FANTASY IN A CAGE : Pioneering Pair Provide Home on the Range for Two Generations of Avid Baseball Hitters

With the count at three and two, the kid dug in at the plate. It was the seventh game of the World Series.

Bases loaded. Two out. The Dodgers were down by three runs. Bret Saberhagen was pitching for the Royals. What a time for a major league debut, the kid thought as Saberhagen wound up and aimed a 100-m.p.h. fastball at the catcher’s mitt.

Crack!

The ball sailed over the center-field fence and into the history books. The kid waved his hat to acknowledge the cheers, then pulled a quarter out of his pocket and dropped it into a coin slot. The pitching machine came back to life and he stepped back up to the plate.

It was the bottom of the 12th, the deciding game of the playoffs, and Fernando was on the mound . . .

“I always make up games when I’m here,” said the kid, alias Mike Minter, an 18-year-old from North Hollywood who was taking his licks at Buddy’s Bat-a-Way in Van Nuys. “It’s easier to concentrate if I put myself in big situations and see if I can come through in the clutch.”

After a long winter layoff from baseball, Minter was indulging in a rite of spring, honing his batting eye in preparation for the season. While major leaguers have the advantage of batting against the real Valenzuelas and Saberhagens in spring training, Minter and thousands of players like him have to spend hours inside chain-link batting cages going one-on-one against tireless pitching machines.

For the past 26 years, Buddy’s has been the Vero Beach of the Valley. Before he played with the New York Mets, Greg Goossen grooved his swing at Buddy’s. In the off-season, Dusty Baker and Lee Lacy have kept in shape at Buddy’s. So have former major leaguers Ernie Banks and Don Buford. Orlando Cepeda, an ex-MVP in the National League, gives batting lessons to Valley kids in a cage named for Bob Gibson, Cepeda’s teammate on the St. Louis Cardinals.

“It was the first batting cage I ever saw,” Goossen said. “My younger sister used to call it ‘Batty’s Butt-a-Way.’ It sure helped me. I spent a lot of time there. Of course, there wasn’t much else to do 25 years ago.”

There are fewer than half a dozen batting ranges in the area these days, the high cost of land and insurance making them risky business enterprises. Opened in 1960, Buddy’s, by all accounts, was the first batting range in the Valley. Buddy and Lee Blatt, married for 31 years, also believe that the Bat-a-Way was the first batting range in California.

Lee’s father, Decky Brigati, designed and built in the 1940s the first pitching machine, the Pitchomat, according to the Blatts. Brigati, who died six years ago, owned nine ranges in the New York area. An inventor and tinkerer, Brigati, the Blatts said, came up with an arm-like mechanism that whips the ball accurately at speeds up to 95 m.p.h. Before his machine, amusement parks used a primitive device called the Bazooka, which was erratic and, said Lee Blatt, “very dangerous.”

The Blatts moved to Los Angeles in 1958. They built their batting range themselves on Ventura Boulevard in Studio City and had what Lee calls a “new concept.” Unlike Brigati, who basically was in the amusement business, the Blatts, she said, “opened our range as a serious practice area for teams.”

In 1967, they temporarily went out of business but reopened at their present location just off Van Nuys Boulevard. Although they originally built the batting range as a business venture, it quickly became more like a hobby, with their real estate deals becoming their primary source of income. Buddy, however, still spends about 60 hours a week at the range; Lee still does the repairs and their boys, Marc and Jeffrey, still help out.

“People ask me why I’m here, and I tell them it’s just part of me,” Buddy said. “I love it, although I don’t really admit it and I can’t really understand why I do it. I’m from back East, and this is kind of like the old family candy store. People came and met here and they still do. Only now the people who once brought their kids are bringing their grandchildren. Fathers tell me they can drop their kids off here and know they’ll be safe. It’s true. We watch them.”

Buddy is almost reverential about the Bat-a-Way. He pointed out the large black-and-white photos of Babe Ruth in the office, the five cages named for great major league pitchers, the homemade machines, the netting that he and Lee lock-stitch by hand, the ball-distribution system that Lee invented, the 13 video games that, he said, “We don’t advertise because we don’t want that type of business.”

As a Southern Pacific freight train rumbled past the industrial neighborhood, Blatt sat down at a picnic table and reminisced about the Bat-a-Way.

“We charged 25 cents for seven balls when we opened and we still do,” he said. “My father-in-law charged 25 cents. That’s what it should be. But we can charge that little only because we’re a mom-and-pop operation, and it has to remain that way.”

Blatt was watching Cepeda give lessons to Brian Herbert, a baseball player at Chatsworth High. Herbert’s father, Jim, watched as Cepeda sat on a bench by the cage and shouted encouragement.

“Never be afraid to get jammed--never,” Cepeda said. “Be aggressive.” Brian whacked a liner that stretched the netting 105 feet away. “See, nice and easy,” Cepeda said. “Beautiful. Perfect. Atta boy.”

Cepeda turned to another observer and said, “Brian’s a good-looking prospect, and being here is the best thing for a kid.”

The Blatts’ gear-driven machine has an arm that propels the ball, but most contemporary machines use two wheels that rotate in opposite directions and spit the ball out. Cepeda likes the arm better because the spinning action it puts on the ball simulates a real pitch. But the manufacturer of the newer machines says that his device makes up in accuracy what it lacks in authenticity.

“Our accuracy is unbelievable,” said Brad Schade of the Atec Corp. in Oregon. “The Model A machines have been around a long time, but they can’t match the sophistication of the ones we’ve been manufacturing for the last 10 years. Our machine is capable of throwing curves, sliders, anything a human can do, but we don’t put this type in a commercial range because we don’t want some kid leaning over the plate and getting beaned trying to hit a curve. We sell those kind of machines to colleges and high schools.”

Atec has installed nine machines, which cost $18,000 each, at the three-year-old Castle Batting Park in Sherman Oaks. One of the innovations of the Atec system is the softball machine. Castle has four of them, including one that throws high-arc lobs for slo-pitch. Unlike Buddy’s, Castle attracts women who play on softball teams.

On a recent afternoon, Shelley Wiggins of Sherman Oaks arrived at the range to practice for her church softball team. She took off her high heels, put on her sneakers, borrowed a batting glove and stepped up to the plate.

Wiggins, 19, said she was a little rusty. The machine lobbed a ball and she ducked. Then she whiffed a few times before making contact. After pouring in a handful of quarters (you get 25 balls for $1 at Castle), she began hitting line drives.

“I thought it would be easier,” she said, rubbing her hands, which were developing blisters. “But I’m satisfied. I haven’t played for a long time.”

Castle Batting Park, like Buddy’s, rents its cages to teams for $15 an hour and also shares something else with the Van Nuys facility:Both the Blatts and Castle manager Terry Terranova are reluctant to discuss the nuts and bolts of the business. At first, they were suspicious about being interviewed.

“Lee spent all this time with these guys who said they were from Cal State Northridge and were doing a term paper on us,” Buddy said. “It turns out they just wanted to learn our business. So they opened their own batting range and went broke. It wasn’t as easy as they thought.”

Terranova had a similar experience. “This lady was coming around asking questions,” he said. “I knew what she was up to and I warned her, ‘You look at this as a gold mine but it’s not.’ We just happen to have a great location here. But she wouldn’t listen. She opened up her own range and she’s starving.”

Potential competitors, Lee said, “have tried every ploy in the book” to discover the Blatts’ secrets. Over the last 26 years, the Blatts have sold machines to other batting ranges, Lee said, with bad results. “They buy one machine, copy it and build their own,” she said. “So you have to fight them in court.”

Industrial espionage aside, most of the action at Buddy’s takes place inside the batting cages. After Cepeda and his protege left the medium-fast cage, a middle-aged man in a business suit went in, removed his coat and dress shirt and began flailing away at the balls. He stayed for about 45 minutes, spending about $5. It seems that he takes long lunch hours at least four times a month to regain his batting touch.

“Don’t use my name for the story,” he said. “I’m supposed to be at the office.” Then he shrugged. “Hey, it’s spring training.”