It didn’t take ex-Palisades High baseball player and Palisadian-Post Cup Award winner Jon Leicester long to earn his first major league victory. The Chicago Cubs’ 6-2, 220-pound right-hander pitched three scoreless innings to earn the 6-5 win over the Angels Sunday in his second appearance since being promoted from Triple-A Iowa on June 6. Leicester, who graduated from PaliHi in 1997, allowed one hit and struck out two batters on Sunday, improving his earned run average to 2.25. Cheering their support in the stands at Anaheim Stadium were former friends and classmates Justin Wallis, Colin Specht, Ben Rothbard, Gina Murdock, Indra Chavy, Lisa Cudrow and Jen Kim, all of whom donned a t-shirt with letters of his last name painted on the front. Sitting in a row, they spelled L-E-I-C-E-S-T-E-R. ‘Jon was only my second four-year player and he batted clean-up on a team that hit 60 homers that season,’ recalls former Dolphins head coach Russ Howard, who now works in the dean’s office. ‘He played short stop, first base, he pitched and he was our best hitter. We won our conference and beat Birmingham in the first round of the City playoffs that year. He’s worked so hard since the Cubs drafted him [in 2000] and it’s great to see him where he is now.’ In his major league debut last Wednesday, Leicester struck out the first two batters he faced before allowing a home run to Jim Edmonds in a 12-4 loss to the St. Louis Cardinals.
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