1986 CITY 4-A BASEBALL FINAL: A LAST LOOK : Grant Answered the Call : Beck Supplied the Right Messages in Team’s Title Drive

The Grant High baseball team was taking infield Thursday when a phone in the home dugout at Dodger Stadium rang.

A group of startled Grant statisticians looked at each other, before one of them gathered enough nerve to pick up the line.

“Hello?” a girl answered. “Who is this? Rodney? Oh, Rodney .”

The person using the phone in the bullpen was the Lancers’ ace pitcher, Rodney Beck, who couldn’t resist playing with the Dodger Stadium phone system before Thursday’s game.

A few minutes later, it was Beck who answered the biggest call of his career.

Holding high-scoring Granada Hills to only three singles, Beck helped the Lancers defeat the Highlanders, 5-1, to capture the City 4-A championship.

“It just capped a brilliant career,” Grant Coach Tom Lucero said Friday about his star. “You just couldn’t finish a career any better. You couldn’t dream or imagine it better.”

After giving up an unearned run in the second inning, Beck allowed the first two batters in the third inning to reach base. The senior right-hander then retired 14 of the next 16 batters to give Grant its first championship in baseball.

Grant’s only other City title in its 27-year history came in 1974 when the boys tennis team won the championship.

“This victory means a lot to Grant High,” Lucero said. “It puts us on the map.”

It also put a strain on Lucero’s vocal cords. Since winning the title, he has been on the phone practically nonstop.

After Lucero got home Thursday night, he was on the phone until 2 a.m., accepting congratulations. The phone began ringing again at 6:40 a.m. Friday.

“It’s a very happy time for me, the school and the whole community,” Lucero said.

It didn’t appear early on that Grant would be in for a happy ending. Granada Hills, which came into the game with a 5-0 record in championship games, nearly scored a run in the first inning when Greg Fowble stole home. The run was negated because time had been called. The Highlanders scored a run in the second on a single, an error by Beck and two passed balls by catcher Sean Pettway.

In the first three innings, Grant had three errors.

“We had some early jitters,” Lucero said. “It’s an awesome feeling being there in Dodger Stadium, playing for a City title.”

But once the Lancers got four runs in the second to take a 4-1 lead, they settled down. Grant played flawless defense the last four innings.

“As soon as we got the lead, it calmed us down,” Lucero said. “It gave us a sense of strength.”

The biggest source of power came from the mound. Beck is an All-City pitcher last season who was selected in the 13th round of the amateur draft by the Oakland A’s. He won all four playoff games to finish the season 13-1.

“It’s going to take Rodney Beck a couple of days, a couple of weeks, a couple of months to fully realize what he’s accomplished,” Lucero said.

Beck may have sensed what he and his teammates had achieved when they arrived back at the Van Nuys campus around 11:15 p.m. on Thursday.

“We were met by about 250 students,” Lucero said. “They carried every player off of the bus and into the locker room. I just stood back and enjoyed it. It was a once-in-a-lifetime experience.”

One Lucero wouldn’t mind repeating one day.