As David Scott stood in the Nottingham baseball dugout preparing for an interview, coach Jim Maher yelled over from the batting cage.
“Make sure you ask him about not being able to hit 62 mile an hour fastballs!” Maher instructed.
Thus, Scott had to explain how three fastballs of minimal speed got by him in the Northstars game one day earlier.
“It had to do with patience,” the senior centerfielder said. “I just wasn’t waiting, and they were three really slow pitches.”
Asked if he will ever hear the end of it from his coach, Scott shook his head forlornly.
“Probably not.”
It might be the only negative thing Scott hears from Maher, who gave one of the highest compliments he can give a hard-nosed player by saying, “He reminds me of the old Florence kids I used to coach. He plays hard, he’s tough. He competes. You win with guys like that. If I had 15 David Scotts, coaching would be easy.”
Scott is in his third year as a starting outfielder and is enjoying a career year. Through Nottingham’s 9-0 start he led the team with a .500 average (15-for-30) and had 10 RBI.
“He’s a line-drive type hitter,” Maher said. “He’s doing well. When he’s going bad, he’s hitting balls in the air. We’re trying to get him to consistently hit line drives and hard ground balls, use his speed.”
After playing JV as a freshman, Scott made varsity as a sophomore but started the season on the bench. When rightfielder Mike Malagrino moved from the district, Scott got his shot and ran with it. He hit .299 with 11 RBI and eight stolen bases, and played a tremendous outfield in helping the Northstars to the Central Jersey Group III sectional title.
Last year, he moved to center, continued to star defensively and hit .333 with 13 RBI and 11 stolen bases. In 59 chances, he committed just one error, and Maher estimates he has thrown six runners out at home plate since his sophomore season.
“Centerfield just kind of comes to me naturally,” Scott said. “I know how to read the ball well, I have the arm for it. I love making diving plays, that’s one of my favorite things to do. Whenever I can get to it, I get to it.”
Scott takes great pride in his defense. He not only goes by instincts but tries to study the situation to give him an added benefit.
“I like to see where they hit the ball, and I always have to maintain the information,” he said. “I just have to see what ball they can hit. Sometimes I’ll ask (catcher) Tommy (McParland) what pitch they’re throwing so I can get a jump on the ball. If they get an off-speed pitch, I go a little to the right because they’re gonna pull it. If it’s a fastball outside and away, I might move a little to the left.”
Maher feels that Scott’s ability comes from his strong fundamentals.
“He gets great jumps off the ball, he gets good reads off hitters,” the coach said. “He’s as good a centerfielder as I’ve ever coached, and I’ve had some really great ones. He made a diving catch in the sectional final against Ocean Township (as a sophomore) for one of the best plays I’ve ever seen. He’s got a good arm, too. He’s got a better arm than you would think.”
Scott began his career as a shortstop/pitcher in HTRBA before being moved to the outfield at age 11. Even back then he showed speed, saying, “I’ve always been that little jet.” He remained in the outfield while playing with Nottingham Babe Ruth, and “I fell in love with it, I didn’t want to move from there.”
When Scott was promoted to varsity his sophomore year, Maher immediately liked his hustle and tenacious attitude.
“The one word I can use to describe him is energy and enthusiasm,” said the coach, who never claimed math was his best subject. “Every day at the park, he’s the loudest guy in the dugout. He plays hard all the time. He leads by example. You can never tell if he’s had a bad day or a good day. He’s always smiling, and he brings a lot of enthusiasm to our team.”
Scott was greeted by several classmates when he arrived on varsity, as Bryce Fremgen, Tom McParland and Nick Houghton were all on the big team as freshmen the previous year. They helped him understand what their coach was all about.
“There’s always a little bit of nerves, especially when Coach Maher is your coach,” Scott said. “He doesn’t really let you live things down. You just gotta get over it and toughen up. I never had a coach that would toughen you and actually get on you if you did something wrong. It was always like, ‘We’ll get better. We’ll fix it.’ He gets in your head, and you gotta keep him there, but you also have to get rid of him and work on it yourself as well.”
When did it all start making sense?
“When it started working, and I was actually getting hits and hitting the ball harder,” Scott said.
Maher’s tutelage and Scott’s work ethic has made him one of the top outfielders in the Colonial Valley Conference this year. He was also helped by a growth spurt, as he grew four inches after his freshman year and began hitting the weights.
Since then, Scott has made his Hall of Fame coach into one of his biggest fans.
“He’s a great team guy,” Maher said. “A real good teammate.”
Scott’s next step is to try to walk-on at Monmouth University, where Houghton has earned a baseball scholarship. Maher had him set up with some good Division III programs, but Scott wants to take a shot at Division I.
“I think there may be a place for him there,” Maher said. “He’s a good hitter, he can bunt. He puts the ball in play, he’s a good outfielder. I’ve let them know he’s coming so he’ll give them a look. He’s done enough good things and it’s probably worth it to keep him around. Who knows, he may get a chance to play there.”
Like most members of Nottingham’s senior class, Scott is strong in classroom. Whether he plays at Monmouth or not, he plans on studying pre-med in hopes of working in the osteopathic field.
“My doctor kind of influenced me a little bit,” he said. “I was always a science kind of person. I love science.”
And he loved taking part in the science fair when attending Our Lady of Sorrows elementary school.
“I always picked something that was fun,” Scott said. “I never won anything, though.”
One of his more memorable projects had to do with warning people about the dangers of soft drinks.
“I put chicken into Coke to see if it would deteriorate and see what kind of acids that were in the Coke you were drinking,” Scott said. “You let it soak and see what happened to the chicken, and it just shredded it.”
Sounds like it didn’t take much work.
“No,” Scott said with a grin. “It didn’t. But I wanted to see what happened.”
And by keeping his effort to a minimum, just think of all the energy he saved for the baseball diamond.
David Scott scores a run during Nottingham’s 16-1 win against Princeton April 13, 2018. Scott led the Northstars in batting average and RBI through their first nine games. (Photo by Wes Kirkpatrick.),
