Siuslaw Vikings pitcher Gabe Simington hopes to one day walk in the steps of Dodgers' Hall of Famer Sandy Koufax.

The talented Mapleton sophomore already has found common ground, literally.

For one week this summer Simington had the experience of a lifetime, an all-expenses-paid trip to USA Baseball's Elite Development Invitational in Historic Dodgertown in Vero Beach, Fla.

Vero Beach was the home of the spring training camp for the Brooklyn and Los Angeles Dodgers from 1948 to 2009, when the team relocated to modern facilities in the Phoenix area.

"It was so humbling," Simington said Saturday, while joining Siuslaw teammates working the Vikings Cup golf tournament at Ocean Dunes Golf Links.

"It was very humbling because everyone was at your level. They see that. Overall, very humbling."

The 15-year-old lefthander was one of some 150 top players from around the country invited to the camp, now in its second year.

Simington was one of only two from Oregon, the other Florence native Ricky Jones, who has been playing his baseball at Riverside Military Academy, an all-boys college preparatory school in Gainesville, Ga.

Simington was scouted in the early part of the Vikings' past season by Hall of Fame baseball coach Jim Dietz, an Oregon native who led the San Diego State Aztecs for more than three decades.

Dietz returned for a late-season assessment, then helped punch Simington's ticket to Vero Beach.

"It was so surreal," Simington said. "One day I'm playing summer baseball in Florence, then I'm in this camp. It all happened so fast."

Simington was considered underage by the airlines, so he flew from Eugene to San Francisco to Orlando, Fla., with Jones, all of 17, acting as his guardian.

"It was my first time flying, but it wasn't bad," the 6-foot-3, 250-pound Simington said. "It was relatively fine, sometimes a little cramped."

He still may not have touched ground emotionally when he arrived at Dodgertown, where he was to rub elbows with some outstanding young talent while taking instruction from former major league stars.

"I don't remember the names, but a lot of them were wearing World Series rings," he said.

The training was intense. Bullpen sessions. Workouts. Seminars. And it was hot work, the thermometer hitting 107 degrees with 86 percent humidity.

"It was pretty miserable," Simington said.

And it was all business. A trip to Disney World?

"No, actually," he said. "It was all about baseball. We didn't leave the facility until we flew out."

Of the 150 players, only 15 were pitchers, so that allowed for some one-on-one tutoring.

"It was a very pleasant surprise to find that they worked on us so much individually," Simington said. "I learned a lot of good stuff.

"I didn't know, in my head, that I had a lot of mechanical issues, but they pointed them out, and there were a lot of little things. Even the little things they fixed."

They also had him test a baseball speed gun.

"I got clocked at 94 miles per hour," he said. "That was around average (in the camp). A lot of the kids were talented, very talented, and consistently fast."

And a lot of them were older. Simington was at the low end of the 15-17 age range, and a fastball nearing 100 mph may be in his future.

"They had a good feeling that if I take care of my body, like I do now, a lot of my baby fat will go away and my velocity will go up," he said.

And if he continues to improve, Simington will get two more visits to Dodgertown.

"You can go again if you put in the work," he said. "You have to prove yourself. You have to be better (each year) than you were before."

Simington wants to be a big leaguer, but he sees a lot of school in his future first. He has three seasons ahead with the Vikings, then he'd like perhaps four with the Beavers at Oregon State.

"I don't want to go to the major leagues out of high school," he said. "Others have done that and it hasn't gone so good and they regretted it, wished they'd gone to college."

Simington already has a plan in place.

"I want to major in human physiology and minor in strength and conditioning," he said, "so if my baseball career doesn't go anywhere, like MLB, I can be a coach or trainer.

"You definitely want something to fall back on."

NOTES

Simington was working the Viking Cup with Siuslaw teammates Michael Larson and Evan Teter. The Western Lane Baseball Association was one of the beneficaries of the event. ...

Dirk Anderson, of the WLBA, remembers the first time he saw Simington pitch youth baseball. Simington struck out six in the first inning. "I think he threw 85 pitches in the first inning," Anderson said with a chuckle. The catcher couldn't handle the heat. "I was getting pretty upset," Simington recalled. "My arm was getting tired out there."