When 16 Razorback baseball commits take the field this summer for the Arkansas Sticks baseball organization, they will do so with a heavy heart and a patch remembering one of their own.
Ashdown’s Cedric Harris, Jr., 14, a former member of the Sticks who has family ties to both LSU and Arkansas, was tragically killed as a result of an ATV accident earlier this month.
Harris, known as CJ, was an eighth-grader being recruited by both No. 1 Arkansas (32-7, 13-5) and LSU (25-15, 6-12), two of the nation’s traditional elite baseball programs who will start a three-game SEC series beginning Friday in Baton Rouge.
The son of former LSU baseball player and 2000 Arizona Diamondbacks draft pick Cedrick Harris Sr., CJ will be honored by his Sticks teammates in a variety of ways, according to Chase Brewster, the owner and a coach of the Sticks’ oldest squad.
The organization will wear T-shirts with his number, with the patch on their uniforms, retiring his number 24 and awarding a scholarship annually in his honor.
“Being as close as we were and having CJ play for us for three years, anything we can do to honor him we are going to do,” Brewster said. “Nothing we can do will bring him back, but the least we can do is let his legacy live on and remember the person that he was. That is something that we are looking for in every player we have.
“We have done some different things with the shirts and the patches, retired his number and started a scholarship in his name. When you think about him, you think about the kind of person we should all aspire to be.”
The Sticks is a fall and summer baseball program that has over 400 high school players that has teams in Arkansas, Texas, Arizona, Louisiana, and Canada.
One senior from the organization, which has had a whopping 40 Arkansas signees or commitments over the last six years, will be awarded the scholarship.
“We have started the Cedric Harris scholarship and we are going to give that annually with me and a team, including Cedrick, his wife Marie and some other people that are going to pick a finalist every year,” Brewster said. “It will be someone that plays with the Sticks as a senior and give it out to them after the state championship games every year.”
Harris is family with current Razorback defensive backs Montaric Brown and LaDarrius Bishop, Arkansas 2021 signee Braylon Bishop of Texarkana and current injured LSU pitcher Jaden Hill, expected to be taken high in the 2021 Major League Baseball Draft.
“It is a heck of an athletic family with a lot of ties to Arkansas and LSU,” Brewster said.
Outfielder-pitcher Braylon Bishop, who played for the Sticks, is ranked 70th in MLB Pipeline’s Top 150 prospects for the 2021 MLB draft.
“Braylon has had a really good senior season,” Brewster said. “A lot of people had said he needed to do this and that his senior season and he has done that. Texarkana has played extremely well, especially from where they started.
“He is pitching really well. He is up to 90 miles per hour and hitting over .500 the last time I checked. All the big scouts have been to see him. One team brought four scouts to see him two weeks ago.”
Brewster thinks there is a chance that Bishop makes it to Arkansas.
“The forgone conclusion is that with him being such a high prospect that he will sign, but I don’t know that is the case,” Brewster said. “He definitely has everything in order to go to Arkansas in the fall. He was up there not too long ago with LaDarrius and having a family member on the football team and knowing where to stay, he’s just going to let everything play out in the draft in July.”