Versatile Neil Walker reflects on Pine-Richland days in baseball and football

By: Don Rebel
Monday, June 15, 2020 | 5:26 PM

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Trib HSSN has been fortunate to cover a lot of great athletes these last two decades. While the “Best of the Century” contest continues, we now feature some of these high school stars from the last two decades twice a week on Monday and Thursday on the Rebel Yell podcast.

Over the course of his 11-year major league baseball career, Neil Walker has 1,215 hits, 606 runs scored and RBI in 4,544 plate appearances.

However, one of his treasured athletic memories did not come on the diamond, but on a football field … a very snowy, football field 17 years ago.

“I honestly believe that outside of some obvious memorable moments from my professional career, a lot of the greater memories in sports were my junior and senior years in football,” Walker said.

“The state championship game from 2003 in December was in a blizzard. I remember it was about three hours before the buses were supposed to leave for the game, and the snow is just dumping on us. We were a pass-happy team and we were going to have to battle the elements.”

The 2003 PIAA Class AAA football championship game became an instant classic as Pine-Richland enjoyed offensive success, but came up just short in a wild 39-38 loss to Manheim Central.

“The most unbelievable thing was how well the game was played,” Walker said. “I don’t think there were any turnovers. I couldn’t believe how well that was played on both sides.”

Walker, a 2004 graduate, was a three-sport star at Pine-Richland. He did receive some interest from college for football and he gave up a starting spot his senior year on the Rams basketball team because his bread and butter was baseball.

He hit over .500 for his career at Pine-Richland, with 32 home runs and 102 RBIs.

His decision to focus on preparing for his senior year in baseball paid off as he batted .657 with 13 homers, 42 RBIs and a slugging percentage of 1.403 in helping to lead the Rams to a WPIAL championship.

Shortly after his senior year, Walker was selected in the first round of the MLB draft and his still-going 16-year pro career was off and running.

For most of his career, Walker has been a standout at second base. However, he has bounced around between the corner infield positions and the corner outfield positions. Not bad for a player drafted as a catcher.

“Especially in today’s game, versatility is so important,” Walker said. “I tell kids all the time that it’s going to be beneficial for you to take some ground balls at first and take some outfield during batting practice because you have no idea.”

After starting his MLB career with Pittsburgh, Walker has played for the New York Mets and New York Yankees, Milwaukee and Miami. He has signed and hopes to be playing this year for Philadelphia.

He was one of 32 athletes in HSSN’s Best of the Century contest and he took time to talk to us about his scholastic career.

Click to watch Don Rebel and James Dotson chat with Neil Walker.

Tags: Pine-Richland