Conklin named ACBL MVP

So you’re Chase Conklin and it’s July 30 and the Trenton Generals have fallen out of first place in the Wolff Division for the first time in weeks after a pair of gut-punch losses by identical 5-4 scores to the Jersey Pilots. The season is going in the wrong direction and you sense it and the General Manager senses it and as the two of you talk it out over the phone on a long car ride home you realize three things.

First, there’s literally nothing worse than these long car rides, these interminable trips from North Jersey to South Jersey at night during the summer, and you want to make sure you don’t have to make any more of them.

Second, you’re Chase Conklin. You don’t lose. You will yourself to victory. You push others to victory. This will become a great team even if they have to peel you off the field at Moody Park to make it happen. You will make sure this happens. Tim and Angela Conklin raised a young man who pulls his teams together through tough times, even if it becomes them versus the rest of the world, especially if it becomes them against the rest of the world.

Oh, and you make it perfectly clear during the call, you will be the Most Valuable Player of the league.

And you start doing these crazy things. Only to you, they’re not crazy. Like finishing the season 20-for-38 with a .609 OBP in your final 46 plate appearances over the nine most pressure-packed games of the season. With zero strikeouts in those last 46 times up. Driving in 16 runs in the last nine games with 11 runs scored.

And somehow these numbers – these video-game-on-beginner-mode numbers – become even more insane in the playoffs. Five games. 11 hits. 11 freaking hits and 11 RBIs and each one seems more important than the last.

Speaking of the last games – here’s what you knew going into Sunday’s Championship series doubleheader against the North Jersey Eagles at Moody Park. Split and you have to play a deciding Game 3 in Lyndhurst on Monday night. And that means a car ride of more than two hours to return home in the wee hours of Tuesday morning. And so you tell everyone in the team’s Group Chat to “get on my back, follow my lead, there’s no chance in (really hot place) we’re going to Lyndhurst.”

See you’re Chase Conklin, and you could feel how close you were to the ultimate goal, to win it all, to take home Trenton’s first ACBL title since 2014. And it was time for a performance for the ages. The Eagles hit you in your first at bat. In the head. Not intentional, mind you. But didn’t matter. Because anyone who knows Chase Conklin knew what was about to be unleashed.

You reached base 10 of 11 times up in the doubleheader. Drove in six runs in the first game, which would have been a Generals record for an entire playoff, let alone one game. Four runs scored. Two steals. And if that weren’t enough, you threw in the defensive play of the game on top of all that. The Eagles had trimmed a 9-1 Gens lead to 9-5 in a matter of about 15 seconds in the fifth inning.

Two out, two runners in scoring position. Lightning-fast Devin Boone at the plate with a sharp grounder in the hole. Ten out of 10 times that’s a hit, except that doesn’t account for the fact you’re Chase Conklin and you take about 10 steps to your right deeeeep into the hole and somehow get Boone on a play thisclose to retire the side.

That’s what MVPs do. They do the same thing in Game 1 of the Wolff Division Championship series, when the visiting Jersey Pilots erase a 3-0 deficit and grab a 5-3 lead and have two runners in scoring position with only 1 out so the infield is in but somehow you still have the ability to make a play far, far to your right and make a perfect off-balance throw to get the runner at the plate and keep the game within reach. In reach, of course, until you drive in the go-ahead run two innings later and the Gens fight to a 6-5 win in a game that champions always find a way to win.

But it’s not even just that. It's also being the type of heads-up player who scores a back-breaking run in the championship game on a dropped infield fly. Or knowing the team is short on pitching for the championship series and telling the GM that if we need someone to close the game, don’t you dare forget the guy at shortstop, the guy willing to give his blood, his battered body to win a title.

The Gens didn’t need you to close. But that’s because guys like Mason Keller and Frank DelGuercio and Dylan Maria were amazing themselves that day and your Richmond roommate Josh Willitts, the guy you helped recruit late in the year when the team needed an arm and guys were dropping like flies, swooped in for the close.

But you would have done it if needed. And that’s another way MVPs lead.

So there’s no better person to be Trenton’s first-ever Santy Gallone ACBL MVP Award winner than you. You said you would get the guys there and you gave everything to get the guys there, and honestly, anyone who knew Santy Gallone would understand how much of his charisma, toughness, and will to win that you embody. You were the Chase Utley, Darren Daulton, and Pete Rose of the legendary teams of your favorite MLB franchise. The glue, the leader that made sure things got done.

You do one ridiculous thing after another and nobody knows how you do it.

But you’re Chase Conklin. That’s just how it is.

They see it as a superman act. You just see it as doing what it takes to win.