Royal Needs Clock to Strike Midnight to Turn Into Winner

When the Royal baseball team defeated South Hills, 5-4, during a Pomona tournament game that did not conclude until 2:15 a.m., the Highlanders may have slipped into a time warp that forbids winning.

Since that somnambulant victory during spring break, Royal has yet to win, a streak that has reached seven losses going into today’s Marmonte League game against Channel Islands. The current streak is in direct contrast with the start of the season, when Royal opened with seven consecutive wins.

The Highlanders have fallen to 9-10 overall and the bottom of the league at 1-5. McCurdy would schedule all remaining games at midnight if he thought it would wake up his team.

“Baseball is a superstitious game so we’ve been trying everything, different uniform combinations, buying the team treats, taking them out for pizza. Maybe that’s what we need to do, find a field with lights and play our games at midnight,” he said.

McCurdy doesn’t need a spotlight to see his team’s shortcomings. During the seven-game win streak, the team made only three errors. During the current skein, Royal is averaging three errors a game. Pitchers John Ward and Sean Sullivan have seen their earned-run averages balloon. Both were under 1.00 when Royal was undefeated, now Ward is at 2.56 and Sullivan is at 4.97.

Royal hit bottom in a 12-3 loss to Westlake last week.

“We were humiliated,” McCurdy said. “That game came as a shock to the coaches and I hope to the players. But this is a difficult group to read. Other coaches think I’m a lunatic because I rake the field and launder all the uniforms for the players. I tell them they don’t have to do anything but play hard.”

Deluge ball: Take two teams battling for Golden League supremacy, stick them on the field, add water and what do you get after five innings?

Ten errors and a 19-13 win by Saugus over Canyon on a rainy Tuesday.

“It was bizarre to say the least,” Canyon Coach Rich Montanio said. “It was really coming down. The conditions were ridiculous. Every time someone touched the ball it was an adventure.”

Saugus, which committed five errors, scored 11 runs in the fifth inning to take a 19-7 lead. Canyon countered with six runs in the bottom of the fifth before the game was called because of rain.

Staying home: Granada Hills wide receiver Kyle Jan has turned down a scholarship offer from New Mexico and will attempt to make the team as a walk-on at UCLA next season. Jan set a school record for touchdown receptions and was named the most valuable player in the Highlanders’ upset of Carson in the City Section 4-A Division championship game in December.

Jan, named All-City and Times All-Valley, was offered a scholarship by New Mexico that would have taken effect during the spring semester of 1989.

“Nobody there will be working any harder than me, that’s for sure,” he said.