Competition drives rising baseball star

For 17 year-old Justin Doran, baseball is a full time passion that just might become a lifetime one.

The Chatham resident, recently named to the Ontario Youth Baseball Team that will compete for the Canada Cup next month, has already played more than 50 games this season and may play that many more before the year is over.

“I love the competition,” he said in a recent interview. “In Oklahoma, a couple of weekends ago there were people throwing in the mid 90’s who were a year younger than me. It’s pretty crazy.”

Doran, a left-handed hitting shortstop, is currently playing with the Windsor Selects.

The Selects compete in the Can-Am and Premier Baseball League of Ontario leagues.

At 6’ 1” and 170 pounds, Doran is a line-drive hitter with plenty of speed. He carries a .382 batting average and leads the team with eight stolen bases against some of the best competition in the midwestern United States and Ontario.

The Selects just finished the Midwest Select Invitational tournament in Michigan in which they went 7-0.

In the 4-3 win in the championship game, Doran homered and threw a runner out at the plate to end the game over the Justin Thompson Selects.

He was named the Fergie Jenkins Award winner in 2012 as the most valuable player in the Chatham Minor Baseball Association.

As his skills developed, he moved to the Riverside Minor and Major Bantam teams with the blessing of the Chatham organization.

“I like seeing how I compare and the challenge of it,” he said.

Having already competed in the Oklahoma tournament, he’s set to head off to tournaments in Indiana and Cincinnati before flying to Fort McMurray for the Canada Cup in early August.

“The fire didn’t touch the park where the tournament is being played,” he said.

After the season winds down it will be back to Chatham Kent Secondary School where he will enter Grade 12.

He’s already had a number of American colleges and universities expressing interest.

“I’d love to play professionally but a scholarship would be great,” he said, noting that seven players on the Tennessee team he competed against earlier this year have scholarships to Vanderbilt University.

Players from the Selects have been offered scholarships to schools in West Virginia, Kentucky and New York.

Doran said as he progresses up the baseball ladder, he notices the talent level keeps getting stronger.

“It gets down to who wants to do the little things right, who wants to run out the ground balls and take everything seriously.”

That doesn’t seem to be a problem for Doran, a former hockey player who gave up that sport to concentrate on baseball.

He spends winters in an off-season skills training program supervised.

“I love to play,” he said. “There’s nothing better.”