After growing up in Mississippi, draft picks Eric Booth Jr. and Kevin Roberts Jr. stay together with Orioles

Will Robertson called it the “scouting event of the year.”

The Orioles’ scouting director, in charge of his first draft in Baltimore, had never been to Mississippi before this year. He had good reason to go so frequently, because Eric Booth Jr. and Kevin Roberts Jr. called that state home. And on March 10 those two high school stars met on the diamond as opponents for the first time.

In one dugout was Booth from Oak Grove, a high school near Hattiesburg. In the other was Roberts from Jackson Prep in the state capital. In the stands were more than 50 scouts, Robertson recalled Saturday.

Oak Grove, much to Booth’s delight, beat Jackson Prep that day.

These two Orioles draft picks — Booth a first-rounder, Roberts a fourth-rounder — are now teammates. They have played on the same showcase teams during scouting tournaments from time to time, and Booth won’t let Roberts forget the final score (14-4) of their head-to-head high school matchup. But, on draft day this month, it sunk in.

These two kids — Booth recently turned 18 while Roberts is 17 — are from a similar part of Mississippi, and they’re living their dream together.

“It’s awesome,” Roberts said after taking batting practice at Camden Yards on Saturday. “Not a lot of guys get to call their buddy saying they just got drafted to the same team. I called him as soon as I got drafted. It was awesome.”

Roberts, Booth and second-rounder Ty Head took batting practice, met manager Craig Albernaz and soaked in what they hope will be their future home ballpark. It was especially surreal for Booth and Roberts, who have known each other in baseball circles from an early age.

Robertson identified both as targets early in the draft scouting process, so he returned to Mississippi multiple times over the last year to see these teenagers with his own eyes. The game between Jackson Prep and Oak Grove in March was a spectacle because it pitted two of the top high school players against each other.

As Robertson recalled, and as the MaxPreps box score confirms, Booth walked four times. Roberts “didn’t have his best day,” Robertson said, although Robertson came back the next day to see just how dynamic Roberts can be, too.

They both knew the other was a talented player. But it didn’t really set in for Booth that he and Roberts could go straight to professional baseball after high school until the end of his senior year, as scouts kept coming to watch and meetings with major league teams grew in number.

“Just realized it was real,” Booth said.

Saturday at Camden Yards underscored the reality. Booth and Roberts both hit home runs in batting practice, putting on an impressive display for kids who only recently were playing in high school.

As Robertson grew more certain those two were players the Orioles should take, he and other members of Baltimore’s front office talked seriously about how they could land both in the draft. They especially liked the “dynamic of them pushing each other” as friends and competitors.

“There are some draft classes where there is only one high school kid, and they can feel, probably, a little bit marginalized or just different, in different places in life, different experiences,” Robertson said.

To go through the high school-to-professional transition with a friend can be a major benefit.

“The ideal scenario is they really push each other and the rest of the high school draft class, with them at the top, all sort of pushing each other,” Robertson said.

Given their proximity (their high schools are about 100 miles from each other in central Mississippi), they knew of each other early. They tried out for a USA prospect team together but didn’t make it, and they teamed up at the East Coast Pro showcase in Hoover, Alabama, last year.

They may have faced off in a well-attended high school game as adversaries. But, in a video Robertson recently watched of the East Coast Pro showcase, there was something fitting in what he saw.

Roberts ripped a double. Just visible on that shaky video stream, he watched Booth blaze around the bases to score.

Someday, perhaps these Mississippi teenagers will team up as Orioles at Camden Yards.