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Under the radar
There's no other way to explain it. Prior to Wednesday's game vs. Agoura, Kain, Newbury Park's Andrew Lambo and Agoura's Richard Stock were tied for second in the Marmonte League with a .500 batting average. Calabasas third baseman Adam Landecker leads the league with a .543 average. Playing for a Lancer squad that was ranked No. 5 in the latest CIFSouthern Section Division I coaches' poll, Kain is the team leader in triples (four), on-base percentage (.592) and slugging percentage (.925). In addition, he's tied for the team lead in RBI (16) and hit by pitches (five). Kain hasn't committed an error in 28 opportunities. Kain, who bats seventh in the Lancer order, has done everything he's been asked to do and then some, and yet he still hasn't had a sniff of interest from college recruiters. "Harrison Kain is a guy that's worked harder than anybody else," Thousand Oaks head coach Frank Mutz said. "It's not even close. He shows up at the ballpark every day and works hard and is usually one of the last guys to leave. . . "The thing about it is a lot of people don't know about him yet," the coach said. "He doesn't get the publicity and exposure that some of the other players do, guys like Chris Hannick and Matt Bywater, guys that are getting Division I scholarships. He's a Division I baseball player, and eventually the word is going to get out." Perhaps one of the reasons Kain has yet to be discovered is because he only played in half of Thousand Oaks' games as a junior. Midway through last season, Kain underwent an emergency appendectomy and missed a month recovering from surgery. He still managed to hit .372, good for fifth on the team. "Coming back from that was tough," Kain, 18, said. "It's right in your core. You can't really run and you can't really throw. The surgery was right through my bellybutton, and it wasn't an easy road back." During the offseason Kain went to work on the field and in the gym. He took countless ground balls to improve his defense and spent hours upon hours in the batting cage working on shortening up his swing. A workout regimen helped Kain add 15 pounds to his 5-foot-9-inch frame. Kain's quick to note that he wasn't the only Lancer who gave 110 percent during the offseason. "My teammates worked just as hard as I did," he said. "(Shortstop) Collin Lavoie helped me a lot up the middle. Daniel Payne is a great first baseman, and he does an excellent job digging the ball. "All the guys work extremely hard. There's nobody on this field that doesn't want to win and doesn't want to be here." Lavoie said Kain is a quality teammate who showed commitment and grit while recovering from surgery last season. "He's absolutely solid," Lavoie said. "To see the improvement and how far he's come in the last few years and all the hard work he put in during the offseason, it's an honor to play with him up the middle. I have so much trust in what's going to happen with us. I have no doubt that he's going to make plays, and I know he has the same feeling about me. "The way he's hitting the ball is unbelievable right now," Lavoie said. "It's really a tribute to how hard he's worked." With his team in the thick of a heated race for the Marmonte League championship, Kain isn't concerning himself with getting recruited for college. His focus remains on winning ballgames and helping the Lancers reach their championship goals. If the team continues to play well, Kain knows that someone eventually will notice his skill set and take an interest. He also takes solace in the fact that Jack Wilson, a Thousand Oaks High graduate, wasn't heavily recruited out of high school and ended up playing at Oxnard College before becoming a major league All-Star. "Others might think my season is a fluke, but I don't think it is," Kain said. "Hopefully I'll just keep putting up the numbers, because the numbers don't lie." |
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