ENGLEWOOD, Fla. — His form was easy, his delivery flawless and after he made his pitch, everyone agreed it was a perfect strike.

Alcorn State baseball pitcher Earl Smith, 23, is already active in the community he’ll call home this summer. Smith plans to join the Charlotte County (Fla.) Redfish for summer league baseball.

And last week, he answered a call to the bullpen when he appeared at a remedial reading class at a high school in the town to stress the importance of reading in both school and life.

Sally Lutz, intensive reading teacher at LBHS, invited Smith to her class in an effort to inspire her kids.

“I have all sophomores, who failed the state assessment on reading as freshmen,” Lutz said. “They need to pass in order to graduate. I have some athletes, some baseball players, who I hope will benefit from listening to a ballplayer on the importance of education.”

Smith stressed getting a jump on your studies as a means of getting ahead.

“It’s really important to focus on your education as early as possible,”

Smith told the class. “I had to decide whether I was going to be the class clown, which I was in the sixth grade, or if I wanted to be a good student, which I became in the eighth grade.”

Smith grew up in San Quentin, Calif., literally on the grounds of the infamous penitentiary.

“My dad was a chaplain at the prison,” Smith said.

Smith started out with a combined academic and athletic scholarship to Pepperdine in Malibu, Calif. — until he suffered a tear to the medial collateral ligament in his right elbow.

“When you get hurt, you lose your scholarship,” Smith said.

Battling his way back through rehab, Smith learned how important a good education is to someone pursuing a dream as ephemeral as a career in pro sports.

“I’m planning on going back to school this fall so I don’t put it off another year,” Smith said. “I’m going to graduate from Alcorn State.”

Smith encouraged the class to get up to speed with their reading.

“It’s important you see that the decisions you make early in your life affect you later on in your life,” Smith said. “If you take your schooling seriously, you almost become professional in what you do. You get a routine.

You have to train and practice the same way in school that you do in baseball.”

Smith confessed he wasn’t much of a reader in middle school.

“Luckily, my dad was there to tell me I needed to focus on my schooling,” Smith said. “My reading got better.”

It helped him when he got to college, he added, where he was required to read far more than ever before.

“Now I’m reading ‘The Audacity Of Hope,’ by Barack Obama,” Smith said. “And ‘Moneyball,’ by Billy Beane, which is about the process of building winning baseball teams.”

Speaking of winning baseball teams, Smith praised the Charlotte County Redfish and the Sun Coast League, of which the team is now a part.

“This independent league is focused on getting players who didn’t get drafted out of college into organized baseball,” Smith said. “The focus of this league is to get players seen and off to affiliated teams as soon as possible. Our season starts on May 18.”

What does he plan to do after his playing days are over?

“My major in college is communications with an emphasis in television production and radio broadcasting,” Smith said. “But I’m also thinking about becoming a firefighter.”

No matter what he ends up doing, Smith intends to succeed. Right now it’s baseball; the class could read that clearly.

It was written all over him.