Minneapolis Edison Pitcher Chooses To Keep His Talents Local

MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) -- The season ended two days ago for the Minneapolis Edison baseball team, when they were eliminated during sectionals, but what a season it has been.

And that's largely thanks to one impressive pitcher, whose school spirit transformed a whole team.

There's one stat that stands out from all the rest, when you're the back-to-back state strikeout king. Edison senior James Swofford struck out 104 batters this season. That's nearly 30 more than the next closest pitcher, and he did it with only 21 walks, leading the state in K's for the second straight season.

"I'm just thinking outs, honestly," Swofford said. "If it's a strikeout, that's just a plus-one for me."

His ERA of 1.24 was third in the state among those who pitched at least 44 innings, and only one player in the state pitched more innings this year than Swofford. Talk about putting a team on your back...

"It's his work ethic, really," coach Tony Schrepfer said. "I remember I first met him when he was a 5th grader. You could tell he wanted to do more than everybody else. He saw the best player and he always tried to go better than that person."

Now, he is that person, because Swofford's most impressive stat is this: He had the third-most wins in the state this season, with seven of Edison's 15 wins. Those 15 wins are as many as their two previous seasons combined.

At 15-6, this was Edison's first winning season in at least more than a decade, and Swofford led the way. That's significant, mainly because if you've got talent, you go play somewhere other than Edison.

But not Swofford -- he stayed.

"And a lot of the parents, when I first started, they were, 'Well I don't want to send my kid to Edison.'" Schrepfer said. "He really changed our program. All these kids started coming here because, 'James is going to Edison, well we got to go to Edison.' And that's how it started, truly."

Swofford says it's all about community.

"Since I was born and raised here, I've always just wanted to help out the community and let people understand that Edison is a good school," he said.

There's no stat for making an impact, but if there was, Swofford would be leading the state in that one too.

"Just an all-around real good kid," Schrepfer said.