PORTLAND – Not too many professional baseball players walk around the dugout in bare feet following a game.

Not many of them help their teammates clean out a dugout, either.

But there was Mark Rogers, selected last week as the fifth overall pick in the Major League Baseball Entry Draft, in the visitors’ dugout, pacing back and forth trying to find something to do to help his teammates out. Only when beckoned by the throng of media and by the several hundred fans that stuck around after the game did he surface to touch the coarse gravel with his toes.

“This is the kind of thing that you remember,” Rogers said. “You don’t remember all of the bad times, or all of the good times, but you remember days like this.”

Yes, Rogers lost on Monday. He gave up three earned runs in 4 1/3 innings. He allowed three walks and struck out only eight, some of his worst numbers of the season. But that won’t matter next week.

What he will remember is the standing ovation that nearly 7,000 fans gave him as he left the mound. He will remember the fans who started lining up outside the players’ exit with balls, bats and programs for him to sign.

And he’ll remember his teammates.

“We got a couple of bad breaks, but that is the game of baseball,” Rogers said to a third wave of reporters in less than 10 minutes. “I’m not going to win every game I start, that’s for sure. You know, I won’t remember all of the bad times, but things like playing two years with my brother, things like losing just two games all during my senior season. Those are the kinds of things I’ll remember.”

With the possibility of a seven-inning pitchers duel slipping from his son’s grasp, Mt. Ararat coach Craig Rogers lifted Mark from the game with the team down 4-0.

“That wasn’t a tough decision, really,” the elder Rogers said. “We had him on a pitch count, and that’s when we took him out, when he got close.”

“There are no sour grapes,” Mark Rogers said of his final game for Mt. Ararat. “They are a good hitting team and they caught a couple more breaks than we did. They took advantage of our mistakes and we didn’t capitalize on theirs.”

With the high school season over, Rogers can now turn his attention to the Milwaukee Brewers organization, which drafted him last week. Rules prohibited Rogers from signing with the National League team until the completion of his high school career.

“It’s coming soon,” Mark Rogers said through his trademark grin, but declined to give a specific time frame. He did acknowledge that had the game not been played Monday, he might have already been in Arizona.

Even though he looks forward to a career in professional baseball, the memory of playing his final high school game in front of the largest crowd to ever watch a high school baseball game in Maine will always remain a fond memory.

“I think the thing I’ll remember most about this game is the standing ovation,” Mark Rogers said. “The goal of any high school team is just to get to the state championship, and we got here. A lot can happen in a game like this, and a lot did. Still, to go through your entire season and lose just two games, now that’s a hell of a season.”

jpelletier