Tuesday, October 6, 2009

Remillard and Roseboom are first Dodgers to verbal

South Troy Dodgers players and La Salle Institute seniors Will Remillard, left, and Dave Roseboom right, were the first Dodgers to make college commitments this fall. (Photo my Mike McMahon - The Record).

Remillard will compete at Temple University in Philadelphia and Roseboom made his commitment to University of South Carolina Upstate, an up-and-coming Division I program, this weekend after visiting the campus two weeks ago.

We'll have a full story in The Record on Wednesday, but these guys gave me a lot of great information, so here are some leftovers.

Roseboom is excited to join coach head coach Matt Fincher at USC Upstate, as Fincher is one of only two people to have his number retired by the Chatham A’s of the prestigious Cape Cod Baseball League. Saratoga Springs native Tim Stauffer, a former Dodgers and A’s pitcher, spent most of this season in the San Diego Padres starting rotation and is an inspiration to current Dodgers players like Roseboom and Remillard.

"(Fincher) coached for 19 years in the Cape Cod league and he’s a big pitching guru," Roseboom, a Pattersonville native, said. "He’s turned a lot of kids into professional ballplayers and that’s what I want to do. I want to play professional baseball and this is the place I feel to be the best chance for me to get me all the tools I need to get there."

Roseboom always dreamed of playing for a southern school, but Remillard just wanted to play Division I baseball. When Temple coaches approached him after a recent tournament, they invited him for a visit and Remillard could not find a good reason to say no to the Owls' offer.

"It was instant," Remillard, a Cohoes native, said. "I played at a tournament in Baseball Heaven, they saw me play and the coach called me and said he wanted me down for a visit. I just loved the school. It was the first thing and I knew it was the school I was going to."

"Those two kids, the thing I like about them is that they’ve been the face of La Salle baseball for the last four years and they’ve also been the face of this program for the last three or four years," said South Troy owner George Rogers. "These are the type of kids you see get these kind of opportunities because they are great players, but they are also two great kids."

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Elite-level baseball has many similarities with basketball in recruiting. High school seasons don't mean very much to college coaches because they are busy coaching their own teams during the same season. Basketball players have AAU tournaments during the summer to catch the eyes of coaches and baseball players have fall tournaments.

There are plenty of baseball teams in the area, but the Dodgers have cemented their place as the best because they use the fall season to travel to elite-level tournaments in front of college coaches and professional scouts, which is the reason why many of their players go on to Division I schools. And the longer the Dodgers develop that reputation and build pipelines into these institutions, the more these college want to come back and get similar types of players from an organization they trust. It's a system built for the long haul because as players such as Roseboom and Remillard go on and have success in college, the younger Dodgers players behind them will stand to benefit.

"There are people that say we run around town and get these players," Rogers said. "Sure we do. Why do you think they come here? They come here because those people aren’t doing for their kids what we do. It doesn’t take that much effort. It just takes some dedication to this crazy bunch."

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