FIELDER’S CHOICE : Baseball Fields That Really Make the Grade Don’t Come Easy

Bob Ickes, Mater Dei High School baseball coach, spends nine hours each weekend maintaining the Monarchs’ baseball field. His wife must take care of the yard work at home.

Bob Zamora of Capistrano Valley lives up the hill from the Cougars’ field and keeps a watchful eye for anyone who defies the No Trespassing signs. Zamora never hesitates to call Orange County sheriff deputies when he spies an intruder on his team’s field.

Doug Elliott, Sunny Hills’ coach, awoke at 3:30 a.m. last Friday and rushed to the Lancers’ playing field because he had forgotten to turn off a sprinkler.

Fanatical? Perhaps.

Extraordinary? Not really.

Today’s prep baseball coaches are a combination groundskeeper, construction foreman, security guard and fundraiser. They’re equally adept with a fungo bat or a rake. Most of them spend more time caring and feeding for their facilities than actually coaching.

Whether you call it a labor of love or a ploy to instill pride in the program, many coaches are spending countless hours building and maintaining their campus baseball facilities.

Crushed brick infields are becoming commonplace. So is neatly manicured, high-bred Bermuda grass, backdrops in the outfield and dugouts of brick. The best fields are the culmination of hard work and community effort over the years.

El Dorado’s baseball field is acknowledged as Orange County’s finest prep diamond. The Placentia Unified School District can point to excellent facilities at Esperanza and Valencia as well.

Other schools with showcase diamonds are Mater Dei, Foothill, Laguna Hills, Capistrano Valley, Sunny Hills and Fountain Valley. It’s no coincidence that many of these schools are among the county’s most successful programs.

“If a coach has pride in his program, the biggest thing he can do is to build and maintain the best facility possible,” Ickes said. “I think it’s important to show your players that, as a coach, you’re willing to do the extra things that need to be done to have a first-class program.”

Ickes has spent 11 years improving the Monarchs’ field, which boasts the county’s only electronic scoreboard. He spends four hours each Saturday and five hours on Sunday at the field.

The scoreboard, which cost $2,000, was donated two years ago by former Monarch star Bobby Meacham, now with the New York Yankees. The Monarchs have added a field locker room and a clubhouse this season.

For those who dismiss a correlation between a good facility and winning, the Monarchs (15-0) are the only unbeaten team in the Southern Section’s 4-A division.

Gerry Sedoo, the Foothill coach, also believes a good facility will help develop good players. Sedoo was the first county coach to have a crushed-brick infield.

“I want my players to have pride in their field, and I want to teach kids in the best atmosphere possible,” he said. “It took 10 years to complete our field, and we’re still working on it. It takes a long time.

“If you’re going to be a high school baseball coach, you better know how to hold up a rake because there’s a lot of groundskeeping involved.”

Sedoo learned how to handle a rake and then went a step further. He went to Joe Verdi, former Angels groundskeeper, for advice on how to prepare a good infield.

“Joe couldn’t help enough,” Sedoo said. “He came out to our school one Saturday and worked with me from 7:30 in the morning until 5:30 that night. Then, he introduced me to the folks at Corona Clay to get the brick infield.”

A good baseball facility is often judged by its infield. Critics of the Knights’ facility point to an abrupt slope in right field, but the infield is as good as any in the county.

For a total package, few compare with El Dorado. Angel stars Bob Boone, Fred Lynn and Dick Schofield spent the off-season training there.

Among its features are:

Two full batting cages and four half cages equipped with two permanent pitching machines and three jug machines.

Nine bullpen mounds and a 25-foot-high by 60-foot-wide backdrop in center field for the hitters.

High-quality Bermuda grass fields on both the varsity and junior varsity diamonds that are maintained by a full-time maintenance man, Jose Borrozo.

“Everything is here for a player to develop,” said Steve Gullotti, the Golden Hawks’ coach. “A player can get in as much hitting practice as he wants, anytime during the day. We can even videotape a player’s workout.”

Of course, Gullotti paid the price for such luxuries. He shares his $20,000 facility with the West Placentia Little League, which donates a sizeable sum every year to maintain the facility.

“You have to give a little to get a little,” Gullotti said. “An electric scoreboard is in the works. We’ll have it in less than 12 months.”

By contrast, Capistrano Valley’s field is off limits to outsiders. Zamora lives in a housing tract behind the Cougars’ field, and he walks to school every morning to lift weights, stopping only to turn on the field’s sprinklers.

On the weekends, he chases off unwelcomed visitors.

“I’ve been spit at, threatened and punched by guys who wouldn’t leave,” he said. “It doesn’t take long for a group of beer-drinking softball players to screw up your field.”

There’s a reason Zamora is so attached to his field. He watched from his house for two years as the school was being constructed. He was coaching at Dana Hills at the time.

“I used to go down there and measure fields in the dirt, hoping that someday I would get the coaching job here,” he said. “I’ve spent a lot of time working on our field, but it’s been a great release for me.”

Jack Hodges of Laguna Hills, who coached the Hawks to the 2-A division title last season, patterned his field after Capistrano Valley’s. The Hawks’ diamond lies on a plateau behind campus with a picturesque view of a wilderness area beyond the outfield fence.

While the view is nice, the steep slope behind the fence means that the Hawks lose many baseballs in practice. Some players have found snakes in search of lost balls.

Hodges remembers 1984 U.S. Olympic team member Eric Fox, from Capistrano Valley, disappearing into the wilderness while chasing a long fly ball.

“When I first got here, the fence in center field was a lot shorter,” Hodges said. “Eric went back for the ball, leaned way over the fence and then disappeared. He didn’t appear again for a couple of minutes. We ran out to see if he was hurt, and he had fallen all the way down the hill.

“We decided to build a 10-foot fence out there the next year. My goal has always been to build a field as nice as Capo Valley’s. The last time Bob was here, he told me we might have surpassed his place. That was the ultimate compliment.”

Mike Curran of Esperanza said he patterned his field after El Dorado.

“The first time I went over there, I saw Steve’s facility and asked him how he did it,” Curran said. “Then, for the next two years, we killed ourselves trying to make our place as nice as his.

“For two years, I spent every Saturday and Sunday here working on the field. There were times when our fundraising stayed just ahead of the bill collectors. But we got it done. The bottom line is, if you want the facility, you better do it yourself.”