UCI’s Gorgen comes into his own

At first glance, Scott Gorgen came out of nowhere to become one of the elite pitchers in UC Irvine baseball history. An unheralded recruit out of Clayton Valley High in Concord, Calif, the undersized, somewhat inexperienced right-hander — he did not pitch until his senior year of high school — chose UCI over Long Beach State and the University of Nevada, neither of which were overly committal about his chances to grace the mound, let alone snatch a spot in the weekend rotation.

UCI made no glowing promises, either and just weeks into his first fall with the Anteaters, Gorgen phoned home to share his doubts about even making the team.

It was home, however, where Gorgen had garnered the secret to his success, the key to the kingdom of competitive excellence that has marked his record-breaking collegiate career.

It was home where Gorgen first developed the “If you want to be the best, you have to beat the best,” credo that has made him UCI’s first two-time first-team All-American and this year helped him share Big West Conference Pitcher of the Year honors.

It was home, nearly every day of his precollegiate life, that Gorgen measured himself against the best athlete in town, the golden boy who quarterbacked the football team, was the star pitcher of the baseball team and was the toast of his class.

Gorgen saw this bigger, faster, stronger version of himself across the dinner table every night, an almost haunting presence that confirmed he did not yet measure up.

His identical twin brother Matt, now a senior closer at Cal, was always the athlete Scott Gorgen wanted to be.

Scott was not without his own athletic prowess, sparkling as a receiver in football and a catcher in baseball, until taking the mound as a prep senior. But, as he said, he became the forgotten kid in the family, no less loved and appreciated by his parents, but not quite able to dislodge his super sibling from the headlines, or the consciousness of those who praised Matt’s endlessly heroic deeds.

So while Matt planned on keeping the brother act together, or at least within short driving distance, Scott yearned for a separate college locale, determined to create a distance vast enough as to not be cast, yet again, under Matt’s athletic shadow.