04.09.10
By Aaron Garcia
South Charlotte Weekly
Much of baseball chatter is superfluous – the message itself often comes second to the words’ ability to distract an opponent. For Charlotte Latin’s Kyle Arbuckle and Xander Maddox, though, the chatter means a familiar voice in the otherwise hectic world of varsity baseball.
“You can always hear us talking to each other,” Maddox said.
It’s a habit Arbuckle and Maddox picked up through years together on the diamond – and the basketball court and the football field. To add a cosmic element to their friendship, the two even share the same birthday.
Now, as teammates on the Hawks baseball team, they’re two of the city’s budding stars. Arbuckle’s hitting .375 with two home runs and 16 RBIs as the team’s first baseman, while the fleet-footed Maddox is batting .296, with three stolen bases and seven RBIs as a right fielder.
“It’s good to see your best friend every day,” said Maddox, a sophomore.
While the two probably would’ve remained friends regardless of where they played high school ball, there was a time in the not-too-distant past when it appeared that they’d be foes on the field, not donning the same cap.
While their families have taken different roads, their stories are similar.
Maddox’s father, Leland, was a baseball and football player at the University of California, Berkeley. After the Oakland A’s drafted him in 1987, a back injury forced him into scouting. ÂArbuckle’s dad, Charles, on the other hand, caught passes from Troy Aikman as a tight end at UCLA. He was a fifth-round draft choice by the New Orleans Saints in 1990 and went on to finish his career with the Indianapolis Colts in 1995.
When the Arbuckles moved to ÂCharlotte in 2004 for Charles’ job, a mutual friend – former baseball star Dusty Baker, who’s also Kyle’s Âgodfather – put the two men in touch. But the boys, then sixth-graders, formally met on the basketball court – as opponents.
“I remember him being big,” Maddox recalled. “Then I saw his dad, and I was like, ‘Kyle’s going to be huge!’”
The next year, they became basketball teammates, and pretty soon they were friends. That spring, they both made the same all-star baseball team.
“I remember Xander pitched occasionally. He was probably the hardest thrower,” Arbuckle, a junior, said with a chuckle.
“I was erratic, though,” admitted ÂMaddox.
“He was either going to hit you or get you out,” Arbuckle said. “He could hit it out, too. I was kind of envious of him.”
In many instances, middle-school friendships don’t carry over into high school. And at first, it appeared Arbuckle and Maddox were no different. Arbuckle began his high school career at Charlotte Catholic, while Maddox decided to reclassify and repeat his eighth-grade year at Providence Day, meaning that although they were both born on May 30, 1993, Arbuckle would now be a full grade ahead of Maddox.
“I thought I was pretty young for my class,” said Maddox. “It gave me time to mature as a ballplayer and as a person.”
The following year, in the fall of 2008, both matriculated to Charlotte Latin and joined the football and baseball teams.
“I never actually thought it was going to happen,” admitted Maddox. “I had good friends (at Providence Day), but there wasn’t always that person you could come talk to. (Kyle’s) there every day, so it’s nice.”
Hawks coach Sammy Serrano knew the two were buddies when they joined the program but has marveled at the way they extract the best from each other.
“They push each other at work every day, and they sort of feed off each other,” Serrano noted. “If one’s doing well, the other tries to outdo him. If one gets down, the other picks him up.
“That’s what you need, especially in this sport. You need someone in your ear 24/7, saying, ‘Hey, man, you’ve got to do better, you need to work.’ They sort of piggyback each other very well, and they do things the right way.”
Serrano also noted that he’s learned how to communicate with Arbuckle and Maddox by watching how they treated each other. Take, for example, last season: Arbuckle had a bad at-bat early in the spring. He was allowed to be bitter on the long trip back to the dugout, but Maddox’s insistence that “he forget about it and move on” once he got to the bench told Serrano everything he needed to know.
“That was it,” Serrano said. “It was short, to the point, and they moved on from it.”
Both players admit that their fathers’ backgrounds made some of this easier. For one, both teens are extremely receptive to coaching instruction. More important, though, they’ve both seen plenty of examples of how to get to the highest level of competition.
Arbuckle, for one, often accompanies his father, who’s now a color commentator for ESPNU, to various college football games.
“It’s nice to see coaches and people in the business and how they do things – how (college) programs are run and things like that,” said Arbuckle. “I get an idea of what it’s going to be like and what it takes to get there.”
Maddox also is no stranger to rubbing elbows with the stars. When his father held a front-office position with the Cincinnati Reds, the younger Maddox was a fixture in the team’s clubhouse, hobnobbing with players such as Ken Griffey Jr.
“You realize everyone’s human,” Maddox said. “We all put our pants on the same way.”
Such comfort with big stages should come in handy for the players, as both are receiving interest from colleges. The 6-foot-4, 230-pound Arbuckle has received letters from “a few (Division) I schools,” according to his father. Because Maddox is still a sophomore, much of his attention is yet to come, but he’s receiving summer camp information and some letters of interest.
More time playing during the summers will only help their visibility to college baseball recruiters, said Serrano.
“I think for both of them, they’re going to get some college interest,” the coach noted.
Entering this week’s Jack Sink Invitational Baseball Tournament at Myers Park High School, the Hawks had a 5-4 record, which is a sign of progress. They’ve already surpassed last year’s win total (four) and have a good chance of being a contender in the Charlotte Independent Schools Athletic Association.
Hawks senior Chase Carbone is one of the hardest hitters in Charlotte, while classmate Paul Paschal has been a gritty performer at second base. As a team, the Hawks are batting .360, led by Nolan O’Mery’s .526 average.
But what might make this a special year is the fact that Charlotte Latin also is finding success on the mound. So far, the team has a respectable 3.75 earned run average, led by hurlers Haines Lucas and Scott McGinnis.
After three years, Serrano said, the team is starting to see the fruits of its labor. During that span, Serrano has focused on increasing his team’s baseball cognition.
“This year, they’ve really taken to it,” said Serrano. “They want to be good and change the perception of what we are as a program, and they’ve put it on their backs. We’ve amped up our knowledge base in a short amount of time. For the guys who have been here for three years, it’s taken a while.”
Arbuckle and Maddox joining the team, said Serrano, has been the perfect catalyst.
“(The older players) have seen the evolution of where we were, and Kyle and Xander have helped that a lot because they force competition,” said Serrano. “It’s been great for everybody.”
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