QUEEN of the HILL : Michele Granger’s Ability, Attitude Put Her a Pitch Ahead of the Crowd

Perspective is a difficult thing to attain at any age. Recognition and extraordinary success can tip the scales crazily out of balance to a point where self-confidence slips into self-obsession and striving to achieve more becomes believing you deserve more.

And when you’re 18, trying hard to define who you are while everyone is telling you that who you are is the best--the absolute best--in the entire world, it can be tough to keep a handle on things.

But Michele Granger sits at the dining table of her family’s Placentia home, unusually serious. Her ongoing eruption of words and laughter has been halted suddenly at the question: When, exactly, did you realize just how good you were? Granger tugs on her bangs, trying to straighten the curls, shrugs and looks down at the table.

“I don’t think of myself as being really good or anything,” she says quietly. “The minute you start thinking you’re good is the minute you’re going to get killed. . . . Everybody’s good at something.”

What Granger is good at, what people say she is the best in the world at, is pitching a softball.

Her list of accomplishments spans all levels of the sport and dates back to when she was in the eighth grade and pitched on an 18-and-under national champion American Softball Assn. team, the Santa Monica Raiders.

The list continues through her performance, at 16, in the women’s world championships in New Zealand, through the Pan-American games, through the national records she has set, and into last week, when she pitched three consecutive no-hitters, including one perfect game, for her Valencia High School team.

But more amazing than her 70-m.p.h. fastball, more amazing than what she has done, is what she hasn’t done: allowed her softball success to dominate her life.

“Softball is a tool for me,” Granger said. “I want a good education. It’s so competitive getting into colleges now. Softball is my edge on someone else.”

Take away the softball from Granger and you still have a pretty complete package. One that not too many universities would snub.

There’s the student with the 3.5 grade-point average, with honors classes in history, English and biology. And the junior class president and the student body vice-president. And the four-year varsity volleyball player. And the avid reader. And the writer on the school paper. And the normal kid who loves to talk and go out with her friends and worries about dates and covers her head with a pillow during the scariest part of a horror movie.

Maybe it’s because she’s a lot more than just a softball player that Granger, who plans to major in communications, is having a hard time picking a college. She has visited Northwestern, Texas A&M;, Penn State and California and has one more trip scheduled to UCLA.

“I had wanted to decide by now,” she said. “Anywhere I’ve gone, I haven’t said, ‘Oh, this is it!’ For some reason, I had this misconception that there would be this one place that I would go to and know I really wanted to go there. But in reality, that’s not the way it is.”

So, even though today is the first spring day for signing national letters of intent, Granger won’t be making her decision just yet. That’s OK. The colleges will wait for her.

“She’ll make an impact wherever she goes,” UCLA Coach Sharron Backus said. “A program would be silly not to pitch her as much as it possibly can.”

Don Sarno, Granger’s pitching coach, said: “I think she’ll be the Arnold Palmer of softball. She’s going to bring a tremendous amount of positive attention to the sport.”

But while the college world waits in anticipation, wondering who will win the prize, the focus of their attention wonders where she will get the best education.

Though most of Granger’s teammates in national and international competition are in their mid-20s, Granger doesn’t expect to play beyond college. The exception would be if softball is an Olympic sport at the 1992 games in Barcelona, Spain. If it is, most coaches agree that Granger would almost certainly make the team.

“Softball isn’t going to make me a lot of money,” Granger said. “After college, no one’s going to hire me because I was one of the best pitchers in the nation.”

“At school Michele Granger is just Michele,” said her friend Erin Eaves. “Not Michele Granger, the best pitcher in the nation. No one really knows the extent of what she’s done.”

What she has done is achieve more in a shorter time than any other softball pitcher, ever.

According to Bill Plummer, the Amateur Softball Assn.’s media director, no one else in softball history has done what Granger did last summer.

Her summer started in June, with the Pan-American trials in Colorado Springs, Colo., where she made the U.S. team. In early July, she pitched in her second Junior World Softball Championship in Oklahoma City, setting tournament records for games won, strikeouts and innings pitched and helping the United States win its first gold medal.

The day after she won the junior world championship, Granger pitched her first game of the Olympic Sports Festival in North Carolina. There, in her second appearance, she pitched her team--the Orange County Majestics--to the bronze medal. One week later, she was in Indianapolis, pitching for the Pan-American team. She gave up 3 hits in 28 innings, struck out 61 batters and led the United States to the gold medal.

But Granger’s summer wasn’t over yet. Two days after the Pan-American games ended, Granger was off to the women’s Fastpitch Nationals, where she pitched her team to first place and was named the most valuable player of the tournament. She topped off the summer with a trip to Japan, where she appeared on a television game show in which Japanese celebrities tried to guess how fast she threw the ball and Japanese professional baseball players tried unsuccessfully to hit off her.

Then she came back to Orange County for her senior year of high school.

“She’s tired; she’s exhausted,” Valencia Coach Debbie Fassel said.

This year, in addition to keeping up her grades in senior classes, Granger crisscrossed the country on recruiting trips, played a season of varsity volleyball and has served as student body vice-president, organizing a school retreat in Idyllwild.

But even exhausted, Granger is phenomenal at the high school level. She is 12-2 this year, and has pitched 8 no-hitters, including 3 perfect games, and struck out 234 batters in 113 innings. Her earned-run average is 0.06.

Granger admits she has a hard time concentrating on the high school level, where she doesn’t have to play with the same intensity as on the national or international level.

“It’s unfortunate,” Granger said. “I’ve really got to get back a little bit more emotion in my game. I don’t want it to ever get boring, but sometimes you feel like you miss out on things. Everybody’s going to the beach, but I have a game.”

So why, with her reputation well-established and with her college future secure, isn’t she at the beach? Why is she pitching this year?

“I don’t think it was really necessary,” she said. “But I have a responsibility to the team and to myself. I’ve been on the team for three years.”

Said Fassel: “In a sense, it’s all just icing on the cake now, putting more distance between her and everyone else. But she has always come to practice like the other kids. She never pulls this, ‘I’m-the-greatest-pitcher’ thing. She always gives her best effort.”

But despite the effort, the one thing Granger--who holds several Southern Section and national records--has not achieved is a Southern Section title. Her teammates have been widely criticized for not being able to support their pitcher.

“If it’s the top of the seventh, it’s hard to keep kids on their toes the whole time,” Fassel said. “If someone puts the ball in play, they’re not used to seeing it; they don’t react. They’re standing there thinking, ‘Oh my God, someone hit Michele.’ ”

But still, Granger puts the burden of the loss on herself. And she believes that if Valencia, which is favored this season, doesn’t win the 3-A title this year, it will be her fault.

“Sure, it’s a team sport,” she said. “But it’s my fault if I put the ball in play and we lose.”

After Granger graduates, the biggest change for Fassel won’t be losing the best pitcher in the world from her high school team. It will be losing the pressure.

“Next year, I get to return to normal,” Fassel said. “People are always wondering why I haven’t won the big game, or second-guessing, wondering how we can lose. And my phone won’t be ringing off the hook.”

The phone rings all the time at the Granger house. Reporters. College coaches. People from other countries asking about her pitching technique, how she does it, can they learn it?

Last week, a television reporter called in the middle of the night to check Granger’s statistics and didn’t believe the numbers her father, Mike--who continually updates his computer file on such things--provided and started an argument.

“Some people just don’t think, I guess,” Granger’s mother, Mary, said. “But most people have been very good.”

The pressure and the expectations are always there. The standards she has set for herself have made no-hitters routine, perfect games not that extraordinary. But give up one hit and the critics start talking.

“It’s nice for her to know that some people couldn’t care less,” Erin Eaves said. “We kid her and say, ‘That’s 50 lashes with a wet noodle,’ if someone gets a hit.”

Sometimes the casual criticism bothers her father, who taught her to pitch.

“People here don’t really realize how good she is,” he said. “Everybody has advice. But she doesn’t owe anybody anything. She’s done it all on her own.”

Said Granger: “I’m just starting to realize that. That I can’t please everyone. I can’t be good at everything. I don’t know if I’m a perfectionist, but I feel strongly when I have a responsibility. I worry about everything.”

Said Sarno: “I think she can handle the pressure and the position she is in very well. I’ve never seen anyone who has done so much and done so well.”

Maybe it’s because of such constant pressure that Granger approaches victory in a businesslike manner. After they won the junior championships in Oklahoma City, Granger’s teammates celebrated in a pile-up on the pitcher’s mound. But the player who had spent the game on the mound throwing 97 strikes walked back into the dugout and took off her cleats.

“That’s the celebration for me, knowing that we won,” Granger said. “As soon as the game is over, I think ‘Ha, we won.’ It’s just like two seconds of satisfaction.”

And on to the next game.

MICHELE GRANGER’S NATIONAL RECORDS

GRANGER FORMER RECORD Strikeouts--Single Season 509 427 Strikeouts-Career 1,407 1,124 (4 years) No-Hit Games-Career 35 21 (4 years) No-Hit Games-Single Season 11 11 (tie) Consecutive Strikeouts-Game 21 21 (tie) Perfect Games-Career* 8 4 Perfect Games-Single Season* 3 2

*Records not yet published in Sports Record Book of National Federation of StateHigh School Assns.