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Sixty feet. That’s the distance from the pitcher’s mound to home plate. At first, it doesn’t seem so far — a very tall baseball player could probably cover the ground in 20 steps.
But to one major league pitcher, it took many steps, a little adversity and a huge amount of heart to get where he needed to be — and the journey began right here in Southwest Bakersfield.
Phillip Dumatrait, 26, grew up in Bakersfield, graduated from Ridgeview High School in 1999 and hoped — but had no real idea — that a professional baseball career was ahead of him. At Ridgeview, he was a four-year starter on varsity and was selected to the all-area team as an outfielder, while he also led Kern County in several categories for pitching.
Local teammates will say that Dumatrait was at the baseball field all the time working on his game, whether it was at Ridgeview, the Southwest Baseball diamonds, the Bakersfield Baseball Academy or Bakersfield College....
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