CLOSE-UP : Resident Experts on JC Baseball Recruits

Their coaches used to tell them that they had to leave the game on the field to stay sane. “Don’t take it home with you,” the coaches said.

Consider, then, the plight of Tim Collins and Doug Dingman.

Collins, 26, is the new baseball coach at Pierce College. Dingman, 24, is in his second year at Mission College.

Both are fiercely competitive.

Both eat, sleep and drink baseball--and live in the same apartment in Northridge.

They’ve been roommates for 1 1/2 years, but adversaries only since June.

“When you walk into our house,” said Collins, who is already thinking like a manager, “you have to be aware of the ground rules.”

Most of those rules apply to the recruiting of baseball players.

Pierce, Mission and Valley colleges compete for the same Valley-area high school talent.

“It was very uncomfortable around here when Tim first got the job,” said Dingman. “We were used to battling each other on the baseball field and the racquetball court. But not on the telephone.”

To help ease the competition for the telephone lines, the coaches have different numbers and separate answering machines.

“It’s nothing new,” said Collins, who worked last season as an assistant coach at Granada Hills High. “The way we used to walk down the street was a contest. We’ve had to almost make a pact not to mention the word competitive anymore.”

Away from their athletic encounters, the two coaches are close friends.

They were teammates at Mission and classmates at Cal State Northridge, where both earned degrees in physical education.

With recruiting for next season completed, they agree that the competition is over--for now.

The real work for both will begin later this month when school and practices begin.

Pierce, which plays in the Metropolitan Conference, was 10-15 overall last season. Mission, which plays in the Mountain Valley Conference, was 6-22 overall.

The teams will play just one non-conference game.

“You can make it as much of a rivalry as you want,” Dingman said. “Whatever happens, it’s not going to be a life or death situation.”

But it will hit close to home.