Published: May 08, 2008 11:36 pm            

No average Joe: North's Meggs has been reliable for North at the plate

TERRE HAUTE — With his high school baseball team facing arguably its four most important games of the season — from a bragging rights standpoint, at least — in the past nine days, Terre Haute North’s Joe Meggs had an unproductive at-bat.

The adjective is right. An. As in one. One time, in 16 or 17 trips to the plate, did he fail to reach base or drive in a run.

Considering that all four games — the Patriots beat Terre Haute South, Northview and West Vigo before losing the rematch against South — were close enough that any one pitch could have made the difference in the outcome, it’s safe to say that North’s ultra-reliable senior catcher — who also made at least two game-changing defensive plays in that series of games, not to mention several pitcher-steadying trips to the mound — was a key to that Patriot success.

Not that you’d get him to admit it.

“I think I got lucky,” Meggs said earlier this week, when his hot streak was pointed out to him by an observer. “Sometimes [the ball] finds a hole.”

The son of Indiana State baseball coach Lindsay Meggs, Joe Meggs has been around baseball long enough to know that hitting can be an inexact science.

“I just try to get my pitch,” he said in explaining his thought process at bat, “and when I get it, I let [my swing] go; I try to get my money’s worth. I just try to hit the ball hard, win games and drive in runs.”

The approach seems to be working. Going into tonight’s game at Mooresville, he has a batting average of .478 that might be the best in Vigo County; has scored 29 runs, which might be the most in the Wabash Valley; and has struck out only three times all season.

This is probably news to him, of course. “I’m not much of a stat guy,” Meggs said.

If the player is reluctant to talk about himself, however, his coach is less so. Shawn Turner was concerned after the first South game that fundamentally sound play like Meggs almost always delivers sometimes can be overlooked. Earlier this week the Patriot coach was even more effusive.

“The heavens shined upon the Patriot program when Joe Meggs moved to Terre Haute,” Turner said. “What a great kid! He’s a blessing in the classroom, and certainly he’s a blessing on the field.”

This is Meggs’ second year with the Patriots, and he admitted this week that he might have felt a little pressure last season as the son of a famous coach joining a program rich in baseball tradition. But that pressure didn’t last long.

“Once the first pitch was thrown, that all went out the door,” Meggs said. “Then it was just playing baseball.”

Meggs was speaking just a few minutes after the conclusion of the second South game on Monday, the nail-biter the Patriots didn’t win. He’d made the next-to-last out in that one — albeit driving in a run in the process. But he was still able to look back at the three earlier games and offer some perspective about his team.

“We seem to be getting better,” Meggs said, “and you want to be playing your best baseball at the end of the year. Maybe we took a small step back [against the Braves], but we’re starting to learn how to win.”

He also left no doubt about how he’d like to see the postseason tournament evolve for his Patriots.

“If we keep getting better,” Meggs said, “hopefully we’ll see South again for the rubber match.”

        

• Click to discuss this story with other readers on our forums.