It's a great day for the Stratford baseball team

Some bubbly high school baseball coaches boast that they have a couple of potential first-round draft picks in their lineup. Others dream.

It turns out John Chalus was that authentically lucky guy who quietly lived the real thing.

"It's great," the Stratford High School head coach said Thursday. "My hair is standing up. You get kind of a little tingling feeling."

Oh, the joy of watching former Knights first baseman Justin Smoak's name announced on ESPN2 as the 11th overall pick in the 2008 draft, new property of the Texas Rangers. A year ago, Chalus from his Goose Creek office watched the Baltimore Orioles use the fifth overall pick in the 2007 draft to snag former Knights catcher and pitcher Matt Wieters.

"Two well-deserved boys," Chalus said of the former teammates who were one year apart at Stratford. "I know how Justin dreamed of this."

Wieters, who attended Georgia Tech for three years, is off to a torrid minor league start. He leads the high-level Class A Frederick (Md.) Keys with a .321 batting average and 12 home runs.

Everyone who saw Smoak play the last three seasons at South Carolina knows he has just as much power potential.

'That's baseball'

Of course, part of the privilege of coaching a pair of sluggers picked among the top 11 players in back-to-back drafts is having to answer the question: How did you ever lose a high school game with those two in the same lineup?

Stratford fell just short of winning the state Class AAAA title, losing to Mauldin when Wieters was a senior and Smoak a junior.

"It's acceptable," Chalus said. "Anybody who knows anything about baseball knows a lot of things have to happen to win a championship. That's just respecting the game. That team won a lot of games and Mauldin just beat us. We've won a couple of state championships with teams that probably weren't as good as that one."

The Knights won it all the next year, edging Mauldin for the state championship when Smoak scored the winning run following his fourth intentional walk of the game.

Chalus wonders what might have been if Clemson junior pitcher Matt Vaughn had stayed at Stratford instead of transferring to Summerville High School after pitching for the Knights as a ninth-grader.

"But that's baseball," Chalus said. "The New York Yankees don't win the World Series every year."

Pilates, too

They cut similar profiles. Wieters is 6-4, 225 and Smoak 6-4, 220.

Keith Smoak coached his son and Matt Wieters as youth league players.

Richard Wieters, the former Citadel All-American drafted by the Atlanta Braves, coached his son and Justin Smoak.

By the time they got to Stratford, Chalus knew he had polished players.

"Justin was always very self-motivated," Chalus said. "You never had to hound him about anything."

Maybe it's the water in and around Goose Creek, or maybe a work ethic instilled by former Stratford coach Fred Jordan before he became head coach at The Citadel. But the Stratford kids just seem to play harder than almost every other team every year, and the hard-nosed, hard-throwing attitude filters down to Stratford territory 9-year-olds.

Smoak takes preparation to another level.

"I talked to someone the other day who said they saw Justin walking out of a Pilates class," Chalus said. "They said his face was red and he was sweating. It just shows he is always doing what he needs to do to get ready."

Baltimore blew it. With the fourth overall pick Thursday, the Orioles could have reunited a pair of former Knights in the meaty part of their batting order.

There's always the American League All-Star Team.

Reach Gene Sapakoff at gsapakoff@postandcourier.com.