Jesse Meaux hasn't had a summer vacation in a while.
Sure, the 2007 Glendale High graduate's last few summers have been filled with travel – from Minnesota to Alaska to Cape Cod – but business has always preceded leisure as the top priority.
This summer figures to be no different, although Meaux, a 6-foot-5 right-handed pitcher, will be logging innings in his current home in Santa Barbara, where he just completed a breakthrough junior season at UC Santa Barbara.
"It's great, I'm very happy I'm here," says Meaux, who plans to spend the summer playing for the Santa Barbara Foresters of the California Collegiate League. "The team is very good, so I'm happy with how the team's doing. The coaching staff is great and I'm happy to be in my favorite place to be, which is Santa Barbara."
Meaux's arrival with the Foresters coincided with a nice run of success for the team, one that Meaux immediately found a part in.
He pitched seven strong innings to get the win with no earned runs allowed and eight strikeouts in the Foresters' 6-2 victory over the Urban Baseball Academy Barons on Friday to get the team into the championship game of the Rawlings California Cup Tournament.
Santa Barbara won the title game on Sunday and locked up a berth in the National Baseball Congress World Series, which begins on Friday in Wichita.
"He's pitching really well [as] one of the starting five," says pitcher Bryce Uhrig, a former UCSB teammate of Meaux, who also plays for the Foresters. "He's doing well and we've got a lot of talent, so it's good to see him shine with so much talent on the team."
For the time being, it's unclear whether Meaux's summer with the Foresters is an extended tune up for his senior year with the Gauchos, for whom he won eight games and garnered All-Big West Conference honorable mention last season, or for the beginning of his professional career with the Philadelphia Phillies organization, which drafted Meaux in the 44th round of the 2010 Major League Baseball First-Year Player Draft on June 9 largely because of those accomplishments.
"We're still in touch and I'm still hopefully looking for an offer that would work for me," Meaux says of his status with the Phillies. "But, if not, I'm more than happy to come back for my senior year."
