Wild ride gathering speed for Edison's Owens

HUNTINGTON BEACH – He is trying to slow this thing down, absorb every minute, take a longer look at his Edison buddies who play around him.

Henry Owens' fast lane is about to become a skate ramp.

His CIF playoffs start Friday. There is graduation. There is the major league draft, on June 6, which will probably include Owens in the second half of the first round.

There is the horde of major league scouts who crowd the bullpen when Owens warms up. Then it moves behind the plate when he pitches.

"I'm trying to enjoy it, but the worst part is filling out the questionnaires," Owens said Monday, before Edison's practice. "They ask you things like, 'If you were a tree, what kind of a tree would you be?'"

Owens is not the type to check a box automatically.

"I go with the sequoia," he decided. "Big and tall and strong."

Certainly he has grown. Owens is a 6-foot-7 lefthander with a low 90s fastball, a curve, a changeup and, this year, a slider. He is 11-0 for Edison with an 0.82 ERA, and last year he was 10-2, 1.45, and as a sophomore he was 9-1, 0.98.

That spring, in '09, he notified Mater Dei just what was coming, in the semifinals.

"I remember riding the bus up to Blair Field and I had the earphones on and I was asleep," Owens said. "Tony Cappuccili was one of the assistant coaches then. He woke me up and said, 'Well, I guess you're ready to go.' I'm sure he was thinking. 'C'mon, sophomore.'

"The place was packed. Mater Dei was sixth in the nation. They had the legendary Cory Hahn, who had hit two homers off (Norco's) Matt Hobgood the week before. I threw the first pitch and Derek Campbell popped it foul to our catcher and the place just exploded. I thought, 'O-o-OK. This must be the semifinals.' But I was confident."

Edison won, 2-1, on Kyle Jones' walk-off hit. For Owens it was a launching point.

Another one came in the AFLAC All-American Game in San Diego last summer, which united most of the nation's top rising seniors. Owens had been told he would pitch first, but found himself at the bottom of the chart.

"I was ticked off, sitting around the whole game," he said. "I had something to prove."

He struck out the side in the ninth and got Tyler Marlette on an evil 3-and-2 changeup. Marlette had homered twice that day.

"It was fun, throwing to those types of hitters and getting to use the changeup," Owens said. "If you throw it to a lot of high school hitters, all it does is speed up their bats."

He studies the Angels' Jered Weaver, and the way he hits spots, changes speeds, and gets big strikeout numbers without blowing up the radar gun.

"As a sophomore I was a thrower," Owens said. "I didn't have a purpose. I'd see the gun and say, 'What can I hit?' But if (I throw 93 chest-high, they'll hit me. Ninety on the corner works, too."

Owens had no personal pitching coach growing up, at least not after his dad Mike realized Henry could mangle his hands with all that speed and movement.

"I didn't want to go buy a bunch of catching gear," Mike said.

Mike did insist that Henry's coaches stick with fastballs and changeups until they started playing 60-feet, 6-inch games.

Mostly Mike wanted to make sure Henry wasn't overdosing on the game.

Henry likes to play guitar, listen to country music, surf occasionally and hang with his guys, but his clicker is dialed into the MLB Network.

It's always interesting to watch an extraordinary person strive for normalcy.

Henry doesn't mind the "goofy lefty" persona. When the team ran the bases ceremonially during Senior Day, Henry ran them backward.

He also masterminded an April Fool's prank in 2009 in which outfielder Eric Snyder showed up on crutches and Owens put a splint on his left wrist. They told coach Steve Lambright they had wiped out while snowboarding.

"Both my parents are pretty comical individuals," he said. "A lot of it has rubbed off. I have fun with the game I love. That's as easy and broad as I can put it. But I'm different when the game starts. With every hitter I say, it's me vs. him. And he ain't winning."

As for Mike, he paces during the games and tries to stay out of Henry's field of vision. He also finds it "weird" and "surreal" that he can be sitting in a restaurant, wearing Edison paraphernalia, and someone will approach and ask, "Do you know Henry Owens?"

He does, actually, and more to the point, Henry Owens seems to know himself.