THE LEFTY : They’re Unusual and Effective--and Abundant in County

There seems to be this weird paradox about left-handed pitchers. Either they have something their right-handed counterparts don’t have, or they are missing something that normal pitchers have.

Ask baseball scouts; they’ll tell you it’s true.

On one hand, lefties have an advantage over hitters, especially on the high school level. Something about the natural way they throw, making the ball move in unnatural ways.

On the other hand, being a lefty seems for some to be tied to being, uh, not right.

Look around San Diego County this year. More than in most years, there is an abundance of high school left-handers who fit the first category. Sean Rees of Mission Bay, Rick Navarro of Helix, Scott Karl of Carlsbad, Anthony Garcia of Chula Vista, Joey Brownholtz of Mt. Carmel, Brent Woodall of La Jolla and Devon Fitzmaurice of Madison have become top pitchers.

Some of those same pitchers fit the second category as well. It has been around as long as there has been baseball. Stories of crazy left-handers are many.

Casey Stengel once theorized why that might be. “They sleep on the wrong side of the bed, and their head gets more stagnant on that side,” he said.

It’s not hard to find stories of local high school players who might have similar sleeping habits.

Bob Warner, who coached 17 years at Hoover and now serves as the Padres’ local scout, tells the story of a young Hoover left-hander.

The starter was struggling, so Warner told the left-hander to warm up. A few minutes later, Warner looked down to the bullpen to see if he was ready. No southpaw to be found.

“I found him in the locker room with a jacket on . . . warming up,” Warner said. “Now there was a flaky left-hander.”

Carlsbad’s Karl is not quite that oblivious. On the mound, Karl is really serious, but he doesn’t mind that many characterize him as off-center when he’s not pitching. He loves telling the story about the time he asked a girl out when he was a sophomore at Palmdale High last year.

“I had to turn an announcement in at the front office,” Karl says. “I just happened to accidentally get hold of the microphone to the (public-address) system.

“I said, ‘For all of you listening out there, and especially you, Michelle, I just want you to know that I would really like to go out with you.’ She was sitting next door in class. I cruised by there kind of casually and looked in the door. People stood up and applauded. It was great.”

The best part, Karl said, was that she said yes.

Navarro is another who spurns the straight and narrow. Helix Coach Jerry Schniepp was yelling at the team after one game this season for not playing well. Everyone would have to do wind sprints.

Navarro lightened things up a bit. “I just looked at him and said, ‘Let’s hurry up then. The sooner we get out of here, the sooner we can get to party.’ He just smiled. He couldn’t get too serious after that. I’m weird, I guess.”

Mt. Carmel’s Brownholtz does not go for that kind of stuff; he’s pretty serious about baseball.

As a junior last year, he was cut from the team because he was too small and could throw 72 miles per hour at best. But Brownholtz, now the Sundevils’ top pitcher at 5-1, grew a little and worked hard during the off-season to build up his left shoulder. He now can throw in the neighborhood of 81 m.p.h.

What makes Brownholtz unusual is his reticence to talk to reporters about his accomplishments. Seems he has taken to following another famous silent left-hander, Steve Carlton.

It is not because Brownholtz is cocky or has been burned by the media before, Mt. Carmel Coach Sam Blalock said. “It’s his first year playing, and he just decided he doesn’t want that much publicity so it won’t go to his head.”

The idiosyncrasies of some left-handers is only half the story. When these guys pitch, the compliments they receive are not left-handed.

No one is quite sure why left-handers are uniquely effective on the high school level, but there are a variety of theories.

One is that high school batters don’t see that many lefties when they are growing up. Because about 90% of the population is right-handed, there simply aren’t many left-handers available.

Because of that, some high school coaches say they will cultivate any left-handed player who has even the slightest notion of how to throw strikes.

“We never cut a left-handed pitcher,” Madison Coach Bob Roeder said. “He has to be third or fourth string with a terrible attitude before he’d get cut.”

Why? Because left-handed pitching is so hard for most high school players to hit.

For right-handers, a fastball thrown by a left-hander will naturally tail away and a curve will come in on him, the opposite of a right-handed pitcher.

For left-handed hitters, it looks as if the ball is coming from the first-base dugout. An inside pitch can cause batting from the right side of the plate to become a nightmare.

“The southpaw pitcher benefits from unorthodoxy against everybody,” Jerry Kirshenbaum wrote in Sports Illustrated in 1977. “He is especially effective against those dreaded left-handed batters.”

There’s something about a left-hander’s delivery that causes the ball to tail, even if he doesn’t try.

Rees and Karl are both known for that movement. So is Navarro. He does not throw that hard, but because the ball moves so well, he struck out 55 in his first 33 innings this year.

Some say Woodall is the scariest of all. He throws hard, in the 85-m.p.h. range. That means batters have even less time to figure out Woodall’s tailing fastball.

Garcia (3-2) struggled early in the year, but he said he has regained the movement on his fastball and curve that made him the Metro Mesa League player of the year as a junior.

“It’s nothing I do special,” said Garcia, whom Warner called the toughest competitor of the lot. “I just pick it up and throw it, but it moves.”

Karl decided one day to try to figure out why that happens. Bad idea.

“When I tried to step back and analyze it, I lost it for a couple of days,” said Karl, who has struck out 46 in 31 innings. “I had to forget about it to get it to do it again.”

Not everyone believes that theory--”I don’t buy the story that the left-hander has more life to his ball because of the angle of his delivery,” said Bob Fontaine, director of player personnel for the San Francisco Giants--but generally, most people believe that some law of physics gives lefties an advantage.

Left-handers are also notorious pickoff artists. Because they can get a better look at a runner by facing first base from the stretch, they can save runs.

Navarro, who has picked off as many as four in a game, figures it saves him a couple of runs a game. Even if he isn’t successful, few runners will get a good jump because they are scared.

Without much help from anyone in the off-season, Brownholtz developed one of the best moves in the county on his own, according to Blalock.

“A good move helps you out a lot,” Blalock said. “You give up a single and then catch the guy leaning. Give up another single, the guy is afraid to run, you get a ground ball and turn a double play. That’s a quick way to get out of an inning.”

That move can be difficult for left-handers to learn. Take Madison’s Fitzmaurice. He has good stuff and is 7-0. But Roeder said he hasn’t shown much of a pickoff move yet.

“It takes more time to comprehend,” Fitzmaurice said. “I’ve never had a left-handed coach. A right-hander can kind of explain what you are supposed to do, but it’s hard to do it yourself.”

That move doesn’t always work to a southpaw’s advantage, either. Karl once tried to make his move too quickly in a game against Oceanside. He nearly fell over without throwing and was called for a balk.

Ramona Coach Bill Tamburrino has his own idea about why southpaws do so well in high school and beyond. Effectively, lefties are limited to five positions: pitcher, first base and three in the outfield. The belief is that it would be too hard to make the throws required from other positions.

Tamburrino, a lefty himself, thinks that indirectly pays off when a left-handed player gets to high school.

“Left-handers haven’t been used as infielders or catchers and only a few are used as pitchers, so not many are burned out,” Tamburrino said. “They play first, where there is no throwing, and outfield, where they are not throwing much. Right-handers pitch and then on their day off, they play short and catch. Their arms are getting worked all the time.”

Whatever the reason, lefties are in demand. College and major-league scouts say they are always looking “for the best athlete available,” but tell them about a good left-hander and their eyes light up. A few will even admit it.

“If there is a left-hander on the mound, you are going to pay more attention,” Padre scout Damon Oppenheimer said.

Said Don Pries, director of the Major League Scouting Bureau: “You are always looking for the best athlete. But if you see a left-hander and he can pitch, you get on the edge of your seat.”

That may be an unfair advantage, and every lefty knows it. They know it may be their ticket to the big leagues.

“I know I wouldn’t be as good as I am if I weren’t left-handed,” Navarro said. “I think it has been one of my biggest advantages since I was little. I think it will probably help me down the line, too.”

Scouts back that up.

“With our ballclub, we’ll go with a left-hander even if he doesn’t have the velocity,” the Harry Smith, a Milwaukee Brewer scout, said. “We’ll go with a guy who throws 82 or 83 miles per hour. A right-hander needs to throw 86, 87.”

Rees is undoubtably the best of the outstanding group of left-handers in the county, according to several coaches. Word is that his competitiveness and good control combined with decent velocity and positive attitude will help him go far.

“Rees knows how to pitch as well as anyone,” Warner said. “He can go inside or outside, up or down. So does Navarro.”

Warner was also impressed that Navarro can--and will--throw a breaking ball for a strikeout in a crucial situation. He is also cool under pressure, Warner said.

Something else caught Blalock’s eye when he saw Navarro: He put his hat on slightly crooked.

“All the good ones tilt their hats to the right,” Blalock said. “They think it lets their arms swing freer or something.”

Al Schacht noticed the same phenomenon. But he took it to mean something more far-reaching.

“They throw crooked, they walk crooked and they think crooked,” said Schacht, a right-hander who was known as the Clown Prince of Baseball from 1919 to 1921. “They even wear their clothes crooked. You have to figure that they’re a little crazy.”

THE BEST LEFT-WINGERS

Name School Year Record Ray Bowen Ramona Senior 3-2 Joey Brownholtz Mt. Carmel Senior 5-1 Devon Fitzmaurice Madison Junior 7-0 Anthony Garcia Chula Vista Senior 3-2 Scott Karl Carlsbad Junior 4-0 Damon Luban Helix Senior 4-1 Rick Navarro Helix Senior 7-0 Roy Neder Grossmont Senior 2-1 Sean Rees Mission Bay Senior 7-0 Mike Rendina Grossmont Senior 4-1 Matt Siesel USDHS Senior 4-4 Travis Small Julian Senior 5-1 Jamie Wilcox Fallbrook Senior 4-1 Brent Woodall La Jolla Senior 4-1