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20 Year Anniversary for BAWS in 2023

11/10/2022, 10:45am PST
By Blaine Clemmens

BAWS 2023 marks two decades for the event

In June of 2004 Bay Area World Series was introduced to the baseball community, at the old Louis Guisto Field on the campus of St. Mary's College. 

BAWS 2023 (June 9-11) will be the 20th edition of the event which over the previous 19 years has seen over 900 participants move on to D1 baseball (which is over 48 players per year), and 45 players reach Major League Baseball. Over 250 former participants have been drafted, including nine in the first round, such as Nick Yorke (pictured in homepage photo, with brother Joe Yorke), and a first overall pick, Mark Appel, who made his big league debut in 2022!

Hundreds of other players have played at other divisions of 4-year college baseball, though I do not specifically know how many (not that my count of D1 kids is exact, it could be closer to 1000). We've even seen a former Marin Catholic baseball standout go on to have a great NFL career... Jared Goff.

Suffice to say, whether it's 1500+ kids moving on as 4-year college players, or nearly 50 MLB players, we've had the great pleasure to see so much of the talent that Northern California has to offer. BAWS has been trusted to be an important part of the journey for thousands of student-athletes as they pursure their dream of playing college baseball and beyond.

As the years go by, former BAWS participants are all over the baseball landscape. There are D1 coaches (Jon Karcich at Santa Clara, Andre Mercurio at Stanford, Josh Nashed at St. Mary's, Cameron Rowland at Pepperdine), MLB scouts (Michael Quesada) and coaches (O'Koyea Dickson, Nico Giarratano, there are PBR state directors (Shea Sbranti, PBR Arizona), there are private coaches and instructors (Nick Sanzeri), high school/JC/travel coaches (Robert Abel, BJ Boyd, Kevin Eichhorn, Kyle Kretchmer). In the coming years, and this is kind of a mind blow, there will be son's of former BAWSr's who will participate in the event! My own son, who wasn't yet born in 2004, is a BAWS participant!

Time flies as they say and what a run it has been. What a run it will continue to be, because Northern California will continue to be one of the most fertile talent producing regions in the country (if considered as a state, Northern CA produces the 4th-5th most MLB players), and BAWS continues on.

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