Monroe’s City Title Cannot Be Repeated Under New Format

Monroe High is the first and last of its breed. For two weeks, the Vikings were better than any team in the city. Thursday night, Monroe was rewarded for its five-game winning streak with a City Section 4-A Division baseball championship.

But this is probably the last time a team like Monroe, a fourth-place team with a losing record, will have the opportunity to shock everyone by coming from nowhere to win a title.

The Vikings, who pulled out a 3-2 victory over San Fernando on Thursday night at Dodger Stadium, are the first to reach the final after finishing fourth in league play.

Next year, a realignment of the leagues has set up a playoff system in which the top two teams in each of the six leagues and those with the next four best records will advance. A fourth-place team no longer will be part of the field.

That makes Monroe the Halley’s Comet of high school baseball--a once-in-a-lifetime occurrence.

Area coaches say next year’s system will be more equitable, but no one will take anything away from Monroe.

“There is no fluke with Monroe,” Chatsworth Coach Bob Lofrano said. “They won the tournament. They played the best ball these two weeks.”

Lofrano’s teams have won eight league titles and the Chancellors (25-2) were ranked first in the nation this season by Collegiate Baseball.

“I’m very proud of our record and can say Monroe is the City champion,” Lofrano said. “Monroe has the right to say they’re City champs. We all understand that. A bad hop, an umpire’s call and you’re out. That’s the way it is.”

San Fernando beat Chatsworth, 5-2, in the semifinals.

“I have no doubt that Chatsworth is the best team in the City but I saw San Fernando beat them and that was no fluke,” Granada Hills Coach Darryl Stroh said. “San Fernando just outplayed them that day.”

And Monroe outplayed them all, although third-year Coach Kevin Campbell was surprised his team qualified for the playoffs. Nevertheless, he thought his team deserved the title shot.

“By the end, we were playing with everybody, up and down,” Campbell said. “I think most of the players went into the game with disbelief.”

The title game was the result of the most unlikely of circumstances.

“Sometimes it’s nice this way, like what’s happening with Kevin,” Lofrano said of Campbell. “It’s so much more rewarding when you’re the underdog and pull an upset.”

So does allowing a sub-.500, fourth-place team to win the City championship make a mockery of the format?

“It shows how competitive baseball is in the San Fernando Valley,” Lofrano said. “The cliche ‘On any given day’ . . . that’s true in the Valley. That makes our area look so much better. A team like Monroe can put together a win streak and win it all.”

Lofrano believes that a streak like Monroe’s could not happen in football or basketball. “But in baseball when a pitcher gets hot on the mound, the game is even,” he said. “That’s why I can’t get upset.”

Only the top two teams in each league reached the playoffs before the current format was adopted in 1983. Since then, only one third-place team has reached the final--El Camino Real, which lost to Granada Hills in 1984.

It will be very unlikely, then, that a team with a losing record a la Monroe will reach the playoffs under the new format.

Coaches unhappy with the current system say next year’s format is a step in the right direction. Other options discussed for future years include a double-elimination tournament or allowing top seeds a bye.

“A double-elimination tournament would be super, because a good team can have a bad day,” Sylmar Coach John Klitsner said. “A team could have a bad day and that blows their season. I don’t think that’s right.”

Grant Coach Tom Lucero noted that a double-elimination format would eliminate the chance of a coach using just one pitcher throughout the tournament.

“A double-elimination tournament would be a better indication of pitching depth, player depth,” Lucero said.

Of course, a double-elimination tournament would cut back on the number of schools advancing to postseason play. The current 16-team format probably would be reduced to an eight-team field.

“With four teams in the playoffs, it waters it down,” Klitsner said. “They should probably take the top two teams, so you’re rewarded over an 18-, 15-game season.”

As opposed to rewarding a winning streak at the end of the season.

“Right now, a team gets hot and things fall into place,” said Dick Whitney, coach of 1985 champion Kennedy. “I don’t know if that’s fair or right as opposed to, say, the setup next year.”

Certainly, Monroe gave the current playoff format a memorable farewell. And the Vikings offer no apologies.

Said first baseman Tim Costic, whose seventh-inning double lifted Monroe to its title victory: “We had trouble at the beginning of the year, but we had as much right as anybody to be here.”