FORT MYERS, Fla. – The rain came and the temperature began to drop at Terry Park Saturday morning, a somewhat uncharacteristic Southwest Florida welcome to the players, parents, MLB scouts and Perfect Game scouts and officials that turned out for the first day of the 20th annual PG World Showcase.
This year’s PG World Showcase, PG World Uncommitted Showcase and PG National Underclass East Showcase – which combined to attract more than 270 participants to Terry Park and the Player Development 5-Plex and will all conclude on Sunday – brought in high school-aged prospects from across the U.S., of course.
The PG World roster also featured prospects from Puerto Rico, Canada, Taiwan, the Dominican Republic and Venezuela, and the chill in the air might have caught many of them off-guard, just like it did some of the local guys. Class of 2017 Florida prospects Dalton Wingo and Bubba Sangster have been down this path before, and a little inclement early January weather isn’t about to deter these guys.
Sangster, a 6-foot, 210-pound corner-infielder from Altoona, Fla., and senior at Ocoee (Fla.) High School who is ranked No. 195 nationally and has signed with the University of South Florida in Tampa, has been to 25 PG events since May 2013, and was pleased as punch to be at his first PG World Showcase.
“PG texted me and asked me if I wanted to come out to this event and I heard there were scouts so I told them I’d definitely show up,” he early Saturday afternoon after a lengthy rain delay had finally been lifted. “It’s always been a blast out here; it’s fun to come out and hit BP, take ground balls. Everything is always run really well and I love it out here. The rain doesn’t even bother me when I’m playing baseball – it’s still fun.”
Wingo, a 6-foot-2, 190-pound outfielder/third baseman from Plant City, Fla., and a senior at Plant City High who is ranked 140th nationally and has signed with University of Central Florida in Orlando, is at his 13th PG event since May 2014. He shared Sangster’s enthusiasm for what laid ahead of him the next two days, chilly air be damned.
“Me and my advisor decided that this would be a good opportunity for me to get some more exposure because I kind of jumped into the whole Perfect Game circuit late,” he said Saturday, also after the rain delay. “We knew that a lot of scouts would be here so we decided this would be a good thing to jump into right before the high school season starts.”
While the international flavor and the flair that accompanies it certainly makes the World Showcase one of PG’s most interesting and diverse events on the calendar, the locals add some flair of their own. Wingo and Sangster do not attend the same high school, but it’s obvious they have become good friends through their involvement with PG, and the other players in attendance seem to feed off that camaraderie.
“You get around these guys that you’ve been playing with for the last three summers, and you end up out in the outfield, just talking,” Wingo said. “You give-and-take some of the feedback and listen to what other people are telling you, and you have a mutual respect with those guys. I learn something new every day because nobody knows everything about the game.”
Added Sangster: “When you come out to a (PG) showcase and you’ve been coming to the for three years, you start to know a lot of people. They become your best friends for a lifetime and you’re going to always be close to them.”
Wingo made his PG debut at the 2014 18u WWBA East Memorial Day Classic at Terry Park as a 15-year-old, playing for SCORE International 17u; he was named to the all-tournament team. He was also named to the all-tournament team at the 2016 17u PG WWBA National Championship while playing with the Scorpions West 2017.
This is only his second PG showcase experience, but his first one was a dandy. He was at last summer’s PG National Showcase down I-75 at jetBlue Park and turned in an impressive performance while being named to both the Top Prospect List and the Top Prospect Team.
“For never doing a showcase before and then going to what everyone calls the biggest showcase of them all, it was a really good experience,” Wingo said. “When you go out and you get on the field and the stands are packed, and it’s not just parents – there are scouts sitting there from (NCAA) D-II schools all the way up to (MLB) crosscheckers. It was definitely nerve-racking for someone who had never done it before; I was pretty nervous.”
Sangster said he’s been pleased with the way his game has progressed from the time he got started – his first PG event was the 2013 16u WWBA East Memorial Day Classic right here at Terry Park, which he played in as a 15-year-old – to where it is now that he’s an 18-year-old high school senior.
He’s been named to four PG all-tournament teams playing with the Florida Surge, FTB Tucci, FTB Black and the Triton Rays, and won the Home Run Challenge at the 2014 16u PG BCS Finals when he dropped two bombs over the wall at spacious City of Palm Park. He was named to the Top Prospect List at the 2015 PG Junior National Showcase and to the Top Prospect Team at last year’s PG National Showcase, the same event Wingo excelled at.
Sangster faces head-on the additional challenge of having played throughout his baseball career with Type 1 diabetes. He knows it’s important he eats all the right things and he needs to check his blood-sugar numbers frequently, just to make sure everything stays steady as she goes. He keeps Skittles in his bag so he can gobble down a few in the event his sugar count gets too low.
“It’s tough to do sometimes, but I get it done,” he said. “I can’t dodge it, so I just have to deal with it.”
The PG World Showcase is directed more towards MLB First-Year Player Draft-eligible prospects and potential international free-agents while the PG World Uncommitted and PG National Under East showcases are aimed more toward the prospects still looking for college scholarship opportunities.
With their letters of intent already signed, the idea of turning a big-time performance at the PG World and simultaneously increasing their draft stock in the eyes of the MLB scouring community was the main reason Sangster and Wingo decided to attend the PG World.
Sangster said that he has started making a concerted effort to lose a little weight and with the hope he can improve his athleticism. He’s also going to try to play left field at Ocoee High School this spring, moving out there from his customary spot at first base.
“It’ll give me more opportunities in the (MLB) draft if I can play left field,” he said matter-of-factly. “I’m really trying to get drafted. I want to wake up every day and go play baseball somewhere. I don’t want to go to school, I just want to go play baseball.”
Wingo said he was always one of those young players who thought any draft conversation wouldn’t begin until he was nearing the completion of his junior year in college. That thought changed when he started getting phone calls with invitations to individual workouts and receiving requests for in-home visits, and those called rocked his world. “I still have to wake up at 6 o’clock in the morning and go to high school, so this isn’t something you can ever plan for,” he said.
“I’ve always had dreams of playing Division-I baseball, and after I signed my national letter-of-intent I know that’s going to happen,” said Wingo, whose throw of 91-mph from the outfield tied for the third-best effort during Saturday’s workout session. “But there’s no reason to stop there. All right, I’ve (achieved) Division I and now I’m going to keep reaching for new goals. I want to get drafted out of high school.”
Both young men feel confident they have done as much as they could have done – crossed every bridge, drug every diamond – to reach this point in their careers. They’ve honed their games and perfected their skills, and when called upon, they’ve tried their best to walk the walk.
“It’s been doing a lot of hard work and I’ve done a lot of praying,” Sangster said. “I kept working hard and I went to all the events that I was supposed to come to, and Perfect Game puts us in front of everybody that we need (to be in front of). I just love it out here.
“I’ve been working hard every day,” he continued. “(Playing professional baseball is) what I want my future to be. I don’t want to do anything else … so I kind of have my mind set on it.”
If a person were to poll every young draft-eligible prospect or potential international free-agent in attendance at the PG World Showcase this weekend about what they want to do as young adults, it’s likely that pollster would receive an answer similar to Sangster’s from each one of them.
The kid from Florida or Pennsylvania or Puerto Rico or Taiwan or the Dominican Republic only wants to one day realize his dream of getting paid for playing the game he loves. Guys like Wingo and Sangster, they can rest somewhat easy knowing they’re in one of those enviable win-win situations. Even if their names don’t get called this June, they can spend the next three years enjoying college life and the beauty of the college game, and maybe hear their name called in 2020.
“My level of stress is actually coming down,” Wingo concluded. “I’ve signed with my college so I know for a fact that I will play college baseball, and now I’m just going out there to play (relaxed). I’ll try to put up good numbers and hopefully we can see what happens come June.”