Four wise men ready to lead Agoura

IRIS SMOOT/Acorn Newspapers BRAIN GANG—Agoura High starting infielders, from left, Matt Aronow, Sam Yarin, Kenny McCroskery and Garrett Aries are all excellent students with GPAs above 4.0. The group is eager to get the Chargers back into the playoffs for the first time since 2006. Twenty years from now, these will be the guys with the cool cars and businessman bankrolls.

For the time being, however, Agoura High seniors Kenny McCroskery, Garrett Aries, Matt Aronow and Sam Yarin have formed what must be considered one of the most intelligent starting infields in the history of local high school baseball.

All four are college-bound honor students; each carries a grade-point average at or above 4.1, and they're all expected to achieve salutatorian status during springtime graduation.

They can all play ball, too.

Aries and Aronow were callups on the 2006 Agoura team that qualified for the section championship game. Both have stayed on the varsity squad ever since.

For McCroskery and Yarin, this will be the third season they've seen varsity action.

The infielders' determination and all-around work ethic adds up to a winning combination for Charger first-year head coach Dennis Reitz.

"Their parents gave them a lot of good, quality direction," Reitz said. "But the other thing is that they have good, quality values, so they work hard and do the right things in their lives. A reflection of that are their grades."

McCroskery, a first baseman, is a history buff with the vocabulary of a 75-year-old Rhodes scholar and the beard to match.

"I just try and relate modern events to past things that have happened," McCroskery said. "A lot of things that have happened in the past have a direct relation to things happening now, and I think it's kind of interesting to learn about it. . . .

"For example, today's economy and the economic depression that happened in the 1930s, there are a lot of similarities, you know, with antiregulation, people going unchecked and greed prevailing in society, which always happens."

Conversations like this have made McCroskery, who hopes to attend Dartmouth and openly admits that this will be his last season playing baseball, a favorite among his teammates.

"Kenny is one of the smartest guys I know," Yarin said. "The way he talks, you have no idea what he's talking about sometimes. It's hilarious. Even his jokes are like that."

Aries plays second base and is a black belt in karate. He goes by the nicknames "Mighty Mite" and "BLM," an acronym for Bitter Little Man.

"It's Mighty Mite," Reitz jokes, "because he's like 4 foot tall."

Reitz has quickly developed a great admiration for Aries' evenkeel approach.

"He has a really good outlook on life," the coach said. "He doesn't take things too serious."

Aries has already been accepted to the University of Michigan. Like McCroskery, he doesn't expect to play baseball in college.

Aronow, the shortstop, may possess the most onfield intensity of the bunch but remains cool enough off the diamond to be labeled "Malibu Ken" by Reitz.

"He just came down to the field with the Birkenstocks and the blue jeans and the long hair and the T-shirt," Reitz said of Aronow. "It reminded me of Malibu Ken."

Aronow is waiting to hear application acceptance from Emory University in Atlanta as well as USC, with Emory being his No. 1 wish. He's already been accepted to Tulane and Cal Poly San Luis Obispo.

"Emory is a great business school, and that's what I'm going to major in," Aronow said. "Plus it's in Atlanta, which is a great city. I really want to get away for a few years before I come back to live in Southern California."

Yarin, a fixture at third base for the Chargers, also plans on attending business school, with USC and UCLA being his top choices.

The crazy things is, the infielders are only the tip of the iceberg at Agoura.

According to Reitz and several players, the AHS varsity team had second-highest cumulative GPA in the state last season.

Catcher Richard Stock, outfielders Brian Bartlett, Ali Hamed and Aaron Presberg, as well as pitcher Patrick Brennan, are all excellent students with GPAs in the uppers threes and lower fours.

And while all this mental capacity hasn't translated into onfield success of late—Agoura has won only three Marmonte League games with very young rosters the past two seasons—the Charger players are certainly smart enough to realize that, with hard work and commitment, the pendulum is poised to swing back in their favor at some point.

"That's one of the things with this team," Aries said. "Because we're in so many classes together in school, we come out to baseball—and it's still baseball and you have to concentrate—but it's almost like having another class together with our friends.

"We're such good friends on and off the field that it's helping us build great chemistry."