Back from injury, Penn Charter's Koplove showing his mettle

Like every fun-loving teenager, Kenny Koplove is given to occasionally nutty behavior.

Just don't accuse him of having loose screws.

Koplove's screws are very much in place, thank you, and for that the star baseball player at the William Penn Charter School is eternally grateful.

In PC's empty field house yesterday, maybe a half-hour before coach-forever Rick Mellor (33 seasons) convened practice, Koplove held up his right arm and pointed to two spots near his elbow. He ran his left index finger for about 2 inches along the underside of his forearm, and for the same distance on the inside portion.

"That's where they are," he said.

He thought for a second, then added, "When I came out of surgery and saw the X-ray, it was pretty intense. I mean, they said 'screws' to me, but . . . I didn't expect them to actually look like a screw you'd put in a door. I was expecting a thin rod. But these are screws. You can actually see the head on them. Pretty awesome."

Koplove, a 6-1, 158-pound junior, is already committed to Duke and while there he's hoping to start at shortstop ("that's my true passion") while also serving as a closer.

Mostly because his brother, Mike, a 1995 product of Chestnut Hill Academy (though he first attended PC), is a former major league pitcher, Kenny is mostly known for his hurling, especially since he was a mound mainstay as early as his freshman year.

After earning second-team Daily News All-City honors in 2009, Koplove hit the summer trail with an organization, the Philadelphia Senators, that's based in South Philly and is headed by his father, Steve. All was going well until Aug. 27, when he was playing shortstop in a game in Toms River, N.J.

"I gloved a ball in the hole, then threw, and I heard my arm pop," he said. "It hurt, but then the pain went away. I got another ground ball and threw that guy out, but there was excruciating pain in my elbow. I looked down and my elbow was swollen. The swelling wasn't gigantic, but I'm not a very large kid and when I looked down, there was a clear difference in size from one elbow to the other. I'd had minor tendinitis from time to time, but never any major issues with my elbow."

Soon, Koplove was paying a visit to Dr. Craig Morgan, of Wilmington, Del., who has performed surgery on Curt Schilling, among other baseball notables.

"He didn't even need to look at X-rays," Koplove said, in a still-amazed-by-that tone. "He put my arm on a table, turned it a certain way and said, 'This is what happened.' I forget the name for it, but he said he'd only seen this six-seven times. He said it was bound to happen because of how much and how hard I was throwing with bones that weren't yet fully developed. The bone just popped away from the elbow and went down [into the forearm]."

Brief timeout, as you wince.

"The screws will stay in there forever," Koplove added. "And they should never affect me. It's really cool."

After a 2010 season that was pretty much a washout, in part due to shoulder miseries that likely resulted from elbow aftereffects, Koplove is his ol' impressive self.

In 16 innings over four appearances, he has permitted just seven hits and one earned run and, last Saturday, he spun a three-hitter with eight strikeouts as the Quakers bested visiting Germantown Academy, 2-1, in an Inter-Ac League opener. At the third spot in the order, despite a recent mini-slump, he's hitting about .350.

"His arm at shortstop is incredible. An absolute cannon," said Mellor, whose squad also includes second baseman Andrew Amaro, a Maryland signee and the nephew of Phillies general manager Ruben Amaro. "He might be the best defensive shortstop I've had."

And that's not all.

"He knows everything about baseball. And pays attention to everything," Mellor said.

At that point, during the practice, Koplove was instructing teammates on proper fielding footwork. "When Kenny was on the varsity in eighth grade, I remember yelling down the bench one time, 'What'd this kid do in his last at-bat?' Kenny spoke right up. 'Popped out to right on an outside breaking ball.' He wasn't even playing that day, yet was still on top of everything."

Once the shoulder problem vanished, Koplove, who lives in the Packer Park section of South Philly, got back to full-scale baseball last summer. Well, eventually. He went the tiptoe route for a while before heading to a showcase event in Tampa, Fla.

"It was supposed to be the top kids in the nation. My first time really performing in front of the college coaches," Koplove said. "The kid right in front of me threw the ball 97 miles an hour across the infield from shortstop. I was like, 'I have to follow him? ' But I made the first throw and everything was fine and . . . That was such a big relief."

Against GA, Koplove said he was told his fastball hit 91-93 in the first inning and was still at 88-89 in the seventh. Varied arm angles make him even more effective.

"Now, it takes me a little longer to get loose," Koplove said. "But once I'm good, I'm good. Ready to roll."

Mike Koplove, who played collegiately at Northwestern and Delaware, went 15-7 with a 3.82 ERA in seven MLB seasons (2001-07) with Arizona and Cleveland, exclusively in relief. He has since pitched minor league ball for four organizations, including the Phillies, and is still hoping to find work this season.

Also, Mike pitched in the 2008 Olympics, and that provided a memory for a lifetime for Kenny. Goofy variety.

Kenny and his dad were in Rhode Island for a special diamond event and Mike, of course, was in Beijing, China. Kenny's game was in the early morning, but he was not yet participating and since Dad had a laptop . . .

"Somewhere on the Internet, my dad found the game," Kenny said. "We were watching it right in the dugout.

"I don't know what the announcer was speaking, but it wasn't English. This was Mike's first Olympic appearance. Pretty exciting. A guy hits the ball up in the air and the camera goes over the fence. My dad is going crazy. 'Oh, my God! Don't tell me he just gave up a home run!' Then they show all the USA guys running in. It was just a popup that ended the inning."

Popups. Groundouts. Strikeouts. Kenny Koplove will take 'em all. Along with any piece of advice that Mike, in attendance last Saturday, wants to dispense.

"Whatever he says, I'm listening," Kenny said. "It's always good. Sometimes we'll go pitch by pitch. That should have been this. That should have been that.

"Since I was always playing ball also, I didn't get to see him too much through the years. But now, he's around a lot and we can actually compete to see who's throwing the hardest. I'm right with him. My velocity is the best it's ever been."

Screw you, arm miseries.