The Community Colleges : FINDING A GROOVE : Mike Mayne’s Pep Talk Helped Put the Power Back in Talanoa’s Offense

Scott Talanoa’s baseball fortunes are about as bright as they can be right now at Orange Coast College.

He leads the the Orange Empire Conference with 15 home runs and is hitting .382. At 6-feet-5 and 235 pounds, he has become the power hitter many expected him to be.

But it’s that very expectation of success that drove Talanoa into a low last winter.

Talanoa had starred at El Segundo High School in football, basketball and baseball for three seasons.

He hit .333 as a junior and .472 as a senior, yet his high school coach, John Stevenson, said he was inconsistent.

“He had some flashes of brilliance,” Stevenson said. “But he didn’t know if he wanted to be a pitcher or a player and that got in his way. I always felt his future was as a player in the field.”

Talanoa accepted a baseball scholarship to Cal State Fullerton in the spring of 1987. But a sore right shoulder ended any thoughts of pitching at Cal State Fullerton, where he was listed on the roster as an outfielder.

He spent much of his freshman season waiting for a chance that never really came. He had seven at-bats and managed two hits and two RBIs. He went to the College World Series with the Titans, but was too far down on the depth chart to suit up for any of the games.

“Everybody, including myself, kept saying that I was a freshman and I had to be patient,” Talanoa said. “But that didn’t make it much easier.”

Last June, Titan Coach Larry Cochell advised him to work at learning to play first base at a community college.

Talanoa picked Orange Coast so he could play for Mike Mayne, whose son Brent is an All-American catcher for the Titans. Talanoa has played some first base this season, and is also the Pirates’ designated hitter.

Talanoa is quick to credit Mike Mayne with bringing him out a slump that lasted from last fall through the winter.

“The fall was a disaster,” he said. “I spent a lot of time learning to play first, and that was what I worried about. I was expected to dominate and really didn’t do anything.

“One day I went to coach (Mayne), and told him I was worried about my future. He just told me that I was capable of putting up big numbers and that if I did, things would come my way.”

Enter Mike Mayne full-time coach and part-time psychologist.

“I knew from what my son Brent told me that all he really needed was confidence,” he said. “What other people felt he could be doing, he didn’t see that in himself. He’s just learned to trust himself and come to grips with his ability. That can be a scary thing for some people. Great success is uncharted territory for a lot of guys.”

Still, the improvement in Talanoa, 19, didn’t come quickly.

Even when the season started in February he didn’t start to do well right away. Talanoa didn’t hit his first home run until the 10th game. He hit two more in the next game but he still wasn’t producing much. He was hitting .288 with three home runs and 11 RBIs after 13 games.

After Orange Coast lost its first three conference games, Mayne told Talanoa there was no pitcher in this conference who should dominate him.

From that point Talanoa went on a tear.

In his last 23 games, he’s hitting .443 with 12 home runs and 37 RBIs. He has hit two home runs in a game twice this season.

Orange Coast (25-10-1 overall, 12-7 in conference play) is two games behind Rancho Santiago.

Orange Coast might be a game closer to Rancho Santiago had one of Talanoa’s home runs not indirectly resulted in OCC forfeiting a victory.

After hitting a home run and an RBI single in his first two at-bats against Los Angeles Harbor March 24, Talanoa was hit by a pitch. He charged the mound and was ejected from the game.

Talanoa hit a homer and had three RBIs in OCC’s next game, a 16-6 victory over Golden West. Neither he nor Mayne was aware that the conference had adopted a rule before the season that stated any player ejected for fighting would have to sit out the following game. The victory became a forfeit loss.

“It bothered me a lot that it happened,” Talanoa said about the fight and subsequent forfeit. “I did something that cost the team a chance to be in first place, but we’ll come back.”

Talanoa isn’t talking about his plans, whether he expects to be taken in baseball’s amateur draft June 5-6, or whether he plans to continue his college career.

“I don’t want to jinx myself,” he said. “It seems like every time my head gets a little too big, something happens to bring it right back down.

“It’s like coach (Mayne) tells me. Each time you go to the plate it doesn’t matter what you did before. You could have hit a home run or struck out. You always start at zero.”

TALANOA’S TWO SEASONS IN ONE

AB H 2B 3B HR RBI AVG First 13 Games 52 15 4 0 3 11 .288 Last 23 Games 79 35 9 0 12 37 .443 Total, 36 Games 131 50 13 0 15 48 .382