American Legion Baseball / Steve Elling : Lull in Action Leads Players and an 8-Year-Old on Merry Chase

Rick Dempsey of the Dodgers likes to kill time during rain delays by sliding around on the infield tarp, like a kid on a front-yard slip-and-slide. Others while away the hours playing cards in the locker room, watching television, perfecting ways to torch teammates’ shoe laces without being caught or putting Ben-Gay in somebody’s jock strap.

At the Legion level, killing time can be just as creative. Sometimes, it’s almost enough to kill a guy.

At Saturday’s scheduled doubleheader between Woodland Hills East and Encino-Crespi at Taft High, umpires disappeared after the first game, leaving players and fans to amuse themselves while coaches conducted a two-hour search for replacements.

Sufficiently bored, the East team moved, en masse, to the Taft track where reserve Marc Hoffberg raced Tony Zeichick, the 8-year-old brother of East designated-hitter Jamie Zeichick.

Child’s play? You bet.

Hoffberg had to complete four laps while Zeichick ran three. After two laps, Hoffman started peeling off layers of his uniform. With one lap to go, Hoffberg burned out. He failed to finish Lap 4 and was 220 yards “behind” Zeichick when the latter finished his third and final lap.

How bored were they? At least two players had $10 riding on the outcome.

“We were just waiting around for the umps to come back,” said Robert Zeichick, father of Jamie and Tony. “I asked if anybody wanted to race Tony and Hoffman said, “Oh, yeah, I’m up for that. I can take him.’ ”

Some people never learn. A few minutes later, the same challenge was issued to East pitcher Eric Rothman, who also accepted. Tony, wearing a black shirt on a 95-degree day and running in basketball high-tops, was soon two for two.

“The other kid thought that since Tony had already raced once, he’d be tired,” Robert Zeichick said. “And (Rothman) didn’t finish the race, either.”

And while on the subject of spinning your wheels, they also didn’t finish the doubleheader--despite two hours of searching for replacement umpires and numerous phone calls to district representatives. The second game was played Sunday night, after the District 20 All-Star Game. Encino-Crespi won, 9-3, and leaped over East into second place in the Western Division.

Third verse, same as the first: First there was Aretha. Then came Rodney. And next is Dave Unter, the latest to request a little R-E-S-P-E-C-T.

Unter, a Panorama City right-hander, is 5-0 and was the winning pitcher in the East’s 7-1 victory over the West in the District 20 All-Star Game at Birmingham High on Sunday. Unter graduated last month from L. A. Baptist High, a Southern Section 1-A Division school for which he was 8-2 with a 2.06 earned-run average and 56 strikeouts in 54 1/3 innings.

Unter pitched a hitless third inning of relief in the all-star game, helping to combine on a two-hitter. Along with Panorama City and former L. A. Baptist teammate Dave Garcia--who drove in two runs--the pair were key players in the win, which, in Unter’s mind, proves that small schools does not mean small time.

“There are a lot of quality players at the 1-A level, guys who would be just as good as players from the 4-A level given the chance,” Unter said. “We don’t get any of the attention that the others get.”

He might have a case. In Legion play, against competition most feel is consistently better than the talent at the 1-A level, Unter has allowed 46 hits in 48 1/3 innings, struck out 22 and has an ERA of 1.74.

Bad timing dept.: Right-hander Lance Gibson (6-1), who has won 19 Legion games in his three-year career and is the No. 1 starter on the Woodland Hills West pitching staff, might not be available for the playoffs because of an injury to his left elbow.

Gibson was struck by a pitched ball in a Palomino game Saturday. Although no bones were broken, West Coach Gary Gibson, Lance’s father, is not optimistic. West is the top-seeded team in the District 20 playoffs, which open today.

“Right now, I couldn’t even begin to guess whether he’ll be able to play this week,” Gary Gibson said Monday. “It doesn’t look good.”

Super Seper: Encino-Crespi’s Vic Seper says that his recent 10-for-10 streak, which finally ended Saturday, was really “no big deal.”

“I’ve had a couple of 13-for-13 streaks,” Seper said. “Back in Little League and Pony ball.”

And for Seper, 15, those feats didn’t happen that long ago. Seper, a third baseman, will be a sophomore at Crespi High in the fall. And while he failed to be bowled over by his own feat, Seper did admit that the level of pitching in Legion ball is much higher than it was at the pee-wee level.

“There are some pretty mean pitchers out there with a lot of good stuff,” he said. “With these guys, you have to think up the middle. You try to pull them and you won’t be around long.”

With three years of high school eligibility remaining, it appears that Seper will be around for some time to come.

“He’s a good kid with a good attitude,” said Encino-Crespi assistant Craig Sherwood, also an assistant at Crespi High. “He was about five for his last five in our high school summer league, too.”

Baby boomers: West Hills Coach Jack Weiss is one of those guys who would put a bat in a kid’s hand in the hospital delivery room if his wife let him, a guy who’d have babies taking cuts before they cut their teeth. As it stands, Weiss still gets his offspring started fairly young.

Weiss says he started tossing a ball to his son, Aaron, when the latter was 18 months old.

“I put a Wiffle Ball bat in his hands and made him swing left-handed,” he said. “I figured if I started him young, it would pay off later.”

It already has. Aaron, a natural right-hander who bats left and will be a junior at Chaminade next season, hit .373 with five home runs and 22 runs batted in for West Hills (6-16) after finishing the season on a 12-for-16 tear.

The elder Weiss has gone so gaga over the idea that he did the same thing with his younger son, David, now a 12-year-old who attends Chaminade Prep in Chatsworth.

“Stay tuned,” Weiss said.

Add West Hills: Weiss said that although Saturday’s 29-19 win over Reseda at Chaminade High might have have been a little short in the baseball purity department--Reseda Coach Frank Des-Enfants termed the field unfit for Legion play--he prefers a high-scoring game.

“Some people are always going to think that fields with short porches are a joke,” Weiss said, referring to the right-field fence at Chaminade that is approximately 40 feet high and located only 240 feet down the line. “But think about it: if you’re down, 10-6, in the ninth and there’s a short porch, you’re still in the game.”

True enough. After trailing, 18-5, Reseda stormed back with eight runs in the fifth. But the game was called because of the 10-run rule after Chaminade scored six runs in the eighth to expand a 23-19 lead.

There were 10 home runs--four players hit two each--and 17 extra-base hits.

“Think about Minnesota before they built the Homerdome,” Weiss said. “They couldn’t draw 800,000 fans at the old place. Then they build the new stadium and they draw a couple of million. I think most fans would rather watch a 10-9 game than a 2-1 pitcher’s duel.”

Wait till next year: Two-time defending District 20 champion Van Nuys-Notre Dame (11-11) failed to defend its title this season--or even advance to the playoffs--but if ever there was a rebuilding year, this was it.

Thirteen of 18 players on the Van Nuys-Notre Dame Legion roster have eligibility remaining next summer.

Pick and roll: Burbank left-hander Brian Forth has established quite a reputation as the master of the pickoff play at first, something he certainly cemented when he picked off Ryan McGuire of Woodland Hills West for the final out of the all-star game Sunday.

Last season, as a senior at Burroughs High, Forth picked 21 runners off first. In Legion play this summer, he has erased 32 for a total of 53 in 1989.