Diamond on the diamond - The Jewish Standard

As of Wednesday, July 5, MySpace.com. the uber-popular online community, had roughly 90,738,401 members. Josh Feit was not one of them. As of the same date, there were hundreds of thousands of high-school kids either filing papers in offices for summer internships or sitting in the basement playing PS’. Again, Josh Feit was not one of them.

The rising senior at Pascack Hills High School is a real life "gamer." Seven days a week, Feit plays baseball, auditioning his skills for college scouts and prepping for his last season at Pascack Hills. So he doesn’t have time for MySpace, or for pushing papers. He’s way too busy on the baseball diamond.

"I’ve been playing on the varsity team since my first game," said Feit, 16. "I pitch and I play at every position besides catcher — since the coaches don’t like me throwing after I pitch, and catchers throw the most."

Ironically, though, catcher is the position that the 6’5", 175-pound Feit most wants to play. But it’s a tough sell to his coaches, who have seen him excel at so many other positions that it would seem like overkill to assign him another responsibility. Of the positions he is allowed to play, Feit most prefers center field — "I get a good jump on the ball off the bat"—and pitcher.

He’s not a bad pitcher, that’s for sure. He posted a ‘.’0 ERA and finished 10-3 during his junior year, as his team finished ‘1-11, and came in second in the state tournament. But Feit was stellar even in defeat: in the 9-3 state finals loss to Pennsville, he hit a home run.

Feit attended Solomon Schechter Day School in New Milford before moving on to Pascack Hills. Wanting to branch out from an "isolated" social life, he went to Pascack Hills, hoping that a regional school would help him make friends closer to home. But the transition gave him more than that — it also afforded him the chance to play elite-level high school baseball, and perhaps even gave him a shot at a college scholarship.

"Hopefully I’ll be able to play at a [NCAA] Division I school, but you never know," said Feit, who said that his performance this summer will help determine his collegiate baseball future. "But I’m looking for a good education first, and good baseball second."

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