A senior second baseman at Free State High, Travis Ice never had the chance to play a varsity baseball game on the field named after his late grandfather, Al, until Tuesday evening.

It just so happened to be on the same night the brand-new scoreboard was named after late, great Gale Armbrister, best friend of Travis’ father, Mark Ice.

This would not be a good night for Travis to have a bad night.

He didn’t.

He had a terrific one.

If there’s a baseball heaven, Gale Armbrister and Al Ice no doubt were popping a champagne cork and lifting glasses to the boy who handled himself like a pro at the plate in the Firebirds’ 12-1, run-rule-shortened victory over cross-town rival Lawrence High.

For one thing, Ice, batting second, produced a very cool box-score line: Ice 2b 1 2 1 2. You don’t see that every day. He walked and scored in his first two trips to the plate, smoked a sacrifice fly to center in his next and seared a line drive up the middle to single in the final run.

Ice pretty much put the game on : I can’t believe I almost typed that. What a horrible pun that would have made.

Anyway, when not sidelined by a hip injury, Ice played for the junior varsity and varsity as a junior. Unlike many of the local high school athletes who star in three sports, Ice plays only baseball.

“I’m a little too small for football and not quite fast enough, not quite athletic enough, for basketball,” he said.

Asked for his height, Ice initially said “5-9,” read the bad poker face in front of him, and added, “at best.”

OK, so how tall are you, really? He allowed that he’s probably 5-foot-8 and weighs 145 pounds. If you think any of that matters, well, then, you must be too young to remember Freddie Patek, the Kansas City Royals’ shortstop from 1971 through 1979. He was 5-foot-5, at best, and weighed 148 pounds.

Ice evaluates himself honestly as an athlete and a ballplayer. He calls himself “an average fielder. Hitting is my strength.”

And walking.

“I’m a big walks guy,” he said. “Anything to get on base.”

Sometimes hitters draw walks because they can’t put a hurt on a baseball. Ice proved that’s not the case with the deep sacrifice fly in the fourth and a dangerous fifth-inning liner that, thankfully, didn’t hit the pitcher. When he takes pitches, it’s because he views them as balls, not because he fears he can’t do anything with them even if they’re strikes.

Ice knows his strike zone.

And he knows his Lawrence Journal-World Cup standings.

“That put us up 11-10, didn’t it?” he asked.

It did. Early in the year, LHS led the head-to-head standings between city rivals, 8-4.

“It’s great playing against people you know,” Ice said. “It’s a friendly rivalry because we all grew up playing together.”

Ice’s grandfather was gone before he was born, but he knew Armbrister, a man, he said, who would “do anything for anybody who wanted to play baseball.”

“It was nice to come here and play well in my first game at Ice Field, and it was pretty cool doing it when the scoreboard was getting dedicated to my dad’s best friend,” he said.

So cool he’ll never forget it.