TOP GUN : Under Direction of His Fighter-Pilot Father, Prodigy Dmitri Young Aims to Develop the Perfect Baseball Swing

Some facts suggest that Dmitri Young leading Ventura County baseball players with a .500 batting average should be no surprise. This is his fourth year of varsity high school competition, for instance, and he has never hit below .400. He even led his league three years ago by hitting .564, and after the season was invited to play on a semi-pro team.

Yet other facts reveal that Young’s accomplishments border on unbelievable. He is only 15 years old and a sophomore at Rio Mesa High. That first varsity season, at Alabama Christian in Montgomery, Ala., Young was a 12-year-old seventh-grader.

His average dropped to .439 the next season because pitchers in Alabama quickly figured out what pitchers in Southern California learned this year--Don’t throw a fastball to Dmitri Young.

Young, a 6-foot-2, 210-pound third baseman without a driver’s license, is the most feared hitter in the county. He has walked 19 times, 10 intentionally, and sees “lots of dirt balls, pitches that are impossible to hit,” according to teammate David Frazier, who reasons that Young gets the treatment because he is “scary. If I was a pitcher, I’d be terrified when Dmitri comes up.”

Young was Cal-Hi Sports’ state freshman player of the year after batting .420 last season, and despite the dearth of fastballs he has improved in every statistical category this year. Many of those walks are as effective as extra-base hits--Young leads the county with 22 stolen bases in 23 tries and has scored 32 runs.

“He’s as exceptional a high school ballplayer as I’ve ever seen,” says Rio Mesa Coach Rich Duran, whose team visits Santa Maria on Friday in a first-round playoff game. “Look at all the things he can do and do well. He’s got better than average speed, a great arm, excellent power and is a very good defensive player.”

Not to mention an overwhelming desire to improve, to eliminate all weakness, to leave nothing to chance. The obsession begins at home--Dmitri’s father, Larry Young, recognized that his son had wondrous gifts for the game shortly after a 7-year-old Dmitri cried until his father allowed him to quit karate lessons and join a T-ball team.

From that day forth, there has been what Dmitri unabashedly calls “a two-man alliance” in pursuit of the perfect stance, the perfect swing. Dad researches theories of hitting then videotapes Dmitri’s swings and applies a little Charlie Lau here, a tad of Ted Williams there.

Dmitri grabs a bat and listens up.

As for the fastballs nobody will throw Young, he sees them in multiples of 20 at a batting cage in Camarillo. Marvels Frazier: “His dad takes him to the cage every day after practice or a game and Dmitri hits until his hands bleed.”

Perfection is a way of life for Navy Lt. Cmdr. Larry Young. After all, there is no room for error when it comes to landing an F-14 jet fighter on an aircraft carrier.

Young, a fighter pilot at Point Mugu Naval Base, notes similarities between his work and his son’s play. Relaxed concentration is the key to doing both well.

“I see a direct correlation between flying and batting,” he says. “Landing on a ship, you must give 120% of your attention to putting the plane exactly where you want it to be. But you have to be supremely confident in what you are doing.

“I apply everything I learn in flight training to Dmitri’s development in baseball.”

Human error is more evident in batting, however, which baffled the elder Young the first few times Dmitri stepped into the baseball equivalent of a flight simulator--the batting cage. Instantaneous judgments must be made, but the only instrument a hitter possesses is a length of aluminum.

“At the cage, I’d see the same pitch come out 100 times in a row and wonder, ‘Why can’t he hit 100 of 100 the same way?,”’ says Larry, who never played organized baseball. “I talked to some scouts and Dmitri’s coach and they brought me down to baseball reality. It takes so much to master this game.”

Dmitri, who admits to having no interest in learning to fly an airplane, has his own analogy for hitting. “The swing is like a puzzle,” he says. “All the parts have to fit just right.”

And when he’s puzzled by a pitcher, Young looks into the stands where his father offers answers.

“He’ll give a wiggle with his fingers to emphasize having a quick bat, not a long, looping swing,” says Dmitri, who bats and fields right-handed. “Or he’ll shake his shoulders to indicate that I should go to the ball and drive.”

Duran permits the input. “The Youngs and I are on the same wavelength so I have no problem with Dmitri’s father being involved,” says the Rio Mesa coach, who smiles as if to indicate he has no problem with the results, either.

Military upbringing is evident in Dmitri’s manner. Polite yet playful, he peppers conversations with sturdy yes sirs and yes ma’ams. But mention the practical jokes teammates pull and he breaks easily into a jumbo smile. “I’m usually the target of those,” he says gleefully.

Actually, the team thought a joke was being pulled the first day Young stepped onto the Rio Mesa campus during February of his freshman year.

“Nobody could believe he was a freshman,” recalls Frazier, a junior and two-year starter at second base. “We thought, ‘This guy’s pretty big. Whose position is he gonna take?’ And when that guy grabbed hold of a bat, whew! He swings a mean stick.”

Young played left field last season before moving to third--his natural position. Next season, he’ll probably also serve as bullpen ace. “I wouldn’t mind that at all,” he says through that grin.

Duran is just pleased that the Youngs have positioned themselves to remain in Camarillo until Dmitri finishes high school. Larry is scheduled to be reassigned in June, 1991, which coincides with Dmitri’s month of graduation.

This is the latest in a series of hometowns for the family of five--Larry and his wife Bonnie also have daughters aged 9 and 1 and a 3-year-old son. Washington, D.C., Texas, Florida, Mississippi, Alabama and Virginia have been stops along the way.

All signs point to high school baseball being only a short stop on the way to the top for Dmitri Young. He has been contacted by numerous professional scouts and will join a Houston Astros rookie team in September, a month before his 16th birthday.

Heady stuff, but the “two-man alliance” is not shy when it comes to goal-setting.

Says Larry: “Over the next two years he should understand hitting extremely well. He should be a complete player, able to lead off or bat No. 2, No. 3 or No. 4. He should be able to play infield or outfield.”

Dmitri simply adds, “I want to take baseball to the ultimate, to the top.”

The quest for the ultimate invariably takes the Youngs to the batting cage, where every swing has a purpose.

“We’re working on hitting to all fields, taking the outside pitch to right field. In the cage he hits 45% to right field, 45% up the middle and 10% to left.” Larry says. And next year? “He shouldn’t swing at pitches outside his zone. If he walks 50 times, so be it.”

Having Dmitri’s every move spelled out by his father has occasionally spelled trouble, and at times the alliance is an uneasy one.

“His dad is always there and sometimes Dmitri takes it in a negative way,” Frazier says. “He’ll say, ‘I hate it when my dad comes.’ That’s when we joke around with him and loosen him up. Anyway, when he gets mad, he gets better.”

And get angry Dmitri does.

“I have temper tantrums and get upset at myself and my dad,” he admits. “Sometimes I want him to let go. I’m going to be my own person.”

To Larry Young, the tension is all part of learning and growing. “There’s a fine line between daddy pushing too hard and daddy trying to perfect something,” he says. “We go through that all the time.

“At the cage I try to distract him, to see if I can faze him. People overhear us and don’t understand. After a great swing, the best he can do, I’ll tell him, ‘That was weak. Don’t you have a better swing than that?’ If he overswings the next time, I’ll say, ‘You let me get to you and didn’t stay within yourself. Your best swing was the time before.’ ”

The product of such exercises is discipline, and Dmitri’s discipline is as uncommon as his natural ability. The combination, it appears, could send him soaring to heights imagined only by a certain fighter pilot.