Watching Riverview play on the baseball diamond this year you could see Gus Benusa's stock rising each game. First there was the Tampa Bay Rays scout at PNC Park for a non-section game against West Shamokin. The next game Benusa noticed four scouts.

From there, it was about six scouts per game until around 20 scouts showed up for Riverview's WPIAL playoff game. Benusa's stock rose all the way up to the eighth round of the Major League Baseball first-year player's draft.

He was taken by the San Francisco Giants with the 237th overall pick and, today, is hopping on a plane to Scottsdale, Ariz. to start mini-camp with the Scottsdale Giants, the rookie league affiliate.

Benusa, a 5-foot-11, 190-pound left-handed hitter got the slotted signing bonus of $125,000 for an eighth round pick and has decided to forgo his baseball scholarship at Duquesne University and begin his pro career.

"My coach told me a scout was coming to our game to watch me, it made me a little nervous, but I thought it was the coolest thing in the world," Benusa said.

Officially, Major League Baseball has Karl Benusa listed as the San Francisco Giants eighth-round draft pick. Karl is his real first name, but he goes by Gus because of his middle name, August.

It seemed that his stock was rising to everyone around the WPIAL except his coach Rich Griser who knew what kind of player he had with Benusa. And Griser has a good eye for baseball talent -- he is a local scout for the Tampa Bay Rays.

"Doing some scouting for quite a while, I wasn't surprised," Griser said of Benusa being drafted.

"I knew I had a special ballplayer. He is a five-tool player and right here I knew I had a prospect all along. When you get scouts at the game and they are making three or four trips to his games and then new scouts are coming in, you know you really got a player."

Of all the places to get his big league push started, Benusa got to have PNC Park as a stage. Riverview lost the game 8-1 to West Shamokin, but that is not what people were talking about after the game.

With a Tampa Bay Rays scout in the stands, Benusa sent a ball to the deepest part of the park and then came back with an opposite field home run.

"He started to get people's attention after that," Griser said.

"Scouts started showing up and it was a domino effect. After that PNC Park game, in a couple weeks we were averaging 8-10 scouts."

On the season, Benusa led the WPIAL with a .638 batting average (30 for 47) and showed pop in his bat with seven home runs. The WPIAL Baseball Coaches Association named him the Class AA player of the year.

Surprisingly, a Riverview baseball player getting drafted is not unheard of for the Class AA school. Benusa makes it three players in eight years drafted for Griser since he has been at Riverview. Brandon Federici, a current assistant at Riverview, was drafted in 2002 by Tampa Bay and again the following year by San Francisco after he decided to go to school. And in 2007, Dave Kaye was taken by Toronto.

"I played on the team with Dave and Brandon was an assistant this year and he has helped me a lot and taught me about the process," Benusa said.

"It is nice to know that people do get drafted around here. I never actually heard of anyone signing, though, so I guess this sets the bar at a high level for kids coming up."

Benusa's situation is different than that of past Riverview baseball draftees. Federici and Kaye were taken in later rounds in the deep 50-round Major League Baseball draft and opted to head to college.

The WPIAL has not had a player drafted this high since the Pirates made Neil Walker a first-round selection out of Pine-Richland five years ago.

"In Gus' case, I think he is probably more ready to play ball at this stage than [Federici and Kaye] were," Griser said.

"He is a lot closer to starting his pro career."