For Prince George grad Bradley, a summer lesson in adversity

Up on the Cape Cod coast of Massachusetts, something unfamiliar is happening to Jackie Bradley Jr., the Prince George High graduate who was a freshman All-American outfielder this past season at South Carolina.

Because all along the cape, in Wareham and Falmouth and Chatham, baseball is doing to Bradley what it does there every summer to players like him, kids for whom the game always came so naturally: It is humbling him.

Baseball was Bradley's favorite sport from the moment he began playing it as a 5-year-old. Born a right-handed batter, he learned to switch-hit when he was 8 and stuck with hitting just lefty when he was 11. By the summer before his senior year, he was leading off and starting in center field for the Richmond Braves AAU national team.

South Carolina coach Ray Tanner liked him so much that he not only offered him a scholarship but also recommended him before the season even started for the Cape Cod League, a summer league that draws some of college baseball's top players. (The league has its players locked in by the previous September.)

Bradley looked every bit a rising star last season, when he started in right field, ranked second on the Gamecocks with a .349 batting average and made Baseball America's freshman All-America team.

But the Cape League has proven his toughest baseball challenge yet. In 22 games through Saturday with the Hyannis Mets, he was hitting .188 and had just two extra-base hits in 69 at-bats.

"I will definitely take mental toughness back to school," he said. "You come in here with a lot of confidence. You expect to do so good, but when you get up here, nobody does as good as they want."

The Cape League has long been regarded as a pitchers' league that can chip away the confidence of the best college hitters, said Hyannis manager Chad Gassman. "That's why a lot of the big schools are reluctant to send freshmen up here," he said.

Consider that among the league's 10 teams, just nine players are hitting .295 or better. Among Major League Baseball's 30 teams, 49 players are doing that. One reason: wood bats. The Cape League uses them, but its players swing aluminum bats during the college season. Wood has a smaller sweet spot on its barrel, leaving a smaller room for error in a player's swing and timing.

The scouts who attend Cape League games understand they aren't going to see kids crushing the ball every night, Gassman said. They want to see what else a player can do well -- the little things, such as hustling and playing solid defense -- and how he handles the inevitable adversity at the plate, something he will eventually encounter as a pro.

To that end, Gassman cited a play Bradley made in Wednesday's game against the Orleans Firebirds. He drifted back in right field to catch a pop fly at the warning track, then whipped around and nearly threw the runner out at third base as he tagged up from second.

"Which should have never even been close to a play," Gassman said. "He's got one of the strongest arms I've ever seen from anybody."

Tanner, a college head coach since 1988, noticed Bradley's talent the first time he saw him, at a showcase tournament in Atlanta after his junior season. Coaches like Tanner see enough players in 20 years to develop a healthy skepticism, but that temporarily faded when Tanner saw Bradley's combination of speed, hitting and fielding.

"A lot of times when you see players, you're like, 'Well, I like him, but he can't do this or that,'" Tanner said. "When I first saw Jackie, there was never any question for me. I was thinking, 'We can't miss here. There's too many positives.'"

Tanner and Gassman both believe Bradley will be a promising prospect by his junior year, after which he will be eligible for the Major League draft. In the meantime, Bradley will try to salvage the month that is left of his frustrating summer on the cape, where he will return to play next season, likely with the Mets again, definitely with a better idea of what to expect.

"You've got to know," he said, "that you're good enough to play up here."