They Are a Shot in Both Arms

Right-hander Jeff Gilmore is so consumed by pitching that he’s almost antisocial during games. He sits by himself in the dugout, building intensity and determination with each inning.

Left-hander David Huff is so relaxed and laid back that he can take a nap before a big game, wake up and be instantly focused. He’s an iceman who’s never rattled.

Together, they pitched Huntington Beach Edison High to the Southern Section Division II championship last season. No high school baseball team in Southern California has a better right-hander and left-hander starting rotation.

“They’re pretty darn good,” Coach Matt Mosiello said. “We all get the feeling when either is on the mound, we’re going to win. They both compete their butts off.”

Huff, a 6-foot-2, 180-pound junior, is a control pitcher with a devastating changeup. He walked 10 in 782/3 innings, finishing 9-2 with a 1.42 earned-run average last year.

Gilmore, a 6-2, 200-pound senior who has signed with Stanford, is a power pitcher. He struck out 73 in 572/3 innings, finishing 8-2 with a 1.34 ERA.

Both should be equally dominant this season. The Chargers (7-2) have given up 15 runs in nine games.

“It’s exciting to know when I’m pitching, there’s going to be a team that has to battle,” Gilmore said. “And when I’m sitting on the bench, there’s going to be a team that has to battle again because they’re facing David.”

They grew up playing in the same Huntington Beach Little League. Gilmore suffered his only pitching loss as a 12-year-old--to Huff.

Huff learned as an 11-year-old about the virtue of mixing up his pitches after Gilmore hit one of his fastballs to the fence.

“I was trying to overpower him,” Huff said. “Pretty much ever since, I’ve tried to spot my pitches inside and outside.”

Gilmore is a walking, talking encyclopedia on the Titanic. He started studying the ship’s sinking when he was 6.

He knows the number of survivors, the identity of the richest passenger, the name of the captain, how many rivets it took to build the ship.

“It portrays a weakness of human nature, mostly arrogance,” he said of the ship. “It brought out the worst in human nature in that people were so confident in themselves that they could build a ship without enough lifeboats for everyone, and knew it.”

Gilmore is more than a history buff. He studies to learn from the past and prepare for the future.

“What traits do the best men and women have and did they use their talents to make a difference?” he said. “And how did the worst men and women do that?

“There’s things you can do to start or stop the good or bad things of human nature. There’s great men who have done great things in history and great men who were powerless to stop bad things, like the chief architect for the Titanic, Thomas Andrews.

“He was brilliant. He wanted a lifeboat for every person on board. He didn’t get it.”

Gilmore is an A student who scored 1280 on his SAT. He’s intense in just about everything he does.

“It goes a lot deeper than baseball,” he said. “I think I’m going to be president of the United States some day.”

And you want to believe him.

“He’s super smart,” Mosiello said.

Just look at Gilmore’s reasoning for becoming a pitcher.

“I was just a pretty ordinary kid going through Little League,” he said. “I was good at chess and liked to read a lot. Then one day I realized God has given me a body of a pitcher and huge hands, so I’m not going to sit around and play chess and read all day. I want to use those things, so I started playing piano and pitching, and I’ve loved it.”

Huff has a 3.3 grade-point average but has no obsessions other than playing Ping-Pong.

He throws a changeup that’s patterned after that of Pedro Martinez of the Boston Red Sox.

“When I throw it, it tails away and down to right-handed batters,” he said. “The arm action is the same, so it looks like a fastball.”

Huff and Gilmore are aided by senior catcher Cory Vanderhook, a three-year starter who knows as much about handling pitchers as any coach.

“He calls a great game,” Gilmore said. “It’s a game inside a game, pitch by pitch, batter by batter, inning by inning. You have another brain on the exact same wavelength as you, 60 feet 6 inches away.”

Gilmore and Huff have refused to participate in the comparison game.

“There was never a sense of who’s better,” Gilmore said. “It was, ‘We’ve got Gilmore on the mound, we have Huff on the mound, we have a shot to win today.’ It’s a respect we have. When I’m in the dugout, I know he’s going to perform. When I’m on the mound, I know he’s behind me.”

Huff was the lucky one to pitch at Dodger Stadium in the Division II final last season. It was his turn in the rotation. He shut out Riverside Poly on two hits.

“I did my usual thing, like it was a normal game,” Huff said.

Huff took home some dirt from Dodger Stadium. He put it in a water bottle, which sits on a chest in his bedroom. He could get another chance to pitch at Dodger Stadium this season. Or it could be Gilmore.

“We don’t care who’s playing,” Mosiello said. “We pitch whoever’s turn it is.”

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Eric Sondheimer can be reached at [email protected]