By KEVIN JAKAHI
By KEVIN JAKAHI
Tribune-Herald sports writer
Kolten Wong, the St. Louis Cardinals’ 2011 first-round pick, is already playing against the best Major League Baseball prospects in the Arizona Fall League, considered a finishing school for future big leaguers.
His all-star appearance resume got thicker Wednesday when the second baseman was named to the AFL’s 7th annual Rising Stars Game on Saturday at Salt Rivers Field in Scottsdale. The exhibition will air live at 2 p.m. HST on MLB Network and MLB.com.
In 13 games and 56 at-bats with the Surprise Saguaros, Wong, a 2008 Kamehameha graduate, is batting .321 with 1 homer and 10 RBIs. He has a .333 on-base percentage and a .393 slugging average.
Wong spent his first full pro season at Double-A Springfield, where he batted .287 with a .348 on-base percentage and a .405 slugging average.
The Cardinals won the Texas League championship. Before that he played in the Texas League All-Star Game, where he batted 1 for 2. Then 11 days later, he played at the All-Star Futures Game in Kansas City. He went 0 for 2 but scored a run after reaching on a three-base error in the fourth inning.
The Futures Game features top prospects from the United States against a squad of prospects from other countries. The AFL season concludes Nov. 15. Then Wong will be at the University of Hawaii baseball camp in Hilo, scheduled for Saturday-Sunday, Nov. 17-18, according to his father, Kaha Wong.
Quintin Torres-Costa, a 2012 Waiakea graduate and freshman at UH, is also expected to attend.
For more information, call 808-956-6247 or email uhbsb@hawaii.edu.
Hilo College Camp
The abdacademy.com’s 2nd annual Hilo College Camp will be held Dec. 10-11 at Wong Stadium, featuring 18 collegiate teams, including Division I Hawaii and Temple.
Division II members UH-Hilo, Hawaii Pacific, Holy Names and St. Martin’s, and three Division III colleges Stevens (N.Y.), Pacific and Puget Sound, where 2003 Waiakea graduate Kainoa Correa is the recruiting coordinator, will also attend.
NAIA schools Arizona Christian and La Sierra (Calif.) along with junior colleges Arizona Western, Cedar Valley (Texas), Chemeketa (Ore.), Colorado Northwestern, Howard (Texas), Southern Eastern Iowa and Southern Nevada round out the roster.
The cost is $300 or $350 for players not in the Big Island Wooden Bat League, run by coordinator Kaha Wong.
“The scouts at the Hilo camp are there to watch only you,” he said. “They’ve all got scholarships in hand. The schools are not only looking for kids who can play, but kids who have good grades and a good work ethic and attitude.
“The reason I’m doing this is to get opportunities for kids who can’t afford $1,400 or to spend money to go to the Oahu camp (UH Rainbow baseball camp in later December). I want to see a lot of kids attend, so we can continue this camp. It’s a good bargain to spend $300 with the possibility to get a scholarship that’s worth 10 times that amount.”
For more information on the Hilo College Camp, call 895-4595.