TURNER – Dustin Gilbert and a couple of his Leavitt teammates waited patiently in line, baseballs and gloves in hand, ready for the signature of the young man who’d just given them nightmares while they were standing in the batters box.

They watched Mt. Ararat’s Mark Rogers show as much skill with a sharpie as he had with a horsehide for the previous two hours. The senior right-hander signed gloves, balls and t-shirts for kids half his age. Gilbert, Leavitt’s senior catcher, got two balls signed, one for him and one for one of his buddies.

“I never thought I’d be asking an opponent for an autograph,” said Gilbert. “But I’ll tell ya, I played against him in eighth grade, and you could see it coming when he was throwing 85 in eighth grade.”

Gilbert saw Rogers’ future coming better than the mid-90s fastball, or the 70ish changeup, or the knee-buckling curve Rogers has at his command. That’s why 10 Major League Baseball scouts went to Turner yesterday to watch him pitch his last regular season game in Maine. It’s why the University of Miami has offered him a full scholarship and it’s why he may turn it down if he is taken early in baseball’s amateur draft in early June.

And it’s also why “My mom took a picture of me up to bat against him,” Gilbert said.

The Hornets took a lot of mementos from Friday’s game, keepsakes they’ll be pulling out of the scrapbook long after they forget the 13-1 final score. So did a lot of the 300 or so fans on hand to check out Rogers’ final regular season start.

Someday, someone will probably ask Chad Schrepper why he didn’t get “the ball.” Schrepper had the Hornets’ only hit off of Rogers, a double in the first inning that came very close to leaving the park altogether. He may regret not having taken the ball out of play afterwards for posterity, though he probably won’t need it to remember the hit.

“I definitely watched it the whole way,” said Schrepper, who has a very bright, though far less lucrative, future in baseball himself at Franklin Pierce College lined up. “It’s something I’ll remember when I’m watching him on TV.”

“I’ve never played in an atmosphere like this before,’ he added. “I’ve never seen this many people at this field before, especially with all the scouts. When I hit it, it felt so good, and then I got on second base and everyone was cheering and it was like, wow, an unbelievable feeling.”

If Schrepper seemed overjoyed at hitting a double, he had good reason. Opponents were hitting .035 against Rogers going into the game. Following yesterday’s one-hit, 12-K performance, he has now given up four hits and fanned 83 of 112 batters he’s faced in 35 innings.

While some might get uncomfortable being the center of so much attention, Rogers handles it graciously and takes it as a compliment.

“I never expected opponents to come over and ask for autographs,” Rogers said. “It just shows the type of people that are a part of baseball in Maine, because everybody has a lot of respect and I have a lot of respect for them fo coming over to me and wishing me the best of luck.”