Evan Longoria goes long again

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As Mike Salazar picked up the phone Thursday evening, Fox’s Chip Caray was announcing, ‘Deep, wall, track, ... ‘ and Salazar’s former student at Rio Hondo College, Evan Longoria, had hit another home run to help the Tampa Bay Rays move a step closer to their first World Series appearance.

I first met Salazar when he helped run a week-long summer baseball camp for youths at the University of La Verne this summer. When my son excitedly came home one night and announced, ‘I have to vote 100 times on mlb.com for Evan Longoria to make the All-Star team,’ I was stumped why. But then my son explained, ‘Coach Sally [a nickname] coached him at college.’

On Thursday, when I mentioned that The Times had run a story today on Longoria written by Mike DiGiovanna, Salazar said, ‘Other JCs were on him when I got him [in 2004], but I gave him what he wanted: a chance to play shortstop and bat in the middle of our lineup every day. ... I think he got about 300 at-bats for us that year.

‘The thing you can say about him more than anything else is that he deserves what he got. He truly loves the game, and always wanted to do something with baseball.’

Salazar said he stoked that fire by telling his Rio Hondo players, ‘We don’t ever want to be just average in anything we do.’ Longoria ‘fit right in,’ Salazar said.

And now, he’s on the brink of playing in the series every young player dreams of.

-- Lance Pugmire