With a sweltering hot bat this season, Lake senior slugger Kurt McKee didn’t just put a dent in his opponents’ ERA.  He wrecked it, bruised it, and crumbled it.

McKee was named Suburban Lakes League Player of the Year last week for his impolite contributions to opposing pitching this season.  In 74 at-bats, McKee recorded 31 hits (.419), scored 21 runs, drove in 16, hit one home run, and led the team with 10 doubles.  He also showed speed on the base paths, stealing nine bases.

Lake senior slugger Kurt McKee

“It feels great to receive this honor,” said the 6-0, 160-pound center fielder.  “Sure, this is an individual award but I couldn’t have done it without the help from my teammates and coaches.  It took a consistent team effort all season long to win a championship.”

Lake finished the season 23-4 en route to its first Suburban Lakes League championship since the 2003 season behind a powerful offense anchored by McKee that averaged nearly seven runs per game and went undefeated (11-0) in league play.

“I hadn’t won a league championship in any sports at Lake prior to this one, so to get the last SLL title is big.  I really pushed for it, as did my teammates, and we got it.”

Just as McKee defied all odds becoming the first player from Lake to win SLL Player of the Year since crafty left-hander Wes Blank did so in 2003, he said his team, coming off of a second place season in which they lost several talented seniors to graduation, exceeded expectations much to the bewilderment of talented league foes.

“Nobody thought we would run the table.  We lost a lot of good arms and bats, but gained momentum and confidence early in the season and that carried us throughout the year.  We knew we were good from the start and now we are league champs.”

Fresh off of an unfulfilling season in 2010 during which he batted well below .300 and described as “not even close” to his production this season, McKee was initially penciled into the ninth spot in the batting order at the season’s onset, but his torrid start to the season forced 27th year head coach Greg Wilker to do more shuffling than a Las Vegas blackjack dealer.

“He got some huge hits early on and you could just see his confidence grow,” said Wilker, who moved McKee and his molten iron bat from the ninth spot in the batting order to fifth early in the season.  “He hit fifth for us all year and did a great job driving in runs.  I am proud of him.”

“I have to give Coach Wilker a tremendous amount of credit for having the confidence in me to move me up in the lineup,” McKee said.  “Every year I have progressively gotten better and better with his help.  He’s a great coach, a great leader, and is well-respected.  That’s why he has been so successful over the years.”

It doesn’t take a retired army sergeant to determine McKee’s intestinal fortitude, the same strength of character that drove the determined slugger to commit himself exclusively to baseball in the offseason.

“I wanted to get better,” said McKee.  “I knew I had it in me so I worked out just about every day, got stronger, and it just so happened to come all together for me this season.  I was seeing the ball way better.”

Before the season, McKee would have been every opposing coach’s dream to have at the plate with the game on the line — a light-hitting outfielder without much of a track record as a hitter at the varsity level—but it didn’t take long for the fire sirens to sound in the opposing team’s dugout each time he stepped into the batter’s box.

“Kurt was a three year player for me,” added Wilker.  “As a sophomore, he was a lot smaller and not as strong but I knew he was going to be a very good player for me.  But I didn’t expect player of the year out of him.  And I’m sure he would tell you the same thing.”

Wilker was right.  McKee said the same thing.

When asked if being awarded the league’s player of the year was something that had crept into his sights prior to the season, he didn’t waste any time gazing into the rearview mirror, revisiting his days as a quality outfielder known for his glove but not his bat.

“I would have called you crazy if you would have said I would have been player of the year before the season began.  In all honesty, I figured I would be more of a factor out in the field, on defense, than I would have been at the plate.”

What else is an underdog to say?

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