Youngsters Find Way to Handle Pressure During Summer Baseball Tournaments

It’s a ritual of juvenile competition at its most feverish.

About 20,000 youth baseball teams around the world are whittled down to a handful during a six-week whirlwind of screaming line drives, screeching parents and scratchy renditions of the Star Spangled Banner.

Three Valley-area teams advanced this summer to state tournaments or beyond. The Van Nuys-Sherman Oaks Babe Ruth League (14-15 year-olds) team is in the World Series, which begins Sunday in Jamestown, N.Y.

Conejo Valley’s Junior League (13-year-olds) and Northridge’s Little League (11-12 year-olds) teams each won three tournaments before being eliminated at the state divisional level less than two weeks ago.

The number of youth baseball tournament games held this summer would exceed the number of games played in 20 years of major league baseball. Surviving the grueling schedule required more than the ability to pitch and hit. The mental game was every bit as challenging.

Yet behind the astonishing numbers were normal youngsters who enjoyed the grind. Faced with increasing pressure as they climbed the tournament ladder, the three successful Valley teams coped in many ways.

The Tight Collar

The 12-year-old middle infielder from Northridge had the pained look of a stressed-out, middle-aged middle manager as he walked to the plate with the score tied and the bases loaded.

Ringing in his ears were the exhortations of the Northridge fans. They wanted performance. Now.

“Light him up!” a father yelled.

“The first good pitch you see,” barked another, “hit it hard!”

His cherubic countenance contorted by tension, the boy took a deep breath and stepped into the batter’s box.

“I think the kids handle the pressure better than the adults,” Northridge Manager Jeff LaCour said. “Most of the kids have played at an all-star level of some sport or another since age 8.”

A symptom of self-imposed pressure is superstitious behavior. As Northridge wound its way through tournament play, rituals rivaling those of the recent harmonic convergence were repeated, not by the players, but by their parents.

“They’d eat the same food, wear the same clothes, sit in the same place in the stands,” LaCour said.

Van Nuys-Sherman Oaks had to withstand taunts during a regional game last week against Oakland. Every time an Oakland player scored, he turned to the Van Nuys-Sherman Oaks crowd, ran a finger across the Oakland stenciled on his jersey and held up the finger in a “We’re No. 1-and-don’t-you- ever -forget-it” gesture.

“It was a game of intimidation,” said Van Nuys-Sherman Oaks Manager Chuck Martin, whose team won, 7-5.

The frenzy of games contrasts starkly with the tranquility of practices. Alone except for crows wandering the outfield, fully occupied with nothing more than bats and balls, the boys are insulated from parents and pressure.

Practice is a time to loosen up, although adolescent behavior can be impetuous.

A Conejo Valley player picked up a golf ball during a practice and without a second thought smacked it with a bat, not noticing until the ball was flying with the force of a Nicklaus drive that it was headed directly at a truck being driven by Thousand Oaks High varsity baseball Coach Jim Hansen.

Luckily, the coach didn’t notice the ball whizzing by the windshield--13-year-old whimsy missing disaster by a whisker.

Practices, however peaceful in their own right, prepare a team for games. And as game day approaches, pressure mounts.

“One player had a recurring nightmare,” Conejo Valley Manager Lance O’Fallon said. “He dreamed he’d be late for a game and discover everyone gone. He’d call his teammates in a panic, unable to find out the score.”

The Beach Beckons

Although the youngsters from Garden Grove had lost, they sported wide grins as they shook hands with their opponents, looking for all the world like they’d been freed from San Quentin.

Conejo Valley had eliminated Garden Grove from the state playoffs moments earlier, but it was tough telling the winners from the losers.

The boys from Conejo Valley were assured a game the next day, their fifth in five days.

The boys from Garden Grove were assured a lazy summer day, the kind they’d longed for when school let out in June.

“We won but I could see that a lot of guys were getting tired,” O’Fallon said.

The seemingly endless maze of tournament games soon becomes a major test of mettle.

“Kids always think of other things they could be doing, but the World Series is a once-in-a-lifetime chance,” said Earl Stone, a Little League administrator who supervised the state tournament.

Once-in-a-lifetime has been twice-in-two-years for six players from Van Nuys-Sherman Oaks who played on last year’s Pony Baseball World Series championship team from Newhall.

“Those guys have really made the difference,” Martin said. “They have lots of experience and maturity.”

Still, the grueling schedule has taken its toll on the Van Nuys-Sherman Oaks players.

“Tempers are getting short and there is a bit of bickering going on,” Martin said. “They’ve been together too long. But it’s funny, the bickering ends when a game starts. Then they’re all business.”

Northridge had 11 games in 16 days after falling into the losers’ bracket of two tournaments. The parents tired more quickly than the players.

“The sense of relief when it was over came from the parents,” LaCour said.The Hits, the Pitches

When asked about their teams’ success, all three managers make like Babe Ruth: They point to the outfield fence.

Van Nuys-Sherman Oaks (10-0) is batting .424 with 26 home runs and 134 runs scored; Conejo Valley (11-2) batted .390 and scored 130 runs; Northridge (13-3) batted .339 and scored 125 runs.

“When you’re scoring 10, 12 runs a game it takes pressure off the defense,” Martin said. “When you’re not hitting, every defensive play counts.”

Van Nuys-Sherman Oaks won the Pacific Southwest final, 26-15, over Oakland with a Ruthian display of seven home runs.

“We don’t have a take sign,” said Dave Kramer, coach of the Van Nuys-Sherman Oaks team. “The bat is to be used. We take our normal batting practice, but if you ask the kids, they’ll tell you they go to the cages on their own.”

Said O’Fallon: “As long as we hit well we won. We lost when we stopped hitting.”

Hitters rarely tire, but the same can’t be said for pitching arms. When a team is forced into the losers’ bracket, the real losers are the pitchers.

“A number of times I threw kids on one day rest,” said LaCour, whose team twice fell into losers’ brackets. One Northridge pitcher tossed complete games on Monday, Wednesday and Saturday of the same week.

Tim Hughes, assistant to the president of Little League baseball in Williamsport, Pa., claims that the more talent a pitcher has, the more innings he can pitch in a short period of time.

“At the tournament level you’re seeing the cream-of-the-crop players,” Hughes said. “For that reason, we haven’t had a problem yet with overusing pitchers. I’m not aware of any move to change the pitching rules.”

Van Nuys-Sherman Oaks has found the best way to avoid overusing pitchers--stay in the winners’ bracket.

“We’ve been lucky in that respect,” Kramer said. “If we’d have lost our first game last Saturday, we’d have had to use a pitcher in the second game who’d had one day rest.”

The Friendships

A casual observer might ask, what kind of game is full of obnoxious fans, overused pitchers, incompetent umpires and kids strung out by pushy parents and coaches?

And why do kids come back every year for more?

Those involved point out that youngsters develop friendships marked by uncommon caring and courtesy, the type of bonds formed between people committed to a common goal.

And spending weeks on end with boys in their early teens is an education for the coaches. “The kids show great maturity on the field but when you have a party or eat out as a team you’re struck by how young they really are,” O’Fallon said.

Said LaCour: “Twelve-year-olds continually crack jokes. They talk about Wrestlemania, skateboards, the Ouija board spirit that tagged us through divisional.”

Except for discussing girls, topics of interest to 15-year-olds aren’t much different. “This is not a serious bunch,” Martin said.

Until game day. And after games, the Van Nuys-Sherman Oaks players scout future opponents.

“After we win we pull out our beach chairs and have a little party,” Martin said. “When the next game starts, the kids study the pitchers, they study how middle infielders cover second base. They are real students of the game.”

The 12-year-olds aren’t that sophisticated.

“Win or lose, we take them to a pizza place,” LaCour said. “While the parents are rehashing the game, the kids are having fun.”

When the run that eliminated Conejo Valley crossed the plate and the players realized their lengthy run of fun was over, there were no tears. The crowd applauded warmly and a postgame gathering at a pizza parlor had the mood of an Irish wake.

Sincere appreciation was expressed to O’Fallon by parents and players. The celebration lasted until well after dark, parents sitting in the restaurant sharing final memories.

Meanwhile, the players spent their last moments together in the parking lot, dashing around under a street light in their dusty uniforms, using a beach ball as a baseball and a Buick as first base.