Two LZ-Area Baseball Players Shine In Summer Leagues

The end of the academic year doesn't mean the end of baseball for members of the  team. Virtually all the players participate in one of the several local summer leagues, like the American Legion League, The Top Tier League or the Lake Zurich Bears Summer League, which is coached by Gary Simon, the coach of the high school team. For graduates who have moved on and play college-level baseball, there also are assorted summer leagues throughout the country that they can join. Some college players even opt to return home and play on the American Legion team, like Lake Zurich alumnus Dan Johnsen did this summer. Two players who had solid seasons in their respective summer leagues are Anthony Drago, who will join the Bears varsity squad in the spring of 2012, and Lake Zurich alumnus Tanner Witt, who plays at Kansas State University.

Catcher-first baseman Anthony Drago, who will be a junior this fall, played for Top Tier’s 16s team this summer, and they compiled a solid 25-6 record. The 6-foot-1, 190-pound Drago also was the only ballplayer from Lake County who was chosen to play for the Team Illinois squad that consisted of the top Class of 2013 prospects. The games were played Aug. 6-7 at the Prep Baseball Report Future Games at Benedictine University in Lisle. Drago singled and knocked in a run as Illinois crushed Missouri 11-1 on Saturday. He also singled in Sunday’s 2-1 victory over Ohio. Drago hit .421 for Top Tier this summer, with 35 RBIs with three homers, eight doubles and three triples. Batting in the cleanup spot, Drago had a spectacular .560 on-base percentage while playing every inning of every game, the only player to do so. To say he was indispensable to his team would be a gross understatement. Gary Simon, Drago’s coach at Lake Zurich, feels that he has the potential to be a Division-1 player in college. Drago is already demonstrating a dogged work ethic; he’s spending a lot of time practicing hitting the other way so as not to be pigeonholed as a dead-pull hitter.

Drago split time this past spring between Lake Zurich’s sophomore and varsity teams, playing for the younger squad in all conference games, while moving over to the older squad for nonconference and weekend contests. Besides his offensive prowess, Drago is a rock with a rocket arm behind the plate, all the more remarkable considering his extremely low-slung way of squatting behind home plate. Drago admits that catching is his position of choice, but he also can throw the leather at first base. The Lake Zurich varsity squad had a solid, dependable backstop with a good stick in Jeremy Reusch the last two seasons, and they’ll be getting another in Drago in the spring of 2012.

Tanner Witt, a 2009 graduate of , is a member of the Kansas State University Wildcats baseball team. The speedy, 5-foot-10-inch, 178-pound spark-plug was the Wildcat’s leadoff hitter, and he stole 14 bases in 16 attempts last spring for his team. After getting off to a slow start for Kansas State last spring, Witt got hot in May, especially in a three-game series against Baylor late in the month when he hit .538, going 7-for-13 with three stolen bases. On the season for the 36-25 Wildcats, Witt finished with a .241 average and a .353 on-base percentage, including 27 walks, second-highest on the team. Witt went on to play for the San Luis Obispo Blues this summer in the California College League, one of the most highly regarded college summer baseball programs, and he was 15-for-15 in sack swipes. On San Luis Obispo, Witt loomed large in his team, capturing their first league title, hitting .262 for the Blues, including an eight-game hitting streak to close out the season, with 20 RBIs in 36 games. In his high school days, Witt was also an important member of the Lake Zurich Bears Class 7A state champion team in 2007-08, where he started as a cornerback after being converted from the quarterback position. Now focused on his college baseball career, he can look back fondly on that historical season on the Lake Zurich gridiron.