Mom the Coach : Susan Abbott is a single parent, a Little League manager in North Torrance and a notoriously tough competitor. To her son and star player, Dominic, she combines the best of June Cleaver and Earl Weaver. Other kids beg to get on her team.

Swinging an aluminum baseball bat in her right hand, Susan Abbott stood at home plate and smacked a ball toward third base on opening day of the North Torrance West Little League.

“C’mon guys, try it again,” said the manager of the Indians, a team of boys age 8-10 who appeared nervous at their first game drills.

“Second base, babe,” Abbott said. She hit a fly to the center fielder, who let it trickle between his legs.

“Adam. You are either over or under the ball, but never over run it.”

Abbott is believed to be one of the few female Little League field managers in the nation. An official in Williamsport, Pa., said the organization does not keep track of the gender of its volunteer coaches. But Abbott, a Hawthorne resident, says she hasn’t seen or heard of many female managers in her four seasons on the job. League officials confirmed that outside of the youngest division (called T-ball), very few women manage Little League teams.

Abbott is unusual in her role, as well, because she is a single parent. And there is added pressure because her son, Dominic, who pitched the Indians to a 17-6 opening-day victory, is a potential future South Bay high school star. She is, in effect, “Coach Mommy,” but it is a role she handles quite well.

“She is the most dedicated women in baseball that I know,” said player agent Kitty Vanderhoof, a six-year Little League veteran. “We have a hard enough time getting one person from a two-parent family to help out here, let alone someone from a one-parent family.”

The Abbott story is a love story, not just about baseball, bats and balls. It is about the bond between a mother and her son and how baseball at this point in their somewhat checkered life has been an important outlet for the pair to share.

Baseball has been a diversion that has carried them through some rough financial and emotional times.

“I love my mom a lot,” said Dominic, watching a televised Dodger game with Susan as he spoke. “She’s a real special person.”

Dominic, who seems to have a command of himself on the field that very few kids his age have, is surprisingly shy in conversation.

“Dominic is real sensitive,” said Susan.

They have a strong bond.

“Dominic is very close to his mother,” said Vanderhoof. “But he is not a momma’s boy. He is not overwhelmed by her.”

Almost from the start, Susan, a one-time softball catcher, taught Dominic the fine points of baseball. He was still in diapers when he learned how to swing a plastic bat and, later, throw a ball.

“I’m just doing everything I know his dad would have wanted to do with him,” Susan said.

The knock on the front door 11 years ago still sounds louder than life for Susan Abbott. A policemen from Tomah, Wis., came to tell Susan that her boyfriend had died in an automobile crash.

The couple had dated for four years.

“It was a small town. Everyone knew everyone else,” she said. “They knew where to find me.”

Dominic never knew his father. Five weeks after the death of her boyfriend, Susan realized that she was going to have a baby.

“(The death) was hard at first,” she said. “When I found out I was pregnant, that made up for it.”

Dominic says being raised by a single parent isn’t a problem.

“It’s not tough without a father,” he said. “She’s just as good as both put together.”

The closeness of their relationship is obvious to others in North Torrance West.

Said Vanderhoof: “They have a very sincere love for each other.”

Susan says proudly that she and Dominic manage without a man around the house.

“I have never been married,” she said. “I haven’t found anyone as good (as Dominic’s father) yet.”

Susan was born in Inglewood, but by the time she was 14 she had lived in 22 different cities. One of six children, she moved again in 1968 to Wisconsin with her parents. After her boyfriend was killed, she thought about returning to California, but it wasn’t until Dominic was almost 3 that they returned to Inglewood.

Susan discovered that the city of her birth had changed drastically.

“It was scary,” she said.

A month after she returned to California, a woman was stabbed to death outside her rented house on Prairie Avenue and 109th Street. Susan packed up her things and found a house in Hawthorne. She chose the South Bay because she felt it had better employment opportunities.

“I just didn’t see a lot of prospects in Wisconsin,” she said. Once settled, however, she couldn’t land what she wanted here either.

As a youth, “I was a hellion,” Susan said. That led to a poor start in the job market. Finally, she landed a small grant and enrolled in a technical college. It was a turning point in her life and her son’s.

“In high school I got only Cs and Ds,” she said. “But this is something I wanted, so I went for it.”

To make ends meet, she took in work at her home. She typed resumes and did secretarial work.

“I still had to pay the rent,” she explained.

Today she is an executive secretary in a major South Bay aerospace firm. She sometimes laughs now about how she had to claw her way to a better existence.

Holding a cigarette in one hand, she lifted her other hand in front of her face.

“Look at this nail,” she said, holding up a mangled red fingernail. “I lost one from baseball last night and now one today from a filing cabinet.”

It’s difficult to miss the diminutive Abbott on the field. On opening day she wore bright red pants, fingernail polish to match, and a white baseball jersey. Over her right breast in red block letters was printed “MGR. SUSAN.” In the midday sun, an auburn tint highlighted her long, dark hair, adding a feminine touch to the American pastime.

As Little League fields go, the North Torrance West site at Columbia Park has seen better days. On opening day the base paths were overly dusty and the grass was unevenly cut. That didn’t stop the Indians from running. They scored six runs in the first inning of their 17-6 victory over the Yankees, stealing bases and taking advantage of wild pitches and passed balls.

The Indians may mirror their manager’s personality.

“She’s very aggressive,” said North Torrance West President Walter Mulvaney.

Susan Abbott has been both criticized and congratulated for that style of play. It is, she acknowledges, an extension of how she lives her life.

“She’s a decent coach,” said Bruce Howell, a fellow manager and rival. “You have to be aggressive. It’s an aggressive game. But she pulls a few stunts that people don’t like.”

Howell adds that Abbott’s teams are always competitive because Dominic is such a good player.

“If you have one or two good players at this age,” he said, “the game is usually over after the first couple of innings.”

Vanderhoof said most of the players have a deep respect for Abbott--something the male coaches and managers have been slower to give her.

“We have kids who sign up that specifically ask to be on her team,” Vanderhoof said. “The kids really respect her. She tells them right up front that she won’t take any guff from them. She sets the guidelines right away, and she doesn’t have much problems with kids.”

Abbott, as would be expected of any woman trying to crack a male-dominated business, has fought hard to earn that respect. Of her chief adversary, Howell, she says: “I don’t think he likes me, but I think he respects me.”

Howell explained: “I don’t know if I like her or if I respect her. In my opinion, something is lost when a woman coaches baseball.”

Abbott, her detractors say, stands too firm on many issues.

“I don’t hate her,” said Howell. “Her and me, we get in some scraps about things. She’s a really nice person when you get to know her. My wife says to me: ‘That Susan, she’s always lookin’ for a fight.’ I say: ‘No, she’s not. She’s just that way.’ ”

Buck Abbott, an older brother, remembers the time Susan came to his defense when they were growing up in Wisconsin.

“This guy was picking on me, and I was no match for him,” he said. “Suddenly my younger sister got in his face. She was trying to protect me. She started swinging at him.”

Buck paused a moment.

“She scared him off.”

On opening day Abbott called her team into the dugout and, in surprisingly soft tones, talked to them about their roles. Then, as parents in the bleachers puffed on cigarettes and munched on nachos and hot dogs, Abbott encouraged each player to do his best.

When a player named Brian struck out, she met him at the dugout with a high five.

“Next time you go down, go down swinging,” she told him.

Another player was hit in the knee by a wild pitch, and Abbott was one of the first to reach him. She put her arm around him and walked the sobbing boy back to the dugout.

Coach Mommy was at home.