At Mammoth, It’s Snowballs and Fastballs

It takes an eternal optimist to deal with a situation such as this, which is why Regan Greene has been so successful as baseball coach at Mammoth High School, the Southern Section’s part-time indoor team and full-time roadies.

The high-water mark for this program occurred in 1978, when the Huskies got to play three home games. That set a record.

Otherwise, Mammoth has battled adverse weather conditions, mostly snow, in the Eastern Sierra by alternating practices between the school gym and the softball field at Bishop High, which entails a 90-mile round trip every other day.

Practicing at Bishop means leaving at 1:30 and coming home at 6, a busload of players going down Sherwin Grade at 45 m.p.h. and back up later at 20 m.p.h., losing, then regaining 3,000 feet of altitude.

It’s a roller-coaster ride that Greene has adjusted to in his 14 years as coach.

“In the beginning, when I was right out of Whittier College, it was real easy to feel sorry for myself,” he said. “Then I realized this is the way it is. You’ve got to put things in perspective. Really, we probably should never win a ballgame, and yet we do win, and we win consistently. I receive a lot of satisfaction from that. If I was at some other school, I might go to the CIF finals every year and not be as satisfied.

“We try to take our adversity and turn it into a positive situation. Our kids probably get at least 300 cuts a day in the gym. We have a lot of hitting drills--soft toss, hitting off the tee, that sort of thing. That’s how we make our living. We certainly aren’t going to beat anybody with our defense.”

Indoor practices are, of course, an inconvenience. It’s pretty hard to work on defensive alignments and hook slides. But the gym really looks like a batting cage when the baseball team is inside, what with the nets that drop from the ceiling to provide some protection from baseballs flying against the walls and bleachers.

“The walls are live,” Greene said. “We could beat anybody in a gym.”

They haven’t done too badly outside, either, especially considering that a pitching mound is a part-time luxury. The Huskies, who play most “home” games at a park in Bishop and average just three weeks a season on their own diamond, opened the season as the No. 9 team in the Small Schools Division and are 5-3, with their next outing Saturday at Big Pine.

Through it all, Mammoth, with an enrollment this year of 190, has consistently finished second or third in the six- and seven-team Desert-Inyo Small League. Several players have gone on to play in college, and one, Paul Rowan, was an All-American at Whittier College and spent some time in the Montreal Expos’ system.

“We’re taking something that seems pretty impossible and making it happen,” Greene said.

Bishop O’Dowd of Oakland has had the state Division I basketball title passed under its nose three times and come away with nothing more than a good whiff. The run-down is worth repeating, considering the events of Saturday night at the Oakland Coliseum Arena:

--1983: The Northern California champions came to the Sports Arena as the No. 1 team in the state and winners of 31 straight but fell behind to John Williams and Crenshaw by 13 points in the first half. They rallied to tie the game on a layup by Tony Ronzone with two seconds left in regulation. In overtime, Crenshaw outscored the Dragons, 9-2.

--1986: Given little chance to beat a Crenshaw team with far more talent--Stephen Thompson, Ronald Caldwell and Dion Brown--Bishop O’Dowd led by a point in the final minute. But with five seconds to play, Caldwell sank a baseline jump shot, giving the Cougars a one-point win.

--1988: The topper of them all. Bishop O’Dowd was outscored at the start of the second half, 20-0, but still regained the lead by the fourth quarter. With 15 seconds to play, Manual Arts’ Chris Small went to the line for a one-and-one, and missed the first. Mike Dunes leaped for the rebound for O’Dowd, but was called for traveling as soon as he hit the floor.

Manual Arts converted the opportunity, Wayne Williams making a fall-away 8-footer with 8 seconds to play.

O’Dowd’s response was Lou Richie’s 5-footer from the lane that bounced up and dropped in just as the clock turned to :00--only to have the game-winner disallowed because the officials--both officials--ruled that Dunes touched the ball on the way down.

How’s this for a nightmare of a football schedule that awaits Loyola of Los Angeles--particularly its defense--in the fall?

--Week 3: Eisenhower of Rialto, with running back Dennis Collier, who gained 1,384 yards as a junior.

--Week 4: Antelope Valley, with one of the top, and most versatile, players in the state, running back-tight end-linebacker Tommie Smith.

--Week 5: Santa Ana, which has several players back from one of the most talented teams in the Southern Section or City last season.

--Week 9: Servite of Anaheim, a nonleague game in the middle of the league season because the Del Rey League will have only five teams in 1988. The Friars have Derek Brown, yet another outstanding running back.

--Week 10: Crespi of Encino, with the best runner of all, Russell White.

Prep Notes

Last Tuesday’s boys’ volleyball showdown between Loyola of Los Angeles, No. 1 in the Southern Section, and perennial City power Palisades is being described by both sides as a match for all-time. It lasted four hours before Loyola won, 13-15, 15-13, 10-15, 15-12, 15-13, before a capacity crowd of about 1,600 at Palisades. “It was the most exciting match I’ve ever been involved in at Palisades,” said Coach Howard Enstedt. “The pressure was unbelievable, mainly because so many kids from Loyola live in the Palisades. The place was packed.”