summer wrap: a star aligns

Last summer, a shortstop from Los Angeles fresh off a big sophomore season headed East with a lot of hype. But Brandon Crawford arrived in Orleans and never quite got his feet under him. Widely considered the top shortstop prospect in his class, Crawford hit just .189 for the Cardinals, a far cry from the .335 average he had in the spring for UCLA.

Crawford still had a tremendous junior season, and he got drafted by the Giants in the fourth round this June. But at the time, the summer of '07 must have felt like a missed opportunity.

This summer, another shortstop fresh off a big sophomore season headed East with a lot of hype.

Grant Green did not have a disappointing summer.

Playing for Chatham, the USC shortstop had an incredible season and was named the league's top pro prospect. He was thought of by many as the top shortstop in his class to begin with. Now, he's drawing comparisons to Major Leaguers Evan Longoria and Troy Tulowitzki.

I think Green's success is one of the great storylines of this Cape League summer. That's in large part because it was supposed to happen, and when things are supposed to happen in the Cape League, they rarely do.

Take Crawford, or countless other players who came in with hype and left with question marks. A lot of times, Cape League success stories come from the players who don't have all the hype. That was particularly true last year, when Aaron Crow and Conor Gillaspie burst onto the scene with big summers.

Green's success is really the first of its kind since 2006, when Matt Wieters came in as a top prospect, hit .307 with eight home runs for Orleans, and left as the top prospect. The next year, Wieters was the fifth overall pick in the draft.

It may end up being a similar path for Green. He's already being mentioned as the top prospect among positional players for the '09 draft. There's a very good chance he'll be a top-10 pick, maybe a top-five pick.

The cool part for fans of the Cape League is that you can trace much of Green's status back to his time on the Cape.

After becoming the first freshman since the 1990's to start at shortstop for the Trojans, Green headed to Yarmouth-Dennis last year and simply couldn't be kept off the field, even though Gordon Beckham was ahead of him on the depth chart at shortstop. Green played four different positions and still managed to hit .291 with four home runs.

Green was on the radar before last summer, but his performance with the Red Sox put him more firmly in the cross-hairs. He stayed there with a huge sophomore season. He hit .390 with nine home runs.

And then he came to the Cape, going to Chatham instead of returning to Y-D. He turned down Team USA because he wanted to play every day. He did play every day, and every day, he hit the ball, leading the league in batting average for much of the summer.

He brought power to the table. Some speed too, and in the field, he flashed a strong arm. He was the total package. His summer line finished up like this: .348, 6 HR, 21 RBI.

That's some serious production, and it matched the projection scouts like to talk about. So often in the Cape League, you'll see a guy struggle but still get high marks. That's the way it works. A bad summer might raise some questions, but there are so many factors at play -- small sample size, wood bats, tougher competition, the daily grind -- that it can be written off a little bit. If you're a top prospect, you want to have a good summer, but if you don't, it's not the end of the world. For scouts, projection is just as important, if not more important, than production.

I am not a scout, and frankly, I was pretty excited to see Grant Green do what he did. It's not that I don't like seeing stars come out of nowhere. And no matter how much a player struggles on the Cape, it's always cool to see his name get called in June.

But this was different.

The first Major League baseball game I ever went to was at Fenway Park. Roger Clemens was pitching, back in the days when he was flat-out dominant. I was so excited. I had visions of a no-hitter, maybe a 21-strikeout game.

He lasted something like an inning and a third. I was fairly disappointed. You go to a game to see the stars, and when the stars deliver, it's something special.

Well, Grant Green delivered. It occurs to me now that he might someday be a Cape League Hall of Famer. By then, if things go the way he wants them to, he'll have some other hardware, too.

But I bet he'll remember this summer, and I think the rest of us will, too.