Georgia baseball coach Scott Stricklin likes to tell the story of the day early in fall camp when volunteer coach Mitch Gaspard pulled him aside. The assistant pointed to a player seemingly making plays all over the field.
“Hey, who is No. 31?” Stricklin recalled Gaspar saying. “He doesn’t even know the names yet," Stricklin pointed out of the volunteer. "He’s just getting to know these guys. and he was like. ‘Who’s that guy?’”
"That guy," it turns out, was sophomore Riley King.
Redshirted as a freshman, the former Collins High standout only played in eight games with six at-bats before going down with an injury to his ulna nerve, causing him to miss the rest of the year.
Now 100 percent, King appears to be making up for lost time.
After playing with the Macon Bacon last summer in the Coastal Plains League, where he led the team in batting average (.306) and hits (49), King is back to enjoying himself on the field.
“It’s been a fun past year,” King said. “I got to go down to Macon this past summer and start playing some baseball. I haven’t played too much the past two years, but it’s been awesome.”
As a result, the confidence he admits was once lost is now back, and has King ready to play a major role with the Bulldogs, who open their season Friday night against Dayton (5 p.m.).
“I’m not going to lie. Sometimes I did lose confidence, like my freshman year. But my teammates and coaches were there to pick me up,” King said. “The biggest factor for me this summer was just creating confidence.”
Catcher Mason Meadows knows King better than most.
Like King, Meadows redshirted as a true freshman before becoming Georgia’s starting catcher last spring.
“We looked at each other and said, you know, of course the situations suck. We want to be out there, and we want to play. But we took that year off and just tried to get the most out of it every single day,” Meadows said. “For me to have him and him to have me, it pushed us, so I think we were a great pair to go through that redshirt year together with. We told each other we were going to earn a spot; we weren’t going to be victims of the situation. We were going to fight because we believed in ourselves.”
King credits Meadows for helping him through what he admits was some tough times.
“Me and him talk about it all the time, I couldn’t have gone through my redshirt year without him, and he says the same thing,” King said. “I’ll never forget, one time his dad told us in a group message, iron sharpens iron. It’s really helped shape me. Mason has always been there, always telling me to keep working hard, don’t worry about what’s going on. Just keep being the best you can be.”
Stricklin has certainly been taking notice, especially when it comes to King’s versatility.
According to the head coach, when he says King can play anywhere, he means ANYWHERE—a jack-of-all trade performer he’s not afraid to compare to another versatile player who happens to play for the Atlanta Braves: Charlie Culberson.
“He can play everywhere,” Stricklin said. “He’s played third, short, first, and right. I half-jokingly said to him, if we ever have that game where I let someone play all nine positions, he could do it.”
King, who has caught and pitched in high school, said that would be fine with him.
“I’d love that. That would be so much fun,” King said. “That would be awesome.”
In the meantime, King said he’s going to enjoy whatever opportunity Stricklin sees fit.
“It’s been a process. I told myself my freshman year when I got redshirted, you know, I’m going to work as hard as I can, and if I don’t become the best player I can be, that’s just how it works out,” King said. “I just wasn’t going to leave a what-if statement. Honestly, through the process of just trying to work my butt off to go as far as I can, I’ve just created confidence through a lot of repetitions, working out, doing any type of thing to create that confidence. I’m always going to do the best that I can.”
