These Boys Beat All : Sextet Leads Hart to Unblemished Record After Collecting 4 Youth World Series Titles

Streaks, streaks and more streaks. They have become more common lately than a punch in the face during a National Hockey League playoff game.

The most intriguing was Baltimore’s Moe-Larry-Curly streak, a monthlong festival of disaster with opponents raking bucksaws across the Orioles’ heads and clamping pliers on their noses and dragging them up and down the American League.

Then came the end of Billy Martin’s streak of winning prizefights as the unruly little fellow who once sent bolts of fear into the hearts of marshmallow salesmen lost a unanimous decision to a stucco wall and a pair of bouncers in a very bouncing bar.

Through all of those, another streak--this one neither pathetic nor frightening--romps its way through the dusty Santa Clarita Valley. It is a remarkable run put together by a half-dozen youngsters that began in 1980 and still beats strongly today.

There’s a temptation to mistakenly elevate the accomplishments of very young men to a big-time level. They are, after all, younger than some of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s socks. But consider for a moment the feats of Jason Edwards, Robby Davis, Darin Tsukashima, Chris Vasquez, Jay Sanford and Lance Migita of Hart High:

1980. Vasquez and Sanford are missing from the puzzle, but the other four help their William S. Hart League team to the district championship of the Pinto Division for 8-year-olds.

1982. With Vasquez and Sanford now aboard, the completed sextet wins the Coastal Region Mustang League World Series in the 10-year-old age group.

1984. The same six win the Bronco League World Series in St. Joseph’s, Mo., beating the Philippines in an 11-inning game.

1986. The group helps its team win the Pony League World Series, beating Japan in the final game in Washington, Pa.

1987. Making up the heart of the Sherman Oaks-Van Nuys Babe Ruth League team, the group powers the team to the national Babe Ruth championship in Jamestown, N. Y.

1988. Together for the first time in high school, the group, now made up of four juniors and two sophomores, stacks up a 25-0 season. And in leading Hart to the Foothill League title and into the Southern Section playoffs later this week, the six have lost just one game since combining their talents. The four who have been together since 1980 are 54-1 in summer tournament play and have a 79-1 overall record.

“We know everyone’s out to get us,” said Edwards, a junior pitcher. “We get ragged all the time by the other team. Things like, ‘We’re gonna kill you guys today.’ It’s funny. We hear it and we think, ‘Yeah. Sure. You and everybody else.’ ”

The six players are all, as you might guess, solid baseball players. There are not, however, any All-Americans mixed in.

Edwards is the biggest at 6 feet and 175 pounds. Sanford, an outfielder, is the smallest at 5-6 and 135 pounds. Migita, another outfielder, is barely an inch taller than Sanford but has a stocky build and impressive forearms. Steve Garvey would look like this if he was tossed, soaking wet, into a clothes drier for a few hours. In between are Tsukashima, a slick-fielding second baseman who doesn’t seem to mind his nickname of “Sue,” heavy-hitting shortstop Davis and the third outfielder, Vasquez.

“You look at these kids play and you don’t think much,” Hart Coach Bud Murray said. “But they beat you. Every time.”

Almost every time. They remember quite well the only loss. It came in 1986 in Watsonville in the regional finals of the Pony League World Series. Midway through the double-elimination tournament they were matched against a team from Los Gatos, a team they had beaten easily earlier in the tournament. And the Los Gatos team’s approach to the game didn’t exactly strike fear into the Win Bunch.

“They came out for the game kicking back with their big, old ghetto blasters, dancing around,” Sanford said. “We said, ‘Man, they’re just giving up.’ And then they just killed us.”

After the 9-7 defeat, they reacted like they had never lost a game before.

“It was the worst feeling I ever had,” said Edwards, who allowed two home runs as the starting pitcher. “It was like we were unbeatable until then. Some of us were even crying. I mean, I wasn’t really crying. But kind of.”

But in the 30 minutes between games, they mopped up the tears and regrouped. In the second game, Vasquez banged a pair of homers and Hart erupted for 10 runs in a rout. Two games later they beat Japan for the championship.

Two years earlier there had been even higher drama. The Bronco League All-Stars trailed the Philippines, 5-3, with two out in the last inning of the championship game. But with two runners on base, Davis tripled, sending the game into extra innings. In the 11th, Davis popped a two-run homer to give the real boys of summer a 7-5 lead. Davis then pitched the bottom of the 11th and shut the Philippines down to preserve the victory.

“Rob was our hero,” Sanford said.

Explanations for the roaring success of the group are many. And few. And clear and confusing. And in the end, it seems, there is no true explanation. Just a lot of grown men with their mouths agape, pondering the marvelous work of kids.

“That’s something I can’t answer,” Murray said. “Some kids have it and some don’t. Mentally, they know they can win. They just go out and compete. They just . . . I don’t know. I can’t explain it.”

Perhaps Dave Kramer, the whiz kids’ Babe Ruth coach who took them to the national championship in New York last year, has a bit more insight. Perhaps not.

“I know they were more intense about the game than most kids,” Kramer said. “When they stepped between the lines their concentration was so great . . . much more so than most kids their age. Most kids try hard to win the game and then let it go at that. They try.

“But these kids had something else. They really wanted to improve, wanted to spend the time working on things long after the other kids had gone home. And they were able to improve their own play when they had to. If they saw a team that was very good or was very sharp that day, these guys would crank up their play a notch. And it always seemed to be a notch above whatever the other team had.”

So intensity and hard work have been the only ingredients in this eight-year binge of trophy collecting? Well, not exactly.

“The main thing was that they had outstanding tournament experience and they were very secure young men,” Kramer said. “But I guess they got that way by winning all the time. So maybe that’s a circular argument. It’s a strange thing.”

Maybe the players know the secret, some mystical formula of decent talent and mysterious mental powers. Maybe an old lamp is involved, and when they’re up against the wall they smuggle it out of a dusty gym bag and rub it and a genie appears and . . .

Snap out of it.

“I can’t explain it,” Edwards said. “It’s like a dream right now. We knew we’d have a good team this year, but 25-0, no way. I think we’re all in a daze. Maybe luck plays a big part in it.”

Davis, a sophomore, takes a stab at an explanation.

“We know we can lose. It could happen,” he said. “But if it actually did happen I’d be in shock. I’d be disappointed. I’d be mad. I’d be . . . I don’t know what I’d be. I haven’t really thought about losing.

“We expect to win every time. We go out and we don’t want to lose. Our attitude is just to win. But I guess most other teams think that way, too. And they lose. It’s hard to explain.”

And while no one actually knows the reason for the long run, everyone knows that even such wonderful romps through fantasy land have to end. It might end with a loss or two. But if not, it still will end. Next June. At graduation. Youth, unfortunately, does not last nearly long enough. Often, just when the ride reaches its wide-eyed, euphoric apex, it is brought quickly back to the ground.

“Next year will be fun because we’ll all be back, but the last game we play together will be sad,” Edwards said. “I know we’ve all started to think about it. We don’t talk about it much, but we all know the end is coming, that we’ll probably never get to play together again after next year. There might be college or professional baseball or no baseball at all. And it’s going to be sad. We’ve been together so long. It’s going to be awful not to have those guys around anymore.”

Sanford has thought about that day so often that he can see it. It is not, as the others know, a pretty sight.

“I don’t know how we’ll prepare ourselves for that,” he said. “No one has coached us for that. I can see it in my mind, that day. We play the last game and we win and we head for the dugout and all of a sudden no one knows what to do or say. We all know that day is going to happen.”

Don’t think, though, that this cast of overachievers is a forlorn, sulking, Bobby Knight-type group. For every win they’ve posted there have been 500 laughs. And even Davis can’t hit a ball as far from home plate as next June.

“The end of next year will be weird,” Davis said. “Four of them will be gone and just me and Migita will be left. But we’ll deal with that when it happens. We’ve got plenty of time to win more games.

“Next year might be the best one of all.”