SCRANTON, Pa. — Mason Black was part of the 2018 Valley View baseball team that made it to the "AAAA" state final. Next spring he will be a junior pitcher for the Lehigh University Mountain Hawks. This summer he pitched in the South Florida Collegiate Baseball League where he worked on his slider and reached as high as 98 mph on the radar gun.
"And then just to go out and be able to train and be able to throw competitively in games is such a huge part of my development as a player and like I said before I am blessed for that," said Mason.
In his high-school career Black had 123 strikeouts in 94 innings and a 1.19 ERA. At Lehigh in the spring an ERA of 3.68 over 22 innings with 29 strikeouts. The numbers are there. It's the control that he is still working on.
"I learned a lot actually. I was able to pick up on a lot of different things. I went down there really didn't have a slider, and kind of had a crappy curve ball, but I talked to some players and messed around with some grips and was able to figure some stuff out as a pitcher," again said Mason.
For now Mason heads back to Lehigh where he is allowed on campus to get in some individual baseball workouts, as far as his class load goes he tells me all of those classes are on-line.
"I like to kind of be in control of things and once I lost part of that side of me I kind of just shut down from baseball once the season was canceled and hit the books hard and then was able to like I said before get down into that league in Florida and that kind of just kind of put me on the right path going forward," added Mason.
.The COVID-19 pandemic has changed our lives and the world of sports. In 2021 Mason is eligible for the Major League Baseball draft. Something he has dreamed about doing since he was a kid.
"It's tough seeing what's happening but it's what has to be done unfortunately. I am just happy to be seeing baseball on television right now personally but you know it is still difficult to just imagine what the draft went from 40 rounds down to 5 and a lot of the guys got cut short there," said Mason.
Steve Lloyd Newswatch 16 sports Lackawanna County.