Fundamental Differences : Baseball Camps Exhibit Contrasting Styles in Teaching Youths How to Play the Game

Listening to Mike Kaplan in the left-field pavilion at Dodger Stadium, it quickly becomes apparent that baseball carries a high priority in his life. Ask him something about baseball and the response is as insightful as that of a major league scout.

“Fernando’s problems?” Kaplan said, before the Dodger pitcher was placed on the disabled list. “His confidence has dropped. He’s lifting his head during his windup and he’s losing the plate and throwing it away. And he’s not getting a good push off the mound.”

Too old for cartoon watching and too young for girl watching, Kaplan, 10, is at the age when life is baseball and baseball is fun.

He is one of the almost 300 youngsters aged 6 to 15 who will satisfy their appetite for the game--and hopefully improve their skills--by attending a five-week session at Valley Cardinals baseball camp in Encino where campers train under the guidance of high school coaches and are visited by major league players.

But baseball camps can be anything but child’s play.

Parents pay upward of $1,800 for 10 weeks of instruction for their children, some of whom aspire to play in the major leagues and some of whom just want to get out of the house.

The more successful camps have become highly profitable and attendance is on the rise. The Joe Torre baseball camp in Encino, for example, has more than doubled enrollment in seven years and has opened a second camp this summer in Orange County.

One of the nation’s most ambitious camps was founded in 1959 by former Brooklyn Dodger catcher Mickey Owen. The camp owns an 80-acre complex in Miller, Mo., and operates on an annual budget of $500,000, 10% of which is allocated to marketing. Five major league players, including Mike Marshall and Terry Kennedy, are among the more than 16,000 campers from 24 countries who have attended.

“I think that camps meet a certain demand in terms of youngsters that want to improve themselves,” said Fred Claire, the Dodgers’ executive vice president in charge of player personnel. “But the camps are only as good as the people involved with them are and the way they have them organized.”

Claire, however, stressed that though Dodger players and coaches frequently make appearances, the organization is not involved with any particular camp.

Most camp brochures prominently display pictures of major league stars. Big names are not, however, the way to judge the value of a camp.

Former Dodger third baseman Ron Cey, who was playing for the Chicago Cubs at the time, used his name and money to help start a camp in Northridge in 1985. The camp lasted just one summer. By Cey’s admission, it was a failure.

“Because I was playing in Chicago, I couldn’t supervise the camp,” Cey said. “Most of the problems that occurred weren’t under my supervision. Parents were dropping off kids and no one was there to supervise them. . . . It lacked a lot of things.”

If a six-time National League all-star could not survive in the business, the odds were certainly against a 19-year-old with no high school baseball experience.

Jeff Pressman, one year out of high school, founded the Valley Cardinals camp in 1972. That summer Pressman, a former coach at Montclair Prep, charged $125 for a five-week camp that he says lost money the first four years. He eventually turned a profit, and, in 1984, sold the camp to New York Yankees pitcher Rick Rhoden for $90,000.

If a novice succeeded where a major league all-star failed, what makes a good camp?

Opinions vary, but they center on staffing, organization and the approach to instruction. An emphasis on winning ballgames is absent at camps, which makes for a less-stressful situation.

“I think the key is to let the young men play without the same things they experience in local leagues,” said Ken Rizzo, director of the Mickey Owen camp. “In Little Leagues, you have coaches who make the game theirs, not the kids’.”

Rick Weber, the baseball coach at Bel-Air Prep who along with two investors purchased the Valley Cardinals camp from Rhoden on March 19, stresses the importance of a strong staff.

“You can be the most organized camp around and bring in all the big league players you want, but it’s the counselors that the kids remember,” Weber said.

At the five-field Encino Little League complex, where the Valley Cardinals camp has been located since 1976, a game is under way between teams of 9- to 11-year-olds. Matt Vener, 10, is on the mound.

Vener’s motion it straight over the top, a la Tom Seaver, and he finishes in fine form, with his shoulders square to home plate. The first batter rips a ground ball up the middle that Vener fields cleanly and throws to first.

“That’s what the early morning drills are for, to teach them to get down,” said Howard Abrams, a coach at Montclair Prep who has been with the camp since 1974.

All camps have a common denominator: They stress fundamentals. The differences are in how those fundamentals are taught.

The Valley Cardinals camp’s five-week plan devotes the first two weeks to training. The remainder of the time is spent on applying the learned skills in games. Across the Ventura Freeway at Franklin Fields, the Joe Torre camp begins most weeks with training. Games are played later each week.

“You really need to look into the camps,” Claire said. “It takes some homework on the part of the parents for the kids to get the most out of the camps.”

While Vener pitches on one field, a contest on an adjacent diamond is interrupted by a major league encounter.

Pitcher Bill Krueger, who has since been sent down by the Dodgers to their triple-A farm club in Albuquerque, N.M., is making one of the approximately 12 visits to the Valley Cardinals camp by major league players and coaches.

“When you’re a little kid and you see someone older offering advice, that’s the big thing, the advice,” said ex-Valley Cardinals camper Torey Lovullo, who plays for the Detroit Tigers’ triple-A affiliate in Toledo, Ohio. “The counselors teach you the basics, how to warm up, how to stretch, but I always listened to whatever someone had to say.”

The list of major league players and coaches making appearances at the Valley Cardinals camp is made up primarily of Dodgers, who are paid $250-$500, according to Weber.

The Joe Torre camp concentrates on appearances by National League stars--Andre Dawson and Ozzie Smith have already shown up this summer. According to Matt Borzello, along with Torre, the camp’s co-owner and operator, the camp also enlists umpires and scouts to give different perspectives on the game. Former Dodger pitcher Don Newcombe, a recovering alcoholic, has spoken about drug and alcohol abuse.

Borzello declined to reveal how much his camp pays the major leaguers. Dawson’s promotional agent, Mark Childers, said he did not know how much Dawson was paid for his appearance at the Joe Torre camp but that the Cub outfielder’s standard appearance fee is $5,000.

Appearances by major leaguers, however, do not make up the bulk of the instruction.

“The Dodgers coming out is terrific,” said Weber. “But the people who really do the teaching are our coaches. The Dodgers are only there an hour. They’re not hype, but for an 8-year-old to say he worked with the Dodgers’ pitching coach is a big deal for him.”

Two theories exist about the value of the camps.

The first is that basically any kind of instruction is better than no instruction at all. Although the intensity of training at camps varies, it is still the first exposure to quality instruction for many youngsters.

“While fundamentals are stressed, instructors on this level strive to emphasize the importance of team play, while at the same time, highlight individual strengths,” California Angels General Manager Mike Port said. “The camps serve as a learning tool and perhaps as steppingstones for those youngsters who wish to pursue their dreams of playing professional baseball.”

Highland Hall High Coach Dave Desmond said that Craig Ernst, one of his players, was “far below average,” as a ninth-grader. After splitting a summer between two camps, he was named All-Westside League as a sophomore.

“I was down on myself and it was affecting my play. I was very satisfied I went,” Ernst said. “I wanted to get better and I did.”

The second theory characterizes the camps as no more than expensive baby-sitting services.

Wayne Sink, the coach at Birmingham High, claims that the camps are overpriced.

“I think a lot of kids that have the ability to be good ballplayers can’t afford the camps,” said Sink, who estimates that 30% of his players attend some form of camp. “They usually end up with a lot of rich little wannabes.”

Sitting in his Ventura Boulevard office, which is decorated with photos of the likes of Steve Garvey and Johnny Bench, Weber is more interested in talking about the camp’s reputation than about the financial end of the business. When asked about future plans for the camp, Weber responded, “If it’s working, why fix it?”

Does “working” include turning a profit?

“Working means the kids are improving skills,” Weber said.

Money is a motive in any business, but camp operators insist that financial rewards are not their primary motivation.

“Money motivates me quite a bit,” said Gary Anglin, who runs a camp at Ventura College, where he coaches. “But being sincere, hopefully these guys will grow up and want to attend Ventura College when they graduate high school.”

Said Dave Gorrie, who runs a camp at Pepperdine, where he coached for 10 years before retiring after last season: “We’re a profit-making operation, not a public service. But we’re not going to retire on the money we’re making.”

The opening of the Joe Torre camp in 1982 ended the Valley Cardinals’ near-monopoly on baseball camps in the Valley.

“That first year they opened up, Jeff was losing sleep over it,” said Paul Lester, an Encino-based photographer who has been associated with Valley Cardinals since 1976.

The Joe Torre camp is located less than 2 miles from the Valley Cardinals camp. And depending on whom one talks to, success breeds either imitation or competition.

Pressman, the founder of Valley Cardinals, says he didn’t mind the competition but contends that the Joe Torre camp stole ideas from his brochure. He also claims that counselors from the Joe Torre camp told parents that Valley Cardinals was for “baby-sitting.”

Borzello denies Pressman’s claims and says that his son, Michael, attended the Valley Cardinals camp.

Borzello, a part-time assistant coach at Cal Lutheran, is the primary operator of the Torre camp; Torre’s extensive travel schedule as a broadcaster for the Angels prohibits him from working full time at the camp.

“Joe outlined how he wanted the camp to be run,” Borzello said. “I’ve always felt that the Valley is big enough to handle both of us.”

Weber is disinterested in the competition.

“All I do is concentrate on making our camp the best possible camp,” he said.

The squabbling underscores the fierce competition in the business.

The Mickey Owen camp spends $50,000-$75,000 annually on marketing with $15,000-$20,000 budgeted for advertising. An additional $7,000 is devoted to printing an eight-page, full-color brochure mailed to prospective campers and a less-expensive mailer sent to high school coaches.

“All that gets us less than 20% of our campers,” Rizzo said. “Almost three-quarters of our kids have gone to our camp before or had the camp recommended to them. Less than 15-20% of our kids come from advertising. But that’s the 20% that makes the difference between a profitable camp and one that isn’t.”

In the Valley area, marketing works on a similar but smaller basis. The advertising budget for the Valley Cardinals camp is less than $750, so most of the marketing is done through sponsorships at youth leagues and mass mailings. This year the camp donated $8,500 in camperships.

‘Getting different children in each league helps spread the word,” Weber said. “The No. 1 way we get kids is through word of mouth. Nothing can be better than that.”

Word of mouth also can spread to high places. Weber said parents of one camper heard of the camp when a stranger in a restaurant overheard their conversation and turned around to offer advice.

The stranger? Dodger Manager Tom Lasorda.