they took a much-needed side trip to … a Los Angeles Dodgers game!
In all fairness, there are some non-baseball destinations, as well, but when a dad and son travel to deep Southern California from the Upper Midwest to attend a PG showcase, high-level baseball and everything that goes with it is always going to be part of the conversation.
“I do have expectations of what I want to accomplish as far as my at-bats and batting practice,” John Malcom said of his two-day stay at the PG Underclass A-A Games. “Being relaxed and having fun is a big component in doing well because I don’t want to be too uptight.”
“It really is a process and you have to put the work in,” his dad added. “It’s enjoyable when he does well and when he doesn’t do as well as he wants, he has to put even more work back into it: ‘You’re not there yet, son, you’ve got to keep working.’”
Johnny Malcom only wants to make sure his son is self-assured enough to keep thinking, “Hey, I’m getting better, I’m putting the work in, I’m playing with the best guys around and the sky’s the limit, so don’t quit.” If Johnny Malcom keeps thinking that way and keeps putting in the time and effort achieving excellence requires, he’ll be just fine.
“I just want to make sure when I leave here that I hit everything I could and showed everyone what I can do and what I’ve been working on,” John Malcom said. “I also want to pick up as many things I can from the other players, and just grow as a player and get ready for this fall. Next season is going to be my (most important) year so I’ve got to continue to work hard.”
While father and son were sitting in the stadium seats at Petco Park Sunday night, enjoying immensely despite the one-sided rout taking place on the field., Johnny Malcom couldn’t help but overhear the things his son, John Malcom, was saying to no one in particular.
“He just kept projecting, saying ‘Next year, this is where I want to be’ and ‘I want to get here next year,’ so that really inspired him,” Johnny said. “I was just amazed thinking about all the work the guys that were there had to put in just to get there. It was nice because it was so diverse, with players coming from a lot of different areas. Watching the game (Sunday night), he was like, ‘I’m right there; I’m on the path, and that could be me next year.”