Sam Miller didn’t remember exactly what he had written at the time.
Then a senior about to graduate from Peters Township High School in 2022, Miller, a standout baseball player, opened the envelope and unsurprisingly saw a familiar name scrawled on the paper inside.
Miller and his best friend, Jack Kail, were just catalysts in leading Peters Township to a runner-up finish in the WPIAL Class 5A championship game.
“We did this thing in fourth grade where you wrote letters to your future high school self,” Miller said. “I got mine back my senior year, and I wrote in fourth grade, ‘I hope Jack and I are still playing baseball together.’ I just thought it was unreal that we still are.
“It’s awesome that we’re still making memories together and playing the sport we love together, still.”
The memories are only getting sweeter these days.
Now juniors at Columbia University, Miller and Kail started every game this season, their third at the NCAA Division I level. The pair was influential in leading the Lions to an Ivy League tournament championship and their first automatic NCAA regional tournament bid since 2022.
“I think it’s awesome,” Columbia coach Brett Boretti said. “They both push each other in different ways.”
Miller, a power-hitting shortstop, was named the Ivy League’s unanimous Player of the Year, while Kail, a gritty second baseman, was named an all-conference first-team selection.
“It’s just really awesome,” Kail said. “This whole time of us growing up, we’ve always played in the middle infield together. Playing that in youth ball and then travel ball and then high school ball and now college, I feel like, that just makes us play even better, even playing off of each other in the middle at shortstop and second base. It’s really special.”
Miller is hitting a team-high .347 this season with an Ivy League-leading 15 home runs and 54 RBIs. The 6-foot, 205-pound No. 3 hitter has a .622 slugging percentage with a 1.041 OPS and 48 runs scored.
Kail, meanwhile, is hitting .302 with 12 doubles, 6 home runs, 42 RBIs and 7 stolen bases. At 5 feet 8, 175 pounds, he is one of the top infielders in the Ivy League with just three errors this season and a .984 fielding percentage.
“It’s been a blast throughout our career, and it’s pretty impressive, to be honest, that we’ve been able to play together this whole time,” Miller said. “It shows how good we are. I think it’s awesome, too. We will always be just like hanging out in the dugout and we will be like, ‘Remember when we did this when we were, like, 9?’ It’s just awesome.”
Their bond around baseball, though, began even before that.
“Our first year playing baseball together was our first year of Peters Township baseball, which is when we were both 7,” Kail said.
Although they didn’t exactly grow up as next-door neighbors, the Miller and Kail McMurray homes were close enough that the pair remained tight after that initial season of organized baseball.
“My house is about probably less than a two-minute drive from his,” Kail said. “I walked there when I was younger.”
Before too long, quick rides to Peterswood Park in Venetia began happening.
“Growing up, me and Sam were always at the field,” Kail said. “Even before we could drive ourselves, our moms would pick us up in the summer and drive us to the field and drop us off and leave us there for a few hours.”
Miller said those sessions forged a strong relationship on and off the field between the two friends.
“I do remember long nights, days in the cage,” he said. “Our parents, they’d drop us off at the field, and we’d be there for hours just playing games, hitting baseballs, taking groundballs.
“It was just us two,” he added. “Sometimes our brothers would come, that’s about it, though, a couple friends — it was mainly us.”
Peters Township baseball coach Rocky Plassio said Miller and Kail’s talent and love of the game were evident from early on in their time together.
“I knew they were so special from the first time that I ever got a chance to work with them,” Plassio said. “I watched them play and grow for three, four years, and now they’re just continuing to get better and better. Their work ethic and who they are as people, they’re special. Every now and again you get to have some special kids, and those two, to do what they do, they’re extremely rare.”
Boretti said he came to the same conclusion through recruiting both players. The coach, now in his 20th season leading Columbia’s program, said he initially began recruiting just Kail.
It would ultimately be Miller that Boretti said he saw play first, though, when he caught him performing in a travel game while also recruiting former Mt. Lebanon pitcher Jack Smith, who is now a junior reliever at Harvard.
When Boretti then saw Kail play in person at a Columbia baseball camp later that summer, he said he was sold on the potential of the Peters Township duo.
“I’m texting Rocky Plassio, their head coach, like, ‘You’ve got a heck of a middle infield,’” Boretti said.
When their longstanding friendship became more apparent, Boretti said he was again struck by the potential for how good Miller and Kail could become.
“I’m willing to bet that hasn’t happened in a long, long time in the Ivy League in our sport,” said Boretti, referencing two longtime teammates playing together in the middle infield at the Division I level. “That’s really unlikely that you’ve got guys academically that can do it and obviously to the level of play.”
Miller first made an impression in the Ivy League as a freshman when he hit .308 with three home runs and 17 RBIs as a part-time starter in 2023. The following year, Miller broke out hitting .358 with a .647 slugging percentage, as a sophomore, while also contributing 12 home runs and 43 RBIs.
“Sam has developed a better work ethic since he’s been here,” Boretti said. “I think Sam probably is more physically talented, arm-strength wise, the football quarterback, and Sam is a gamer. When the whistle blows, or getting between the white lines in our sport, there’s a different level that he gets to.”
Kail, meanwhile, made an immediate impact, starting every game of the 2023 season as a freshman and hitting .241 with three home runs and three RBIs. He battled some injuries as a sophomore but steadily improved by hitting .288 with two homers and 13 RBIs before his breakout campaign this spring.
“Jack, he’s what you would describe as that dirtball, dirt kid at practice that goes hard and is dirty at the end of the day,” Boretti said. “Probably some of that is being a smaller guy, he’s probably like, ‘Hey, I’ve got to fight for every little inch I get.’ He’s probably been that way through all his life with sports.
“He just is always going after it, always wanting to get better and working to get better.”
Now the two will have a chance to showcase their skills in the NCAA tournament.
The NCAA regional site pairings will be announced at noon Monday as part of a tournament selection show, which will be broadcast on ESPNU.
It will be the eighth NCAA regional appearance for Columbia in school history with seven of those berths coming under Boretti.
The field for the NCAA tournament will consist of 64 teams, 29 with automatic bids by way of winning their conference tournament, which are all vying to play in the NCAA Division I College World Series in Omaha.
The four-team, double-elimination NCAA regional series will begin Friday at sites across the country.
“It’s a dream, man,” Kail said. “This is the best, the highest level of college baseball in this tournament, and it’s great to be a part of that and to play with these other teams. We just want to win.”
So, too, does Miller.
“I’m excited,” he said. “The senior class we have has played in a regional and they talk about how it’s probably the most fun they’ve had playing baseball. That’s something we want to experience for sure.”
Plassio, too, said he is anxious for the tournament to begin. He said he has kept tabs on the careers of his former players and can’t wait to see them perform at the highest level of NCAA competition.
“It means everything,” Plassio said. “We reference those guys all the time. The last time we were in a championship was when those two led us there. We fell one run short of getting back to the championship this year. Trust me, I use those two young men specifically when I’m talking to my current group.
“What’s really neat,” he added, “is that our kids who are in our current program now are quite aware of both who Sam Miller and Jack Kail are.”
John is a copy editor and page designer at the Post-Gazette, but he's currently on strike. Email him at jsanta@unionprogress.com.