O.C.'s best baseball players ever?

Slide show: Orange County high school baseball has produced hundreds of major-league baseball players over the years, including four who were elected to the Hall of Fame.

Right-hander Walter Johnson and shortstop Arky Vaughan, both from Fullerton High back in the day, and more recently catcher Gary Carter from Sunny Hills and pitcher Bert Blyleven from Santiago were the honorees.

And the major leagues' all-time saves leader, Savanna's Trevor Hoffman, will likely go in, too, in five years since he announced his retirement.

With the season starting today, it's time to revisit our list of O.C.'s top baseball players.

Let's take another look at the all-time of Orange County high school baseball team. Pick the players was a daunting task, but given my 40-plus years of covering sports in the county (the past 33 for the Orange County Register), I felt up to it. So much so that I even picked four teams.

My selection process was pretty simple: A player had to have attended an O.C. high school, and reached the big leagues. His major-league numbers, achievements at the game's highest level, pretty much settled the issue of who was going to be where, although some liberties were taken, position-wise, to represent the best teams possible.

Active major leaguers were avoided, with the obvious exception of Hoffman, who's been around more than long enough, because their stories are still being written.

I had the good fortune to see all of these players play at some level, with the exceptions of Johnson and Vaughan because I am simply not that old. Most I saw play in high school, JC, college and the major leagues, for which I am extremely thankful.

The end result, I believe, is a great team. The four-man rotation is so good, a pitcher with two major-league no-hitters, Fullerton's Steve Busby, could only make the second team, along with Servite's Mike Witt, who pitched a perfect game for the Angels. Yeah, it's that deep.

Any omissions are unintentional, and the final decisions, while certainly arguable in some cases, are solely mine.