A Dip Down Led Carroll to the Top : Sidearm Delivery Gave Crespi a Lift

Dan Carroll was trying to get comfortable during a bumpy bus ride back to Crespi High after yet another rocky outing when Coach Scott Muckey requested his presence in the front row.

At first, Carroll wasn’t sure if he was in hot water. After all, his pitching had been about as spectacular and awe-inspiring as a bus ride down Victory Blvd. Was Muckey going to bench him, right there on those bench seats? Carroll was certain of one thing--he was a lot more likely to get verbally busted in the chops than bussed on the cheek.

After a moment alone with Muckey, however, Carroll quickly realized that the coach was not yelling. No froth was leaking from the corners of his mouth. In fact, Muckey was actually making sense. And Carroll wisely decided to listen.

The coach suggested that the two try something different upon their return to Crespi, a new approach, something fresh. And Carroll, who in Muckey’s estimation was nothing short of mediocre in his early appearances, quickly agreed. It was self-preservation time.

“I was walking a lot of guys--it was nothing spectacular, that’s for sure,” Carroll said.

In fact, Carroll had allowed four runs in four innings in that afternoon’s game against Royal. Line drives were plentiful, and the Crespi outfielders racked up plenty of mileage tracking down the lanky right-hander’s re-routed offerings. It didn’t exactly take a road map for batters to locate Carroll’s fastball. Or changeup. Or curve.

“I walked a few, gave up a few hits and hit a few. It wasn’t a great outing,” Carroll said with a laugh.

It also wasn’t a rarity.

After the team arrived at Crespi, the pair went to the practice field and Muckey made a change in Carroll’s delivery. Almost 2 1/2 months later, Carroll helped deliver a Del Rey League title.

After throwing over the top in a conventional manner his whole career--such as it was--Carroll was cajoled into throwing sidearm, and the payoff was soon to follow. He’s been cruising his own victory boulevard ever since.

In Carroll’s first start after adopting the new delivery, he beat undefeated Redondo, then the top-ranked team in the Southern Section 4-A Division. While Muckey was impressed, he was not overwhelmed.

“Our basic plan was to start Carroll and let him pitch the first two innings,” Muckey said. “Then we were going to come in with Chad Nichols, and then with John Dempsey if we needed him.

“But after awhile, we couldn’t get him out of there.”

Carroll’s dramatic improvement was especially impressive in league play. After defeating San Marcos in a spring-break tournament game to improve to 3-1, the Celts resumed what seemed certain to be a very lackluster Del Rey performance. Crespi, after all, had started 0-3.

Carroll, however, would make the difference. The 6-foot, 2-inch, 170-pounder carried a no-hitter into the fifth inning in a 13-3 rout of league-rival St. Francis.

Soon after, he became the staff workhorse, starting every league game for Crespi, which finished 8-4 and tied Notre Dame for the championship.

“It had gotten to the point where he was either going to get better or he wasn’t going to pitch much,” Muckey said. “He really wasn’t much of a factor on the mound.”

A factor? This is fact-or-fantasy time. Carroll, who was 1-1 when Muckey changed his throwing motion, improved to 12-3, more wins than any Valley-area pitcher. And now Carroll, a senior, has been selected to play for the West team in the Bernie Milligan Game on Saturday at 4 p.m. at Cal State Northridge.

Carroll finished the season with an earned-run average of 2.79 and led the Valley area with 105 innings pitched.

“It seemed like the more tired he got, the less likely he was to try to overpower anybody,” Muckey said. “He has more movement and more control, even more rhythm, when he’s not as well-rested.”

Rest was something Carroll saw little of during the Crespi title drive. He started the Celts’ last 10 league games and their two playoff appearances as well.

West co-Coach Steve Costley said extra work makes a sidearm pitcher even tougher to hit.

“He reminds me of the way I threw,” said Costley, a former high school pitcher. “A lot of the reason for that kind of success is because he got so much work. The work makes you get your hand on top of the ball and gives you a kind of lag in your arm. That makes the ball sink and tail.”

Even in Crespi’s season-ending 4-3 loss to Long Beach Millikan in the second round of the 5-A playoffs, Carroll pitched well. His only other defeat during the improbable streak was a 4-0 loss to Loyola.

Nobody was more surprised by the turnaround than Carroll. He had thrown sidearmed before, but only as a change-of-pace.

“I’d messed around with it,” he said. “Like when I was ahead, 0-and-2, I’d drop down because nobody was expecting it.”

And since he was rarely ahead 0-and-2, few had ever seen it.

“Exactly,” Carroll chuckled.

After Muckey--who once turned outfielder Chris Haslock into an all-conference pitcher at Valley College by offering the same advice--convinced Carroll that sidearming the ball was better than trying to strong-arm it, the Crespi senior became a different pitcher.

And all it took was a little arm twisting from Muckey.

“I remember he said that he had a guy who was even wilder than me that he helped turn around--I didn’t know if it was true, but that’s what he said,” Carroll recalled. “He said he had some time he could spend with me after we got off the bus, so went went right over to the mound at school and started throwing into a net.

“Of course, my control wasn’t too good that first day. But it was a big net.”

And of course, Carroll’s net results speak for themselves.