HOOVER, Ala. – Christian Little is still a month away from celebrating his 16th birthday, and yet in the four years he’s been involved with Perfect Game, he continues to show an uncanny ability to come up especially big.
Consider this: He got his start competing in the Perfect Game 12u and 13u Series Classics in 2015 and 2016, with those events held in Southwest Florida. He was also at the prestigious, invitation-only, nationally televised PG 14u Select Baseball Festivals in Fort Myers, Fla., in both 2017 and 2018.
Due to that early exposure, he maintains, in October 2017, at the age of 14 years, three months, Little committed to head coach Tim Corbin and Vanderbilt University, becoming the youngest player ever to commit to one of the nation’s top programs.
Wait, there’s more. Last year he was a part of the USA Baseball 15u Team USA squad that won the 15u World Cup championship in Panama. And suddenly – or perhaps, not so suddenly – a rising star’s star-power was on the rise even more rapidly than ever before.
Now, fast-forward several months and Little has added another very important entry to his resume. He was invited here to this weekend’s Perfect Game Junior National Showcase – his first true PG showcase experience – where he is mixing it up with more than 260 other top prospects from the classes of 2021 and 2022 in an effort to get an even better handle on where he stands amongst his peers.
“This is a good way to kick-off the summer,” Little told PG Saturday morning, speaking from outside the cages at the Hoover Met Stadium. “We get to see more of the top players in the country that we haven’t seen all spring because we all live in different places. It’s kids that I played with last summer and got to share experiences with, and hopefully I can create new experiences with them here.”
Christian Little is an athletic 6-foot-3, 205-pound 2021 right-hander from St. Louis, Mo., with a fastball that touched 93 mph and a plus-curveball he delivered at 76 mph during his outing Saturday. PG ranks him the No. 7 overall prospect in his class and the No. 1 right-handed pitcher, and by the looks of things on Saturday he’s only getting better with age.
While the PG Jr. National is his first showcase go-around, it is also the 14th PG event Little has attended. He didn’t arrive with any specific expectations, other than the one he always has of himself to go out compete toe-to-toe with other top guys in the country. It’s a winner’s mindset that will not only serve him well but also serve as a springboard into the rigors of the summer tournament season.
And, most importantly, he feels good. He worked hard on several aspects of his game he felt needed improvement during his sophomore season at Christian Brothers College High School in St. Louis, and now feels as good as he’s ever felt heading into the summer. He also feels like he’s still got a lot to prove.
“I actually think this is an important summer because your junior summer, you’re getting ready for the Draft and getting ready to showcase yourself for major league teams,” Little told PG Saturday. “I feel like (this summer) is a vital step to get ready to showcase myself next summer.”
He was here this weekend with his dad, Chris Little, a man who himself has been around the game for most of his life.
Chris was a 12th round selection of the Astros in the 2001 MLB June Amateur Draft out of St. Louis Community College. He played minor league and independent league ball for 10 of the next 11 years (2001-11) and now coaches at University City (Mo.) High School – his hometown – and gives private pitching lessons. And there was no way he was going to miss this show.
“The Perfect Game family in general has done so much to help so many of these kids including my son … and to be able to participate in an event with so many elite players, this is definitely a must-do for him,” Chris told PG Saturday. “Especially in preparation for next year in hopes that he has the opportunity to compete at the (PG) National Showcase.”
Fortunate sons are blessed with dads who can offer them insights on the road ahead based on their own experiences, and it seems magnified when the dad has played at a high level himself. Chris helps coach Christian and is constantly teaching, helping his son fight his way through certain less-than-favorable scenarios he attempted to fight through himself.
“He’s impacted my baseball career in a lot of ways I don’t even know,” Christian said. “Just growing up with him playing, being at the stadiums, living baseball at a young age and being surrounded by it; I feel like that kind of honed my love for baseball early.”
Christian Little got started with PG early at the PG Series Classic events in 2015 and 2016. He kind of marvels at the fact that he was invited to the PG 14u Select Festival in back-to-back years, one of three players asked to come back in 2018 from 2017, joining 2020 outfielder/right-hander Jeffery Waters and 2021 shortstop/right-hander Brady House; Waters will be at next week’s PG National Showcase in Phoenix while the No. 3-ranked House is here with Little at the Jr. National.
The thing that made it especially enjoyable for Little was that each year was a different experience. Most of the players he was with in 2017 were older than he was, and then in 2018 he was with his own age group, along with some younger guys.
“The first year I went down there I had never seen competition like that,” he said. “Where I’m from the competition level isn’t as high, on average, and going down there with those dudes, their body types were different and they were way bigger than me, and that pushed me to get bigger and get stronger.”
Becoming a part of the USA Baseball 15u Team USA squad is definitely the highlight of his career so far – there are, after all, just some things a teenager will never forget. He told PG Saturday that when he first learned he had earned a roster spot on Team USA it was “one of the greatest feelings I’ve had in my life” and it only got better once the team started playing games in Panama.
Imagine, he said, going down to a small Central American country where he and his teammates felt somewhat isolated, and then going out there to fight and battle and against all odds, come out on top in the end.
“The best part of it was when we won, the other countries actually cheered for us when we ran across the field,” Little recalled. “The whole stadium was going crazy for us, chanting ‘USA! USA!’ and I thought that was the greatest thing I’ve ever seen in my life.”
Other than playing in the back-to-back Select Festivals, all of Little’s PG experiences have come at WWBA and BCS tournaments until this weekend. He has been named to four all-tournament teams, two while playing with the Midwest Prospects in 2017 and two others with Team Elite in 2018.
There is no real secret to the success Christian Little is having at such a young age. It requires a lot of hard work, of course, but it also requires a lot of self-discipline and it’s something you hear from top prospects at any age, even from the guys who are already playing collegiately or professionally: Don’t let your own adrenaline rush get the best of you.
“I have to try to control that and channel that into the game and not worry about the things that are going on around me,” he said. “I just need to realize that we’re all just here to do what we do.”
Every event is special and important in its own way, of course, and the Jr. National is no different. The demands a player faces at a showcase can be different than those he faces at a tournament simply because the spotlight shines directly on an individual’s accomplishments and not the overall success of the team.
“I tell Christian and all these guys, you’re participating with the top guys in the country; everybody has a physical gift, that’s why they’re here,” Chris Little said. “The separator now is the mindset and the work ethic … so the biggest thing that we preach to Christian is don’t take any of this for granted and continue to work hard.”
Chris laughed when reminded that there probably wasn’t anything like today’s PG showcase schedule available when he was in high school in the late 1990s, but he said it just wasn’t around during his time although his time wasn’t all that long ago.
But, he said, it was long enough ago where gaining valuable exposure, even in the St. Louis area, was difficult and sometimes it became just a matter of a young prospect getting lucky. “The great thing about events like this and especially with what Perfect Game has been able to do,” he added, “is they’ve taken the luck out of it.”
The one thing Christian doesn’t have to do any longer is impress college coaches, dozens of which were in attendance Saturday. That’s because he had already impressed Vanderbilt’s Corbin enough to earn that early scholarship offer, which he readily accepted. He called the entire recruiting process “quick,” which in his case, was about as quick as it can be.
“It did kind of happen fast,” he said. “Thanks to Perfect Game I got to show myself on TV at the 14u Select Festival, and (schools) got to see me because where I’m from there’s not a lot of showcasing going on. I got to present myself in a way so that I was, fortunately, able to get (an offer) from Vanderbilt.”
It will be two more years before Christian Little graduates from Christian Brothers College HS in the spring of 2021, which means he still has this summer and next to take part in PG events. Chris Little is going to continue to soak it all in.
“For our whole family and for our community back home, it’s been a great run, it’s been a great ride,” Chris said even with the knowledge it’s a ride that won’t be ending anytime soon. “A lot of it is shocking, a little jaw-dropping even, that he has the opportunity and that he has the skill-set to be able to participate in these types of events with these guys; it’s been phenomenal.”