Baseball: Fairfax roaring toward possible playoff berth

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Fairfax’s baseball team has a chance to make the City Section playoffs, which wouldn’t seem to merit a second thought.

Unless you consider the backstory.

The Lions haven’t made the playoffs in 20 years and were coming off back-to-back one-win seasons when Rocky Sherwood took over as coach before last year. Interest in the program was so lax that Sherwood said he ‘had to literally walk around the campus and recruit players who looked like athletes.’

Fairfax won six games in Sherwood’s first season and now the Lions (12-9 overall, 5-4 Western League) are one game behind third-place University with three games to play. The top three teams from the league make the playoffs.

‘Winning three of three is a perfect world but we’re thinking two of three will get us in,’ Sherwood said.

It won’t be easy.

Fairfax plays the Los Angeles Center for Enriched Studies on Thursday before closing the regular season next week with first-place Palisades and Venice.

The Lions are led by hard-throwing junior right-hander Anthony Giannelli, whose fastball touches 87 mph. Giannelli also plays first base and leads the team with five home runs. Junior shortstop Tony Gasparetti is a capable leadoff hitter and senior catcher Vince Gamez has what Sherwood describes as a ‘major league arm.’

The team is starting to generate some interest at the basketball-crazed school. One year after barely having enough players to field varsity and junior varsity teams, 55 players showed up for tryouts prior to this season.

‘The school’s always been known for basketball,’ Sherwood said. ‘It’s been 20 years since we made the playoffs, so things are starting to get kind of exciting.’

--Ben Bolc