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Millville shares starring role in Mike Trout documentary

MLB Network documentary illuminates his ties to his South Jersey home

Settling into comfortable seats in the Levoy Theater, Millville High School baseball players Buddy Kennedy, Ryan McIsaac, and Nick Grotti prepared to watch the most unlikely of stars on the silver screen: themselves.

"It's surreal," Grotti said of watching himself and his teammates in Mike Trout: Millville to MVP, a documentary presented by MLB Network.

The Millville baseball team joined with a couple of hundred others in watching a screening of the show Thursday night in the theater on High Street in the heart of the city's Glasstown Arts section.

The documentary will be televised at 8 p.m. Sunday on MLB Network.

Trout's fame as perhaps baseball's best player has cast a reflected glow on the three seniors who will take turns wearing his No. 1 jersey this season for the Thunderbolts and on the blue-collar community in rural Cumberland County, about 45 minutes south of Philadelphia.

Millville is the costar of the documentary, which features footage of Trout as a youngster who used to sleep in his Little League uniform on the night before opening day as well as extended interviews with his parents, Jeff and Debbie; Trout's former Los Angeles Angels teammate Torii Hunter, and Oakland Athletics general manager Billy Beane.

Beane calls Trout "the best player I've ever seen," and laments the decision made by the Athletics and so many other teams to pass up the opportunity to select Trout in the 2009 draft.

Hunter says Trout's remarkable leaping catch in Baltimore in 2012 was "the best vision I ever had on a baseball field."

While the 25-year-old Trout is portrayed as a player who compares favorably to baseball immortals such as Mickey Mantle, Stan Musial, and Joe DiMaggio, much of the focus of the documentary is on Millville and the city's lasting impact on its most famous and favored son.

"It's in his blood - South Jersey, Cumberland County, Millville," Jeff Trout says in the documentary.

Mike Trout is interviewed in one of his favorite places in Millville, Jim's Lunch, a little diner that has been serving customers since 1923, according to the sign on the awning out front on Main Street.

Trout places his standard order: six hamburgers with "secret sauce" and a side of fries.

"They won't tell me," Trout says in the documentaty of the ingredients in the sauce. "I don't want to know. I'd try to make it myself and it wouldn't be as good."

The love affair between Trout and Millville is the theme of the documentary, which features interviews with waitresses from Jim's Lunch, Mayor Michael Santiago, and the barber who cuts the superstar's hair when he's home from California.

"I've never seen a town so much 'in' the guy like Millville is 'in' Mike Trout," MLB producer Marc Caiafa said before the screening Thursday night.

Millville baseball manager Roy Hallenbeck, who coached Trout during his four seasons with the Thunderbolts, said his former star player has never forgotten his roots.

Trout donated his $20,000 rookie of the year bonus to refurbish Millville's home field - now officially known as Mike Trout Field - and sends dozens of cleats to the baseball program before every season.

In the documentary, the team is shown receiving the cleats, and watching a short video message from Trout.

"That's a lot of talking for Mike," Hallenbeck tells his players.

When Trout met the three team captains during the offseason, McIsaac shook his hand and called him "Mr. Trout."

"I couldn't believe it," Hallenbeck said before the documentary. "Mr. Trout? Nobody calls him Mr. Trout. That's Mikey."

Hallenbeck echoed another theme of the documentary, that Trout's connection with his old hometown is tied to the way of life in largely rural Cumberland County.

"I've got kids in class who know him because they're in the same hunting club with him," Hallenbeck said.

McIsaac, Grotti, and Kennedy - four-year starters who play second base, shortstop, and third base, respectively - will take turns wearing Trout's No. 1 jersey for the Thunderbolts this season.

"It's such an honor, to think he wore that number and now we're wearing it," McIsaac said.

McIsaac was overwhelmed to see himself on the big screen in the swanky theater and to realize he'll be part of a documentary that will be shown on national television.

"It was amazing to think, the whole team is going to be on MLB Network," McIsaac said. "It's like a dream come true."

The affable Kennedy probably is the current player who is closest with Trout, having worked out with the five-time American League all-star and two-time American League MVP several times at a facility in nearby Bridgeton over the winter.

Kennedy nearly steals the show in the documentary, when he's interviewed walking down the school hallway with two boxes of cleats, turns to the camera, and tells Trout that the Thunderbolts are going to win a championship for him this season.

"Don't worry, Mike, we're going to get you that ring," Kennedy said. "It might not be a World Series ring with diamonds, but we'll get it for you."

Kennedy is one of the state's top hitters and has signed with North Carolina but is likely to be selected in the draft in June. He said the documentary was "amazing" and accurately portrayed Trout's connection to Millville.

"I've seen it," Kennedy said. "He loves it here. He comes back and he's just a regular Millville guy again."

panastasia@phillynews.com

@PhilAnastasia

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