The High Schools : Help Arrives After Theft at Reseda

Mike Stone wanted his team to steal some bases. Instead, his team’s bases were stolen.

And their bats. And batting helmets. And balls. And catching gear.

Stone, the Reseda High baseball coach, was flabbergasted last week when he went to the team’s supply shed and found the cupboard bare.

Not even a doughnut was there.

“Somebody busted the door off,” Stone said. “All of it (the equipment) was stolen. It wiped out our entire baseball supply.”

Stone estimated the loss of equipment at $1,000, including eight aluminum bats that belonged to the players. Stone donated $100, $250 came out of student body funds and the father of a former player donated baseballs. “People just kind of came to our rescue,” Stone said.

Easton Aluminum Inc., a Van Nuys sporting goods company, donated eight aluminum bats.

“Coach Stone gave me a list of every bat that was stolen,” said Mike Danford, the company’s product manager for bats. “We tried to replace them one for one.”

Danford estimated the value of the replacement bats, including an additional prototype bat that the company plans to market this summer, at between $600-700.

“They’ve really saved us,” Stone said of Easton.

Armed with the new bats, perhaps the Regents can still save themselves. Reseda is 4-11 and last in Mid-Valley League play at 1-10.

The missing Link?: Sylmar’s newly hired basketball coach, Larry Link, realizes that he has his work cut out for him. He was hired last week to replace Billy Reed, who left the program after three losing seasons. The Spartans were 3-13 last year and rarely have had reason to brag about their basketball program.

“We’re starting from scratch,” Link said. “We’re known for baseball and we have an up-and-coming football program. Basketball has been viewed only as the season between those sports. Maybe we can change that attitude so that people look at basketball as equal to the other two sports.”

Link, 44, is a 1968 graduate of San Fernando Valley State (now Cal State Northridge), where he played basketball and baseball. He played basketball for one year in Europe before becoming a tennis coach. His only basketball coaching experience came from 1982 to ’84 at Hamilton High, where he replaced Yutaka Shimizu when the current Kennedy coach transferred.

Earning his stripes: It was the last college basketball game for Simi Valley baseball Coach Mike Scyphers, and it also marked the end of his short-lived movie career.

The cable station Showtime has been airing a movie titled “Candy Stripe Nurses” in its red-eye time slot this month. As a senior point guard at Cal State Northridge, Scyphers briefly appears in uniform during game action. The movie features Scyphers and several teammates in a win over Fullerton State in the 1974 season finale at Northridge.

The movie, a 76-minute bomb that was given a one-star rating in the TV listings, is rated R and has all the melodrama, suspense and skin that its name implies.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen the whole thing,” said Scyphers, who said he has received phone calls from friends reminding him to watch. “I remember one (teammate) had a pretty big role, and that the hair and clothes of the actors looked pretty bad.”

Uh, yeah, when the actors wore clothes. Lucky for Scyphers, his basketball career ended on a better note than did “Nurses.” Scyphers nailed a just-for-the-heck-of-it toss from half-court as the game and his career ended.

It didn’t make the movie.

Whiteside’s white knight: Poly’s Harold Whiteside, who suffered a broken jaw March 29 when he was hit by a pitch and has been playing ever since with his mouth wired shut, nearly dropped his jaw when his coach told him of the plans of an area dentist.

After an item about Whiteside’s injury was published, a Van Nuys dentist called Coach Jerry Cord and offered to make Whiteside a protective mouthpiece, free of charge.

“He said he’d done it before and that he’d like to help Harold if he could,” Cord said. “When he told me how much it would normally cost, I made sure Harold made it down there.”

Paid to stay: How much is a high school baseball game worth? Well, to the Highland Hall Hawks, a Westside League game against Grace Community carried a $75 price tag for just one player.

The Hawks each kicked in $5 to keep junior third baseman Steve Francis in town for a few more hours. Francis was scheduled to return home to New York City and would have missed a first-place showdown with Grace Community.

Francis’ parents moved from New York to teach at Highland Hall but returned East two weeks ago. Francis stayed through the weekend to attend the school’s senior prom and extended his departure a few more hours to play in the Hawks’ 8-3 victory. With the $75, Francis exchanged his ticket for a later flight and went one for three in the Hawks’ 21st consecutive league victory.

Staff writers Steve Elling, Vince Kowalick and John Lynch contributed to this notebook.