Anatomy of an Escape : Former Taft Players Land at Reseda Through Web of Bureaucratic Intrigue

Mike Shwartzer and Matt Gilmore remember with vividness the day they were kicked off their high school baseball team. It happened minutes before Taft’s game against Reseda last year on May 13. The two boys and their teammates were warming up in the outfield--Shwartzer was scheduled to be the starting pitcher, Gilmore the shortstop--when Taft Coach Art Martinez motioned for his team to huddle along the third-base line.

The coach told the players he had heard about a petition and letter submitted to Principal Ron Berz, asking the administration to fire him, in part, because, according to the letter, Martinez lacked “the ability to motivate, has poor communication skills. He confuses discipline with fear and rules the team that way.”

Furthermore, Martinez said it had come to his attention that a number of his varsity players had signed the petition and now he wanted to know who they were. According to one of the players at the meeting, the coach asked: “Whoever has the guts should stand up and admit they signed it.”

Gilmore and Shwartzer raised their hands. Martinez responded by dropping them from the team. After the game, two more players confessed and also were given the heave-ho.

“He told us to get our stuff and get out,” Shwartzer said. “I was in shock. We just left.”

And since that day in May, Shwartzer and Gilmore have left Taft, as well. The incident, and the events that led to it, sent them on a journey through a mountain of red tape and high school administrative politics that only simmered down when they transferred to another school. Debris from the fallout remains, though, mostly in the form of accusations and contradictory stories between Taft administrators and Gilmore, Shwartzer and their families.

Ironically, both of them are now playing baseball at Reseda--for the team they never had a chance to play against last season.

The benefactor of the dissension, Reseda Coach Mike Stone, claims ignorance regarding what happened at Taft. “All I know,” he said recently, “is that they’re fine young men. Both of them have a good attitude and a good work ethic. Maybe they had a personality conflict over there. But I feel, in high school, it’s the coach’s job to adjust to kids.

“These players are extremely hard workers. It starts you wondering why a coach would let kids like this go.”

The world may never know. Other than saying, “I was just doing my job,” Martinez refuses to make any comment about his reaction to the petition and the subsequent unrest provoked among some players, parents and administrators.

What he calls doing his job almost got him fired.

In June, Taft administrators met with disgruntled parents, who voiced concerns over the way the school’s baseball program was being handled, and with Martinez. But Martinez was not fired, only monitored closely this season by Berz, and he remains as baseball coach.

That left Gilmore and Shwartzer, they say, with no alternative but to bolt.

Transferring, though, presented problems. Gilmore, who decided to go to Reseda because he had friends there, moved to an apartment within the school’s boundaries to comply with Los Angeles Unified School District policy. It was the quickest way out for Gilmore but the move has proved costly--the apartment in Encino costs his family $750 a month--and troublesome.

“It’s been a hassle,” said Gilmore, who helps pay for the apartment by working on weekends at a scrap-iron yard. “But there was no way I was going to stay. My brother and sister live with my mom in Woodland Hills. My dad and I live together here. It’s been a pain, but that’s how important baseball is to me.”

Gilmore could have avoided moving out of his home by taking Berz’s offer--an offer Berz now says he never made--of an opportunity transfer without athletic privileges.

Opportunity transfers allow students in the L.A. school district to move from one school to another if a principal decides the move would benefit a student. “It enables a student to be removed from a negative environment and put in a new environment,” said Hal Harkness, director of interscholastic athletics in the district. “It’s usually used in discipline cases or when there are gang problems or academic problems. It usually doesn’t involve problems in athletics.”

Nonetheless, Gilmore said Berz told him before school started in the fall that he could live at home and still be granted a transfer from Taft. He added, however, that he would not be eligible to play baseball at the new school during his senior season.

Berz denies ever offering Gilmore the transfer. “The kid never came to me and said he wanted an opportunity transfer,” the principal said. “Two weeks after school started in September, I heard he was living in another area. He had said he didn’t want to come back, but he never asked me for a transfer.”

But Gilmore said he was offered a transfer, rejected it, and packed his bags.

Shwartzer’s odyssey has taken a more complex and bizarre path. The only way out of Taft went straight through Berz’s office. And that escape route, according to Shwartzer and his parents, was an arduous one.

Berz offered to let the junior transfer to Granada Hills, Grant, Poly, Van Nuys or Kennedy before school started in September, but without athletic privileges. In Shwartzer’s case, that would disqualify him from playing football. He decided to stay at Taft and play football but not baseball.

Berz said he didn’t allow a transfer with athletic privileges at that time because he thought the Shwartzers wanted to transfer their son only for athletic reasons. Moving to a new school to improve his prospects in athletics was unacceptable to the principal. Also, Berz said, he thought Martinez and Shwartzer might be able to work out their problem.

The principal instigated peace talks between former player and coach in September. “I think Martinez felt progress had been made,” Berz said. “He felt that they might be able to work things out.”

But Shwartzer said the meeting was a failure. “I expressed my feelings to Mr. Martinez,” he said. “I didn’t respect him because of the way he had treated some of the players. That was about it. He didn’t say anything.”

During football season, Shwartzer moved from third-string to Taft’s No. 1 quarterback because of injuries. The Toreadors were 4-1 with him as the starting quarterback. He continued to play baseball, in a semipro league on Sundays. Some professional scouts, who routinely attend semipro games, advised Shwartzer to play high school baseball.

In January, he went back to Berz and told him he wanted back on the team.

After meeting with Martinez, Berz told Shwartzer that the coach didn’t want him. “Mr. Berz said Martinez felt I’d be a problem,” Shwartzer said.

Neither he, his parents nor Berz thought it would be in Shwartzer’s best interest to play baseball at Taft.

According to Shwartzer’s father, Howie, Berz met again with Martinez early in February and the next day informed Shwartzer that he could transfer with athletic privileges to El Camino Real.

Although Berz would not discuss specifically what changed his mind about allowing a transfer with athletic privileges, he admitted that Martinez’s negative attitude toward the student played an important role in the decision. He said Shwartzer’s recollection that Martinez considered him “a disruptive force” was an accurate assessment of the coach’s line of thinking. And because Berz chose not to fire Martinez after evaluating the complaints of some players and parents last summer, the solution was to let Shwartzer move on.

Berz’s choice of El Camino Real was, if not calculated, at least curious. Canoga Park, which was the Shwartzers’ choice because it was the closest school to their home, was considered out of the question by the Taft principal.

It is interesting and perhaps not coincidental that Canoga Park happens to play in the Sunset League--the same football league in which Taft plays. The Shwartzers say Berz did not want their son to play football against--and possibly help beat--his former team.

“Berz was trying to put Michael in a situation where he wouldn’t be playing football against Taft,” Howie Shwartzer said. “I got that much out of him. He said he knew Michael would help any team he played for.”

Berz denies that football or baseball was the reason he kept Shwartzer away from Canoga Park. “I never said that to Mr. Shwartzer,” he said. “In my 25 years of being involved in academics and sports, I haven’t seen one individual who could beat a whole team. I was not worried about football.

“It sounds to me like he wanted his son to get some notoriety by playing on a good team so he could get a scholarship somewhere.”

Even though Howie Shwartzer said all he wanted was “Micheal to go to a school close by with good academics,” he hinted that good football and baseball programs were also high on his list of priorities.

El Camino Real, which plays in the Valley 4-A League, fit into the first two categories, but the football team is not among the Valley-area’s best. During the past two seasons, El Camino’s record was 2-16. Not exactly the place a promising quarterback, nor his parents, would pick.

But, the Shwartzers felt, it was an out-of-the-way place for a principal of a Sunset League school to send a former quarterback who had memorized his old team’s playbook and who could pose a threat to his former team.

Howie Shwartzer said he forced the issue by going to Dan Isaacs, assistant superintendent of the high schools division of the L.A. Unified School District.

“He worked out an agreement with Berz to give us some choices,” the father said. “They came up with Reseda, El Camino and Birmingham. I asked, ‘Why not Canoga Park?’ They were worried about how it looked--a father calling the shots and getting the school he wanted. Berz told me, ‘I can’t have a boy and his father calling the shots.’ But I think he was mostly worried about the football thing.”

Berz’s response: “A parent doesn’t come in and say ‘I want my kid to go here or else.’ I considered El Camino because it is a neighboring school. When I mentioned that to Mr. Shwartzer, he said he didn’t want his son to go there. He was adamant about it.

“He was trying to pick a school because of sports. I thought he was shopping around for the best situation.”

So Berz played a little hardball himself. He refused to consider Canoga Park. He stood firm and offered only Reseda, El Camino Real or Birmingham.

Mike Shwartzer transferred to Reseda early in February.

“It took a long time,” he says now. “I felt sad leaving the Taft football team, but I’ve been accepted here. Both the baseball and football players have been good to me. Coach Stone never asked me about what happened at Taft. He just accepted me.”

Stone said he had little reason to do otherwise. He has inherited two of the best players in the area. The third-year coach looks at the Gilmore-Shwartzer transfers almost as if they were miracles--ones that will have a noteworthy effect on this year’s team.

“We were going to have a good team without these two,” Stone said. “Now it will be as good as any team we’ve had. These two are the reason.”

In three preseason games, Reseda is 3-0. It beat Chaminade, 17-0, Gardena, 4-2, and Birmingham, 10-2. In those games, Gilmore hit 11 doubles and a home run. Against Birmingham, the shortstop cracked five doubles in five at-bats. “He reminds me a lot of Robin Yount,” Stone said. Yount, who now plays for the Milwaukee Brewers, graduated Taft in 1973.

Shwartzer will pitch and play center field. “There’s no doubt that these two are impact players, and Mike is only a junior,” Stone said. “We’re glad to have them.”

And the two players are glad to be wanted.

Despite the emotional upheaval, the financial cost and the tedious transfer process, both players say if they were faced with similar circumstances, they would do it again.

“We just want to forget about all of it--the disagreements, the hassles,” Gilmore said. “We’re both really excited about this season. More excited than we’ve ever been before about a baseball season. Both of us think it’s been worth it.”