Promising outing
It’s no wonder that Lakeside High School baseball coach Matt Sullivan is happy to see senior Garrett Perkins healthy and in an Eagle baseball uniform again.
Perkins was an All-State defensive back for Lakeside last fall, and he’s won second-team All-Great Northern League honors in basketball for the past two seasons. He was a three-year starter for the Eagles in both sports.
It’s been a different story in baseball, where Perkins played on the junior varsity as a sophomore and was injured early his junior season when he was hit by a pitch and suffered a broken wrist.
So Perkins’ best quality may be that despite his football and basketball honors, he puts his ego in his back pocket during baseball season and does whatever Sullivan needs him to do, which is quite a list – two different outfield positions, designated hitter, pitcher and backup catcher.
“I guess my motivation in baseball is that I’ve been playing for a long time, and it’s in my blood,” he said. “After two really strenuous sports seasons, baseball requires a lot more out of me mentally at this point in the year, but you have to work in all three, just in different ways.
“It wasn’t a big deal to be on the JV as a sophomore,” he said, “because the varsity was loaded. Last year was tough, because I was starting in the outfield and pitching before I got hurt, and then we got eliminated in districts my second game back.”
Sullivan says he’s still learning what Perkins can do as a baseball player, but he likes what he’s seen so far, including a complete-game victory on the mound on Saturday over Riverside, where he showed the ability to make adjustments after the Rams knocked him around early.
“Garrett’s a great team guy,” Sullivan said. “An example of that is last Saturday, when he told me not to worry about getting him any innings in the second game. He understood that it’s early in the league season, and we’re trying to look at different guys. An attitude like that makes my job a lot easier.
“Garrett has played pretty much every minute, every period, every inning in everything he’s done, so I didn’t really expect that reaction, but it sure was nice to see it.”
Perkins’ favorite sport is probably football, which he hopes to play at the college level, but basketball is right up there, too. Baseball, he says, requires an emotional adjustment.
“Especially this year,” he said, “because we got back from the basketball state tournament and jumped right into baseball. Compared with the other two sports, in baseball you sometimes have to find something to do besides stand around.”
He’s talked with some California colleges about continuing his football career, but nothing’s firm yet. When he’s done playing, Perkins hopes to teach and coach at the high school level.
Sullivan notes that Perkins’ reserved attitude belies the level of his competitiveness, which he may have developed at home, where he’s the second oldest of five children, all of them athletes. He also talks about Perkins’ magnetic personality, which draws teammates to him.
And here’s an attitude a coach has to appreciate:
“I was voted team captain in basketball,” Perkins said, “and in football, too, I’m more of a vocal leader. But I don’t know baseball as well, so I don’t think it’s my place to tell people what they should be doing.”
He’s happy to have competed in three sports during the past four years and knows that college will be quite an adjustment in that regard.
“In some ways it will be easier to focus on one sport,” he said, “and I imagine I’ll improve more by doing that, but I know that I’ll miss the others. I’ll still be watching and enjoying them, though.”