REBEL WITH A CAUSE : Only a Bad Break Can Keep Softball Philanthropist Sawitx From His Flock

On Aug. 8, a freak thunderstorm strikes Nevada, blows out the lights in Las Vegas with 90 m. p. h. winds and turns the desert into mud. Groping in the dark at a car-rental return, Reb Sawitz slips and breaks his left leg in seven places. He arrives home in North Hollywood with a thigh-to-toe plaster cast and doctor’s orders to stay in bed, which means he won’t be able to run his softball team the following weekend in the California state tournament.

During the past two decades, Sawitz, 44, has sponsored hundreds of adult and kids teams in the L. A. area. So many, “it’s almost impossible to figure out,” he says. His A-division SSK Reb’s team, which has won more than 100 slow-pitch tournaments over the years, is the crown jewel in his mini-sports empire. He has missed only one tournament game: eight years ago when the same leg was broken in a motorcycle accident.

Gerri, his wife of 24 years, wasn’t going to let another fracture keep him from going to Martinez for the United States Slow-Pitch Softball Assn. California championships Aug. 12-13. Forget about the doctor. After all, her husband is the guy who legally changed his first name to Reb, short for rebel, and won’t divulge his given name. So she gassed up the van for the five-hour drive to Martinez and charged the batteries in Reb’s wheelchair.

“She was ready to go,” Sawitz recalls, “but I was too weak. I had to talk her out of it.”

Typically, Sawitz sees the accident as a bad break for him but a worse one for his team: Despite hitting more home runs in one game than anybody else at the tournament, Reb’s was eliminated in three games. He wasn’t there to “pull them together. I was the missing catalyst,” says Sawitz, who is summoning the strength to take his team to the American Softball Assn. World championships in Midland, Tex., at the end of this month.

A large man (235 pounds) with full beard and thick dark hair, Sawitz isn’t exaggerating when he credits himself for making the team go. In serious men’s slow-pitch softball, it takes a tough hombre to handle the enlarged egos of giant men who hit home runs into the next area code. Sawitz has five 300-pound long-ballers on his current team.

“There are guys on my team with such tempers they’ve been known to throw the bat 400 feet when they’re mad,” he says. “But before they play for me I tell them, ‘I don’t go for this.’ If you don’t have the right attitude with me, you don’t play. And that means no drugs and no booze,” adds Sawitz, a non-drinker.

“Reb is very good to play for,” says Jocko Keller, who has played on various Sawitz teams since the mid-’70s. “He runs the team very professionally. He treats everybody fairly and we get the amount of playing time we deserve.”

Although it might sound unusual for a wife to encourage her husband to ignore medical advice--a typical plot device on “Murder, She Wrote”--Gerri knew that Reb’s lifelong ethic is “quitters never win and winners never quit,” she says. And he applies it to himself: In the motorcycle accident, his elbow also was shattered and doctors told him he could never play softball again, but he still does.

Ever since they were married--”The day of our marriage I didn’t know his real name wasn’t Reb,” Gerri says--the Sawitzes have centered their lives on sports. All four of their children played everything from American Legion baseball to park and rec tackle football (even daughter Crystal).

They owned a sports-oriented Canoga Park sub and rib shop that specialized in the Pete Rose B. L. T. and the Billy Martin turkey sub. Which other Valley couple--except maybe Wayne and Janet--have decorated almost every room of their house with a forest of massive trophies? And there are not many sons like Shane, freshman football coach at Chaminade, who brings home cartons of football gear and repairs them for kids leagues.

Gerri has run her own tee-ball team, but Reb has virtually made a full-time job out of sponsoring and coaching teams in almost every sport. His softball teams have always been at the top--his men’s team in the Burbank Park and Rec League was dominant for 15 years--and he has coached hundreds of youngsters.

“Reb eats, drinks and sleeps sports 24 hours a day,” says Gerri, who has been a waitress for 21 years at Tiny Naylor’s in Studio City.

Sawitz says he can’t estimate how much he’s spent, “but we’ve supported these teams out of our pockets, and we don’t earn that much money.” During the long softball season, his phone bills go up to $200 a month. Only in the ast five years has he been able to get Sasaki Sports of Japan and Mitre Shoes to sponsor his tournament team.

“I begged for sponsors,” Sawitz says.

Why does he sponsor teams? “I love competition,” he says, “and I want to give kids a chance to do something I never did.” That would be to make it to the majors in baseball. Sawitz says he got as far as the Rookie League until a back injury forced him to give it up. A pitcher, he says he “was better than Bill Singer,” who went to Pomona High with him and later pitched for the Dodgers.

Sawitz is also a regular at Notre Dame High football and baseball games because Shane played at the school. And since Shane became freshman football coach at Chaminade under head Coach Rich Lawson, Sawitz also shows up at the Eagles’ games. He takes action photos and hands them out free to players at both schools. He also gives sandwiches to the teams for road games. Sandwiches like the Kirk Gibson teriyaki steak.

“We call Reb the Gut-Bomb Man,” says Lawson, who used to live in the same neighborhood as the Sawitzes and would baby-sit Shane.

At Sawitz’s North Hollywood ranch house, a ramp is being installed so Reb can get outside with his wheelchair. He has been spending most of his time indoors, a little depressed about the broken leg, preoccupied thinking about the upcoming world championships. Almost all of his players are new this season; the only returning player is 6-foot-4 utility man John Kramer.

“A team can only stay together without friction for a few years,” says Sawitz, whose tournament team, playing in the A division, finished third in the world in ’84 and fourth in ‘86, winning the state title both years. He looked at about 60 players before deciding on 14 for this year’s team. “They come to us,” he says, “and I’m not saying that to be pompous.”

Sawitz would like to win a world title, of course, but even if he doesn’t, he’s happy with the way things have gone. “If I die without a penny,” he says, “I’ll be rich in memories.”