Garden Grove Pitcher Faces the Duress of a Team Having Very Little Success : Lung’s Long Days Are Journeys Into Character Building

It’s the end of a long, hot, frustrating day for Marc Lung.

He has had plenty of them this season while pitching for Garden Grove High School, but this day is a little longer and hotter and a lot more frustrating than usual.

In the bottom of the seventh inning of a Garden Grove League game at Santiago, a medium-strength grounder sneaks under the third baseman’s glove for a single. A passed ball a moment later moves the runner to second.

Then with two out, a lazy fly ball drops into, and just as quickly out of, the right fielder’s glove, scoring the runner from second.

It sends a sure-fire 2-1 victory for Garden Grove into extra innings tied, 2-2.

In the top of the ninth, Garden Grove gets two runners on base. But disaster, seemingly never far away on this day, strikes when the runner on second is picked off. The inning ends on a groundout, with the Argonauts failing to score.

Lung, having pitched the entire game on a sweltering, 88-degree day, falters in the bottom half of the ninth. There is a man on second with two out, but Santiago’s Steve Larson belts a single to score Mike Barry with the winning run.

“It was very frustrating,” Lung would say later. “It’s kind of been the story of our season.”

Lung, a senior left-hander, is 3-6 in 9 starts with 1 save.

That’s not the best of records, but Garden Grove, which plays its last game of the season today against Los Amigos, is only 5-16 overall and 1-12 in league play.

Lung is a first-rate pitcher on a losing team. Last season, he was 6-8 with a 1.63 earned-run average and was selected first-team all-league.

“He’s never once complained about the adversity he’s had to deal with,” Garden Grove Coach Jim Rawls said. “He never makes excuses. Never blames his teammates. He’s always trying the best he can.

“It’s tougher for him to be good. He’s had so many hardships over the past year.”

When your team has won only five games all season, you have to take personal victories where you can find them.

A slider that catches a Santiago batter by surprise for strike one.

A solid, but not blazing, fastball for strike two.

A curveball, Lung’s sucker pitch, for strike three.

Unless Garden Grove wins, however, only a few care that Lung had his curveball working to perfection.

“I’ll tell you,” La Quinta Coach Dave Demarest said, “he threw a great game against us. He’s probably thrown the best game against us of anybody we’ve played. We beat him, 2-1.”

La Quinta, the Garden Grove League champion, has won 19 consecutive games and is ranked third in this week’s Orange County Sportswriters’ Assn. poll.

“He’s very underrated because of his stats and his won-lost record,” Demarest said. “I like him. I think he’s a class act.”

The compliments from opposing coaches are all well and good, but it’s small consolation after another loss.

“It’s tough because our team has a lot more talent than it has shown this year,” Lung said. “It’s frustrating going on the mound and trying to make the batters pop up or strike out instead of hitting it on the ground.”

To be sure, Garden Grove has lost plenty of times this season, but all the pieces came together in nearly perfect fashion three weeks ago.

Playing against league rival Los Amigos, Lung pitched a no-hitter and led the Argonauts to a 4-0 win. It was their first, and only, victory in league play this season.

Lung didn’t want to be told he had a no-hitter going. In the late innings, however, his teammates were about to burst with excitement.

“I don’t like to know how I’m doing in the game,” Lung said. “I don’t want to try for a no-hitter. I don’t want to say in the first inning, ‘I’ve got a no-hitter.’ In the second, ‘I’ve got a no-hitter.’ In the third, ‘I’ve got a no-hitter.’ . . .

“I had them (Los Amigos) off balance. I had some great defensive plays behind me. That helped. That was the first game we got our bats moving. We got 15 hits. That’s like three games for us.”

The no-hitter was the high point of the season for Lung and the Argonauts.

“It was the combination of the no-hitter and our first league win,” Lung said.

The no-hitter put Lung and the Argonauts in an unusual position at school in the days after the April 25 victory. Teachers, classmates and people Lung didn’t know stopped him in the hallways to offer congratulations.

Better days and more congratulations may be ahead for Lung. Though his high school season ends today, he hopes to continue playing baseball next year at a community college.

“That’s what has motivated me most this season,” Lung said. “Having the season we’re having, I have to keep in mind that I want to go to (play) in college. I have to keep myself, my individual stats, in mind.

“I’ll never regret playing for our team,” Lung said. “You win as a team and lose as a team.”