Vroom, vroom. It's a sound almost as pleasing to Wes Carswell's ears as the ping of bat hitting ball.
Carswell got a 2000 Chevrolet Camaro near the end of his sophomore year and immediately went to work on it, including re-doing the suspension -- a task he'd never tackled before.
"He's pretty handy," said Rob Carswell, father of the Pacific Grove High baseball star. "He jacked it up and pulled out the shocks and springs and did the entire suspension. He also did the exhaust and put in a new sound system, building the wooden boxes himself."
Carswell is just a natural when it comes to tinkering on cars. In baseball he doesn't answer to "Roy Hobbs" or wield a bat called "Wonderboy" but he's sort of a natural in that too, as proven by his diamond effort this season.
Wednesday Carswell pitched the Breakers to a 1-0 victory against King City. The senior right-hander gave up six hits, struck out two and walked two. For the season he's 6-0 with a 1.14 earned run average with 24 strikeouts and six walks. Opponents are hitting just .209 against him.
At the plate -- he also plays second base and sometimes catches -- Carswell is hitting .491 with four triples and 13 runs batted in.
"He's a competitor and he has talent," Pacific Grove coach Gil Ruiz said. "His fundamentals are really good from his infield play to his swing to his base running. He's played a lot of baseball."
Carswell's older brothers Taylor and Alex played youth baseball and the current Pacific Grove star was perpetually the little brother, tagging along.
"He was always in the dugout with a glove, beginning when he was 3 years old," Rob Carswell said. "He was like Dusty Baker's kid."
Rob Carswell coached his youngest son in youth league and travel ball, including three trips to Cooperstown's Field of Dreams, site of the large, annual travel-ball tournament. It was a family affair back in New York, with Wes' mom, Martha, also in the mix.
"My mom is my biggest fan," the Breaker standout said. "She's always the loudest one in the stands. I tell her it would be all right if she was just the SECOND loudest one in the stands."
Rob Carswell nodded in agreement at that.
"When we were in Cooperstown we only had about four parents there, but people said we had one of the loudest sections."
Carswell and the Breakers have given Pacific Grove fans plenty to cheer about over the past two seasons. The Breakers haven't lost in nearly a calendar year, with their last setback being 8-3 at Soledad on April 30, 2012.
Since then they've recorded 26 consecutive victories, including a 10-6 triumph against Menlo School in the section title game.
Included in that run was a 14-0 victory on April 2 of this year at Monte Vista Christian when Carswell pitched a three-hitter and had three hits in five at-bats with three runs batted in.
Performances like that have helped Pacific Grove (18-0) offset the loss of Santa Clara University-bound shortstop Kyle Czaplak, who has missed the entire season due to injury.
"It's not a surprise," Ruiz said of Carswell's performance. "This has been expected by Wes and expected by me. He was going to do this whether Kyle was in or out."
Red-haired with a ready smile, Carswell is 5-foot-8 and weighs just 160 pounds. He agrees his size has been a factor in only a handful of colleges, including San Francisco State, looking at him so far. But he offsets his diminutive stature, observers say, with a quick mind.
"I like the strategy of baseball," Carswell said. "There are a lot of little nuances that the people in the stands don't know, like situational hitting and what to do on a first and third situation. My dad has always told me that since I'm smaller I need to know the little things."
Carswell, who has a 3.4 grade point average, said he'd like to play baseball as long as he can and then go into business. He doesn't anticipate working on cars for a living, but is not ruling it out completely.
"It's just something I like to do," Carswell said. "I don't know if it's something I'd want to do for a career, but I guess it's a possibility."
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John Murphy may be reached at jmurphy@Prep2Prep.com or followed on Twitter @PrepCat
