FOUL PLAY : Baseball League Hustles to Launch Season After Thieves Take Gear, Damage Complex

A new record for stolen bases was set this week at a Little League baseball field in Encino.

Fifteen of them were swiped by thieves who broke into storage sheds and also made off with home plates and the league’s supply of baseballs, bats, catchers’ equipment and batting helmets.

The break-in, which occurred last weekend, sent officials scurrying for replacement gear for use by 200 girls who start their baseball season today.

Friday night, parents patrolled the ball-field complex on Hayvenhurst Avenue south of the Ventura Freeway to guard the colorful red-white-and-blue bunting that has been put up around the ball diamonds for the girls.

They didn’t want the banners stolen before the 10 a.m. opening ceremonies.

“We’re all pretty disappointed and disgusted,” said Jerry Bass, president of Encino Baseball, a 1,000-player conference that organizes games at the complex for children and adults.

Bass said the intruders also painted graffiti on scoreboards and backstops, and ripped away pieces of walls from dugouts and announcers’ booths. They set fire to a scorer’s book in one booth.

“They smashed electronic scoreboard controls. They broke a brand-new public address system we just got this spring and left it here. I’d have had more satisfaction if they’d just taken it,” Bass said.

The rampage caused about $7,000 in damage, he said.

The 26-year-old baseball complex is operated year-round by Encino parents who lease the site from the Los Angeles Recreation and Parks Department. The city department operates the property for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which owns the land as part of the Sepulveda Flood Control Basin.

Maintenance of the ball fields is the responsibility of the baseball league, however, said Ron Cherney, a league vice president in charge of the facilities.

Cherney said the league’s groundskeeper quickly painted over the graffiti on the advice of Los Angeles police detectives, who late Friday had no suspects in the attack on the ball fields.

He said the league operates with a $200,000 annual budget financed by registration fees, fund-raisers and baseball program advertising. Insurance will apparently cover most of the loss.

But one of the advertisers, realty owner Mike Glickman, pledged Friday to donate $2,000 to help beef up security at the ball-field complex.

Mickey Luftig, another league vice president, said parents may hire a private patrol service to watch over the fields and install a fence along the back side of complex where, “right now, there’s a gate but no fence attached to it.”

“There’s also been a suggestion that we get an old car and paint it to look like a police car and park it here,” Luftig said. “It would be like a scarecrow.”

That could throw the thieves a curve.