Jordan Wins Games, Not Friends, With Intimidating Style

There is a championship to be won here this weekend, and Barbara Jordan, Cal State Northridge’s menace with a cause, is ready to create havoc.

Jordan, a senior, will play center field and bat leadoff for Northridge in the NCAA Division II softball tournament beginning today and ending Sunday. If all goes well, she’ll get some hits, steal a couple of bases, make a diving catch or two, stare down a few opponents, mouth off to at least one umpire and leave in a stained and dusty uniform clutching a first-place trophy. Should her college career end any other way?

Sending Jordan out to play in a game with 17 generally mild-mannered college girls is like turning Rambo loose in a Cub Scout troop. She is a three-time All-American whose actions do not always befit the title. Her own coach describes her as “gnarly.”

But no one questions Jordan’s mettle. They question her manners. She is, perhaps, the least-liked yet most respected women’s softball player in the nation.

“She’s an intimidator,” CSUN Coach Gary Torgeson says. “If your foot is there, she’ll step on it. That’s the way she is.”

Jordan will do just about anything to gain the upper hand during a game. She impedes a catcher’s path to a bunt by flipping her bat backward. On close--and sometimes not-so-close--plays at first, she steamrolls past the bag with such force that she has, on occasion, spun a first baseman in a circle.

“I hate to get out,” she says. “Getting on base is my job and I do it any way I can.”

Jordan, 21, may be somewhat of a rogue, but she can come across quite innocently when she looks you straight in the face with her large, hazel eyes and says, “Sometimes I just get out of control and I don’t know what I’m doing.”

Case in point: In the West regional tournament last Friday in Sacramento, Jordan was called out on a close play. She jumped up, pointed emphatically at the umpire and screamed something to the effect that she disagreed with the call.

“When I got back in the dugout, they said, ‘Don’t point like that at the umpire,’ ” Jordan recalled. “I said, ‘Point?’ I didn’t point . . . Did I?’ ”

And that’s not all she did.

After Northridge rallied to go ahead in Saturday’s championship game, she ran onto the field with a bat and led the CSUN fans in a cheer. Jordan punctuated her performance by using the bat handle to beat the smithereens out of the chain link fence behind home plate. All of this took place while the opposing coach was about 50 feet away, making a pitching change.

“I was so happy we scored I just had to go do that,” Jordan says. “It was a little too much excitement for me to keep inside.”

Jordan’s outburst earned the Northridge team a warning from the home plate umpire, but Torgeson called the incident harmless. “That’s part of her personality,” he says with a shrug. “She’s an intense person and sometimes it all spills over.”

Northridge second baseman Kim Bernstein, who has known her for seven years, says Jordan, for all her boisterous behavior afield, is “very thoughtful and will go out of her way to help a person,” but “when she steps on the field she has a whole new attitude, a whole new look. There’s a fire in her eyes.”

Alan Segal, a Sacramento assistant coach, said opponents have come to expect such emotional displays from Jordan.

“She’s cocky and some of her stuff borders on unsportsmanlike, but that’s the emotional roller coaster they play,” Segal says. “Northridge needs that kind of thing to stay up and play their best. She’s their spark. She gets the players up and the crowd going.”

Northridge administrators are sometimes not as understanding. “I’ve been told on a number of occasions to keep Barbara Jordan in the dugout,” Torgeson says.

But that is easier said than done. Supervising Jordan is no simple task.

She has been known to pilfer a poster from a restaurant and sneak it into the team’s hotel--Torgeson caught her in the act. She was also caught playing in a sorority basketball game only minutes after being warned not to participate by Torgeson, who was afraid she might injure herself.

“Barbara is a natural, whether it’s playing softball or getting into trouble,” Torgeson says. “She’s a great player, but she can be a real pain in the butt sometimes.”

Says Jordan: “If there’s trouble, I usually find it. I’m curious, I guess. And I like to have fun.”

She is mischievous, but not malicious.

“I don’t know how people see me, but I hope it’s in a good, competitive way,” Jordan says. “It bothers me sometimes that people might think I’m a bad person. I’m really a nice person. It’s just that I’m very competitive.”

Her spirit was instilled as a youngster growing up in Northridge, the second youngest of Elmer and Gloria Jordan’s five children. There were 35 children living in the 14 homes on Tulsa Street--most of them older boys--and Barbara Jordan played as roughly and as toughly as any.

“Three or four boys would come to our door and they wouldn’t be looking for either one of our sons,” Elmer Jordan says. “They’d want to know if Barbara could come out and play.”

Jordan says she was accepted as one of the boys because she played like one.

“I had to be good because I was one of the only girls playing,” she says. “We’d play football and baseball on the cement and I’d dive after a ball and they’d laugh. They were never easy on me. I’d get hurt, but it was fun.”

Jordan still has a habit of throwing her body into the game. She rarely slides, more often choosing to hurl herself headfirst at a base.

“If I come home dirty, my mom and dad know I had a good game,” she says. “If I’m not, they say, ‘Why aren’t you dirty, Barb?’ I like being dirty. It makes me feel like I’ve done something.”

Jordan’s experience on the cement playgrounds and blacktop of Tulsa Street helped her become a three-year starter at Granada Hills High, where she played on a City championship team her sophomore year.

She says she always wanted to play for Northridge but didn’t think she was good enough.

If that was the case, Torgeson says, she had an odd way of showing it. “She wasn’t exactly my favorite player that first year,” he says. “She didn’t care what anyone thought about her--not even her teammates.

“When things didn’t go her way, she could be awful. She’d pout, and yell at umpires, and throw her bat and helmet. She was all show. There were times when I didn’t think I could take her for another minute.”

Torgeson said she has learned to pick her spots.

“There is a purpose for most of the things she does,” he said. “She’s a born leader--a natural catalyst at doing just about anything--and instead of being a sideshow, she’s learned to use her talents productively.”

Jordan is batting .346 and leads the team with 63 hits and 19 stolen bases in 23 attempts.

“She fits into the Northridge mold perfectly,” Sacramento’s Segal says. “Any team would love to have her at the top of its order. No matter how mad she makes you, you have to respect her talent and the fact that she plays to win at all costs.”

That most assuredly will be evident as top-ranked Northridge tries to reclaim the national title. The Lady Matadors had won three consecutive national championships before losing to Stephen F. Austin, Texas, 1-0, in the 1986 championship game in Akron, Ohio.

Austin is not in this year’s final four, having moved up to Division I status, but that makes little difference to Jordan.

“We want our title back and I believe we’ll get it,” she says. “They took it away last year. They never should have done that. I hate to lose.”

Notes

Jordan became a three-time All-American at an NCAA awards luncheon here Thursday afternoon. Joining her on the first team were teammates Debbie Dickman, a freshman pitcher; Lori Shelly, a senior shortstop; and senior Priscilla Rouse, who was the designated-player. Kelly Winn, a senior first baseman, made the second team. . . . Northridge (55-7) will play Mankato State, Minn. (48-8-2) in its first-round game at 11:30 a.m. today at Maranatha Park. Dickman (21-3, 0.47 earned-run average) will start for CSUN. . . . Mankato State, which was placed in the Mid-Atlantic regional, advanced to the final four in the same fashion as CSUN, losing its first game, then winning three in a row. . . . Mankato State had won 23 straight before losing to Shippensburg, Penn., 3-1, in the first round of the regional, 3-1. Carrie Tschida, a sophomore with a 34-7-1 record, is expected to start for the Mavericks. Teresa Lenzen (.388) and Lori Doffing (.362) are Mankato’s top batters. . . . Florida Southern (47-4) plays Sacred Heart, Conn. (40-5) in today’s other game. The losing teams play at 9 a.m. Saturday and the winners at 11:30 a.m.