<p>Prospect With An Asterisk</p>
<p>Service academy stars balance pro dreams with reality of commitment</p>
<p>By Adam Foster
April 11, 2007 </p>
<p>There are under-the-radar Division I prospects, and then there's Mitch Harris.</p>
<p>An all-state high school player with a tall, muscular frame, Harris initially drew interest from just a few Division III coaches and junior college programs. And he probably would have wound up playing for one of them if Navy assistant football coach Buddy Green wasn't a baseball fan.</p>
<p>On a recruiting visit to South Point (N.C.) High, Green had finished his football work and gone to the baseball diamond to chat with Mickey Lineberger, South Point's coach and an old friend of his. He happened to see Harris throwing a bullpen and was very impressed.</p>
<p>"I asked Mickey about him and he told me he was just really shocked that no one had offered him (a scholarship)," Green said. "He looked really good to me, so I got a copy of his transcript and I called the baseball coaches. They went and saw him play, and late in spring he came on a visit. They signed him and the rest is history."</p>
<p>Harris, a pitcher and outfielder, did little his freshman year to fulfill the promise that Green first saw in him, but the righthander's sophomore season was an entirely different story.</p>
<p>Paul Kostacopoulos was brought in from Maine after the 2005 season to fill Navy's recently vacated head coaching position. Right away, he let the players know that every starting job was up for grabs, and Harris was one of the first players to make a strong impression on the new coach.</p>
<p>"You could tell that he had a chance to be pretty good . . . toward the end of the fall, we started to feel better and better about him. And then almost from the get go, he really separated himself as far as a legitimate Division I pitcher."</p>
<p>Harris came out touching 92 in his first start of the season, on a 44-degree afternoon.</p>
<p>Thrusting his way onto the pro prospect radar, Harris went on to dominate hitters all season (10-3, 1.74 with 113 strikeouts in 83 innings), earning Patriot League pitcher of the year honors. He also batted .333, but most of his hits were singles and he struck out nearly three times as often as he walked.</p>
<p>"He doesn't really need to deceive people," Kostacopoulos said. "He just has a good repertoire of three pitches that he can pretty much put where he wants. And when he does do that he's very impressive."</p>
<p>Though Kostacopoulos couldn't have been happier with how Harris pitched, in the back of his mind he knew his 6-foot-4, 215-pound ace's Navy career could be reaching an end.</p>
<p>Naval Academy students are required to serve five years in active duty once they begin classes their junior year. So if Harris was primarily concerned about making a typical transition to a pro career, it would have been in his best interest to transfer.</p>
<p>"I would be lying if I said I didn't (consider transferring)," Harris said. "I'm human. It's been my dream to become a professional baseball player, but you can't beat an education from the Naval Academy. I feel I'm blessed to be a part of this institution, and I don't see how anyone could turn down such an opportunity here."</p>
<p>"That's the best part of the whole story," Kostacopoulos said. "Nobody would have really questioned it if he had chosen that route. But he didn't because he's got an unbelievable sense of who he is; he has an unbelievable sense of what the Naval Academy stands for."</p>
<p>If the junior pitches well for the rest of this season?he stood 5-2, 1.87 with 59 strikeouts in 43 innings through his first seven starts?and in the Cape Cod League, he will easily blossom into the best major league prospect the Midshipmen have ever produced. He has also carried the team's offense as its No. 3 hitter, batting .327/.402/.614 with seven homers and 33 RBIs through 101 at-bats.</p>
<p>Harris said he's hoping that the Navy will consider letting him play pro baseball full-time immediately after he graduates, though there's no precedent for such an agreement.</p>
<p>Dating back to when David Robinson attended the academy, Navy has allowed a handful of athletes with pro contracts to serve two years in active duty followed by six in the reserves, recruiting in the area they're playing.</p>
<p>Still, even this kind of arrangement would leave Harris unable to pursue pro baseball full-time until he's 23 years old. And there's currently a giant roadblock for athletes who are looking take advantage of Navy's early release from active duty policy.</p>
<p>"As the nation is at war (in Iraq) and the other services have utilized Stop Loss authority to maintain readiness, I believe it is inappropriate to continue this policy," Secretary of the Navy Donald Winter said in a memorandum last January. "Accordingly, all submissions should be held in abeyance until further notice."</p>
<p>Stop Loss keeps individuals in war zones beyond their enlistment length or retirement dates.</p>
<p>So while Harris could become a great poster boy for the Naval Academy by making a name for himself in pro ball, in the eyes of the Navy, the immediate concerns of Stop Loss outweigh the long-term benefit of a adding him as a recruiter.</p>
<p>"It's hard to speculate on any of that stuff," Kostacopoulos said. "I think the important thing is along the lines of the pros and being a professional prospect. There is a strong sense of commitment here, and there's a strong sense of serving. So if you are here, you have that strong sense. It's not in better interest or a less interest, it's just what young men do here, and they know that. So I think this is going to play out the way it should."</p>
<p>Army Is More Pro Friendly</p>
<p>Unlike Harris, Army lefthander Nick Hill already has an arrangement in place that will allow him to pursue pro ball full-time upon graduation.</p>
<p>Hill, a senior who pitched for Team USA last summer (going 4-0, 1.48), will be permitted to play professionally while serving in the reserves for the first two years of his contract. If he still has a contract after two years, he can pay West Point back for his education and get out of any active duty entirely. In this case he'd spend six more years in the reserves.</p>
<p>"There's been a lot of support from a lot of higher-ups to get people in place, 'cause this is still a real new program for the Army . . . very few people ever being in it," Hill said. "So I think they're really eager to get some people in it and see how it works. Hopefully, I'll be one of the first to go through it, and hopefully there'll be a lot more people after me as well."</p>
<p>Similar to Harris, Hill was only a blip on the Division I prospect radar until late in his high school career. He caught Army's attention in a small showcase event, and his standout senior season at Tennessee's Sullivan East High - when he earned regional player of the year honors - piqued Army's interest. But the school couldn't offer him a scholarship right away, so he committed to East Tennessee State with a gentleman's agreement that if he got into West Point he'd go there instead.</p>
<p>"But the only way we would do that is if he was up front and honest with them, and he was," Army coach Joe Sottolano said. "Their head coach told him point blank, 'If you get an opportunity to go to West Point, you need to go.'"</p>
<p>Hill was very interested in defending his country, so he was thrilled when Sottolano offered him a scholarship to pitch for Army. And he's done nothing to make his coach regret the decision, going 26-9, 2.30 with 236 strikeouts through his first three seasons (243 innings).</p>
<p>Now Hill is just months away from receiving his degree in systems engineering and testing his value in the 2007 draft, though he's already somewhat familiar with the draft process. The Red Sox drafted Hill in the 47th round last year.</p>
<p>"They actually called me after they did, and they said they just wanted to do it because they thought I was worthy enough to be drafted . . . kind of to show respect," Hill said. "They had no intentions of signing me the whole time, just did it as a kind gesture, which I was really appreciative of."</p>
<p>Hill isn't exactly the kind of athlete who sticks out in a crowd. Sottolano said if you were asked to pick him out from a group of 500 people, the 6-foot-1, 185-pounder would be the 499th you'd choose.</p>
<p>Nonetheless, the tremendous competitor continues to baffle Patriot League hitters. Through his first six starts this season he's 2-3, 1.84 with 47 strikeouts in 38 innings, continuing an impressive career. He ranked second in the nation in ERA in 2005 (1.21) and is 28-12, 2.23 in 287 career innings. </p>
<p>"He doesn't throw a baseball without a purpose," Sottolano said. "He won't lob a ball without a purpose. I believe his stuff is good enough to succeed right now at the next level. And he is consistent. There's a lot of guys out there that have that, but there's intangibles that separate him."</p>
<p>Hill attacks the zone with a tailing high-80s fastball, a devastating changeup and a curveball. Sottolano described him as a disciplined perfectionist and insisted that his leadership skills and intangibles will make him successful no matter what road he goes down.</p>
<p>"There's a lot of Hall of Fame players out there that aren't Hall of Fame people," he said. "And Nick is a Hall of Fame person first and foremost."</p>