All-Star game in Southland is the ultimate home game for all of baseball

We are baseball.

We are Jackie Robinson sprinting through an overgrown sandlot in Pasadena. We are Walter Johnson stalking through a dreary oil field in Olinda.

We are Eddie Murray and Ozzie Smith fighting through the clutter to discover greatness in south Los Angeles. At the same high school. On the same team.

We are Don Drysdale and Robin Yount playing in San Fernando Valley towns separated by 11 miles, Bob Lemon and Tony Gwynn playing for Long Beach high schools separated by five minutes.

We are Duke Snider hitting balls over palm trees in Compton, Darryl Strawberry hitting balls over those same palm trees three decades later, and five kids in baggy shorts swinging mightily for those fences just last week.

“This place just goes on and on, don’t it?” says Gerald Pickens, a local coaching icon sitting in the dank dugout of Jackie Robinson Stadium at Gonzales Park in Compton. “Baseball is what this town breathes.”

Pickens, who has helped send more than 35 players to the major leagues, was discussing baseball’s midsummer celebration, the game returning to its Southland Mecca for tonight’s All-Star game at Angel Stadium.

“Oh yeah, that reminds me, I’ve got to call my man Dennis,” he says.

Standing amid piles of old caps and rusted equipment, Pickens punches speed dial and begins talking and laughing with the most unlikely of soul mates.

His man Dennis, it turns out, is Dennis Kuhl, chairman of the Angels.

We are baseball, full-circle baseball, from the boss of a World Series-winning major league franchise to a guy throwing curveballs off a folding chair in the middle of an inner-city afternoon.

To tonight’s All-Star game we say, welcome to the greatest baseball area in the United States, from pitchers to catchers, from owners to agents, from borders to Borders.

Yeah, that would be Ila Borders, the La Mirada kid who became the first woman to be a starting pitcher in a men’s professional game.

We are baseball and we are bold, from the waxed mustache on Upland’s Rollie Fingers to the dumb muscles on that Damien High kid Mark McGwire, from the curve thrown by Garden Grove’s Burt Blyleven to the smile honed by Gary Carter at the perfectly named high school in Fullerton, Sunny Hills.

We are not Barry Bonds. You got that? He was born in Riverside, but he played high school ball up north in San Mateo, OK?

But we did know Sparky Anderson when he was a Dorsey High kid called George, and we did know Gene Mauch when he was a Fremont High kid still able to smile.

We are baseball, and no matter what you hear about one of our nice little pro basketball teams, over the past 80 years our identity has never been in question.

The Lakers, right now, are the Southland’s heart. But with the combination of perfect baseball weather, plentiful baseball fields and the enduring tradition of this town’s first popular sport, baseball has long been our soul.

Look at the numbers.

More people watch major league baseball in the Southland than any other urban area in America. The Dodgers and Angels are currently averaging a combined 84,358 fans. The New York Yankees and Mets are averaging more than 5,000 fewer.

Minor league baseball is also watched in the Southland by as many people as it is anywhere else, five Class-A California teams within a two-hour drive, earnest operations that play in glistening little stadiums in front of several thousand die-hards every night. These outfits are so connected to the community, the team in San Bernardino is actually named after a highway (the 66ers), and the team in Lancaster recently held a bobblehead night for longtime local sports columnist Brian Golden.

“That’s one of the great things about baseball here,” said longtime local scout Phil Pote. “You don’t like what you’re watching in town, you head toward the desert, and before long you run into something better.”

Then there is college baseball, where UCLA’s house was rocking this year with the eventual national runner-up Bruins. Nearly one-third of the 64 collegiate national championship games have featured at least one team from the Southland, including a record five consecutive titles by USC in the 1970s under legendary coach Rod Dedeaux.

But the hottest game in town may be high school baseball, and while there are no attendance numbers available here, I’ve got the sore legs to prove it. If you don’t arrive at a high school baseball game early around here, you park several blocks away and you stand.

“The level of interest here is incredible,” said Dan Evans, former Dodgers general manager and current head of West Coast Sports Management. “It’s a big deal, and it’s every day.”

We are baseball, from three kids playing catch in Elysian Park near Dodger Stadium to a group of stars who annually make up as much as 30% of the amateur draft.

Those locals are so tied to their roots that former West Hills Pony baseball star and part-time sportswriter Jeff Suppan once stunned a group of national journalists during a World Series interview when he was asked to pick the greatest baseball writer ever.

“Eric Sondheimer,” the veteran major league pitcher announced, referring to The Times’ longtime high school writer. Sondheimer has never covered a major league baseball beat, but he can’t walk into a major league clubhouse today without seeing somebody he knows.

“If you grew up here like I did, I pretty much grew up living and breathing baseball,” said Downey’s Evan Longoria, one of five locals in Tuesday’s All-Star game.

The grass roots continue to grow because the major league teams continue to water, with the Dodgers currently building or renovating nine youth league fields, bringing their total number of Dodgers Dreamfields to 18, part of a sweeping commitment that has included funding for equipment and coaching.

Then there are the Angels, who, well, just ask Compton’s Gerald Pickens. He, like other local community baseball leaders, consistently receives equipment and money from owner Arte Moreno and “my man Dennis.”

We are baseball, the place where the national RBI inner-city baseball movement was founded by John Young, the place where the Major League Baseball Urban Youth Academy helps keep that dream alive.

Standing at Jackie Robinson Stadium the other day, I was wondering how many major leaguers actually grew up on this ragged diamond. Surely the number has been exaggerated over the years, so I checked, and here they are:

Eddie Murray, Reggie Smith, Tommy Davis, Willie Davis, Ken Landreaux, Darryl Strawberry, Don Wilson, Hubie Brooks, Chet Lemon, Lonnie Smith, Chili Davis, Enos Cabell, Derrel Thomas, George Foster, George Hendrick, Willie Crawford, Rick Burleson, Al Cowens, Bobby Tolan, Ellis Valentine, Gary Ward, Bob Watson. . . .

I’m not making this up. There are more. But we’ll stop now. There’s a game to be played, an All-Star game that fits as well here an evening breeze.

Welcome home. We are baseball.

bill.plaschke@latimes.com

twitter.com/billplaschke

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