THE HEAT SEEKERS : A prep baseball star may have enough pressures with the game at hand, but many have to learn how to handle the added attention of scouts : Diversion Behind the Backstop

Between innings at a Sunny Hills-La Habra baseball game at La Habra High School scouts are performing a most traditional task--talking baseball.

The scout from the San Diego Padres is teasing the scout from the Detroit Tigers about failing to sign Tony Gwynn when he had the chance. Other scouts are talking of how the Angels did that day or about Bob Sharpnack from Fountain Valley, who threw a two-hitter the night before against Huntington Beach.

It’s easy to tell who’s who behind the backstop--just look for the gaudy jewelry, such as the diamond ring the Tiger scout has inscribed “1984 World Champions.”

Once Sunny Hills pitcher Paul Abbott takes the mound, however, the chatter stops and out come the stopwatches and notebooks.

Abbott, the principal object of affection of the 15 to 20 major league and college scouts present, is then given an eight-gun salute.

Eight “speed guns” are extracted from their portable carrying cases, looking like some kind of modified hair dryers or perhaps a ray gun from a “Star Wars” movie.

As the ball pops into the catcher’s mitt, the speed guns instantly record the approximate speed of the pitch, this one ranging from 82 m.p.h. to 86 m.p.h. on the variously-calibrated guns.

Later, with a full-count on that same batter, Abbott’s fastball is in the dirt in front of the plate, and the batter gets a walk to first base.

“See,” one scout behind the plate said to nobody in particular, “he’s pressing because we’re all here.”

Indeed. Though the walk didn’t hurt Abbott, who would pitch six of seven innings in a 17-3 rout of the Highlanders, the scout’s observation was a fair one. Abbott did seem to be trying to impress his visitors as much as he was trying to strike out the batter at hand.

“I don’t think Abbott had his really good stuff,” said Doug Elliott, Sunny Hills coach. “He was trying to overthrow it in certain situations. He seemed to be aiming it instead of just cutting loose.”

For a pitcher with Abbott’s speed and talent, overthrowing in that instance hardly hurt him, but it does raise the question about whether such baseball scouts indirectly pressure high school ballplayers.

“I know that they’re there,” Abbott said, “but when I’m on the mound, I try not to think about it. I just try to throw strikes.”

Scouts following Abbott didn’t become a distraction until the day Sunny Hills played a makeup game on a Monday--a day when no other teams in the county were playing.

Abbott threw a two-hitter and struck out 10. As best his coach figures, the extra scouts there saw all of the other scouts and figured that they must be on to something, hence the backstop legions he’s drawn in every game since.

“They see a big, 17-year-old kid throwing in the upper 80s (m.p.h.), and it gets their attention,” Elliott said.

That also applies to other big, hard-throwing pitchers in the county such as Sharpnack of Fountain Valley or Leonard Damian of Canyon.

“I see all of the guns in the stands, but I treat them like any other fans watching the game and just concentrate on the pitching,” Sharpnack said.

Earlier this season in the final of the Loara Tournament against Loara, several scouts showed up to watch Sharpnack pitch, but since it was a cold day and he felt tight, he threw one pitch and left the game.

Naturally, it works the other way around, too. Most scouts will try to see at least two to three players in one day, so they tend to stay at each game for maybe three innings, tops. But then they also miss something such as Damian hitting a tremendous home run in the last inning of a losing effort against Santa Ana recently.

Scouts hoping to discover the next Dwight Gooden, Fernando Valenzuela or Steve Sax spare little expense in their efforts to sign a potentially great player.

Mark Wulfemeyer, the former basketball and baseball star at Troy, recalled the time that a small army of scouts showed up to see him pitch his first game coming off a long basketball season.

“I walked the first six batters I faced and they all left,” Wulfemeyer said. “You knew which ones were scouts because they all looked the same.”

Whether scouts become a problem seems to depend on the attitude of the coaches and the players involved.

Bob Zamora at Capistrano Valley said that he doesn’t mind scouts at his games and usually even has a scorecard written out for them to copy down his lineup.

Zamora said that the presence of scouts has rarely been a problem for any of his players.

“That’s when you have to counsel your boy to just stay within himself,” Zamora said. “It doesn’t help the pitcher to be tense because your muscles don’t function as well as when you’re loose.”

Zamora said that former Capistrano Valley pitcher Bill Dodd, now on the Arizona State varsity, was good at relaxing when scouts were around with their speed guns and stopwatches.

“Scouts are only doing their job--just pooling information,” Zamora said. “They’re baseball people and I’m a baseball man, so I enjoy it when they come around. The kids get excited about it, too, because it means they’re playing in front of more people.”