Infield Throws Pitcher a Curve : Softball: Lady Toros hurler Kim Park has an earned-run average of 0.39, but her win-loss record is 5-6.

Kim Park has had a run of luck lately, most of it bad.

A control pitcher on a weak defensive softball team at Cal State Dominguez Hills, Park has a fine 0.35 earned-run average, but her overall record is just 5-6. She is 0-4 in the California Collegiate Athletic Assn.

Normally, a pitcher with an earned-run average that low should be winning most of her games. It has been frustrating for Park, who has held opponents to a .197 batting average but doesn’t strike out many, relying instead on making them hit ground balls--which her teammates have been booting. The Lady Toros have committed 47 errors in 16 games.

It’s disappointing, she said, to look at the win-loss column on the team’s statistical sheets, then look at her ERA and see an entirely different story.

“Sometimes it’s hard not to worry (about statistics), but I know that I’m doing my best out there,” Park said. “Right now the team is beating itself.”

The big problem has been the poor play of the infield, where Nicole Stelter playing at third base is the only returning starter playing the same position she did last year.

Ironically, the Lady Toros are 11-8 overall, posting a 6-2 record behind their other pitcher, Jennifer Boen, a sophomore who has recorded 13 more strikeouts than Park in 21 fewer innings.

“It’s still early in the season, so hopefully we can get our defense together before too much longer,” Park said. “If we work hard, the errors should come down.”

A recent example of Park’s bad luck was a 5-1 loss to UC Riverside in which all five Riverside runs were unearned. The Lady Toros committed eight errors.

Park, a senior left-hander, has pitched at the four-year college level for three seasons. With all that experience, said Coach Janis Ruetz, she is in top form.

Park calls herself a “junk pitcher,” but Ruetz insists on the term “control pitcher.” It amounts to the same thing--a pitcher who doesn’t throw fast and gives up a lot of ground balls.

For such a pitcher, good placement is essential. Since the pitch doesn’t have overpowering speed, it must break at just the right moment so that the hitter will swing through it.

“She doesn’t blow it by anyone, but she really knows how to pitch. She knows the spots to hit,” Ruetz said.

Park’s most effective pitch is a curve, and she throws three variations of it. She also has a screwball to catch left-handed hitters off balance.

“The reason I throw so many curves and off-speed pitches is because I’m left-handed,” she said. “Everyone knows (left-handed people) can’t throw straight.”

Experience has taught Park how to accept losing, but that doesn’t mean she is going to take the losses without a fight.

“I’ve been injured in the past, so I know that frustration, and now I know what it’s like to pitch well and lose. It all makes me try harder,” she said.

Park has thrown three shutouts and 11 complete games, allowing only four earned runs in 79 2/3 innings.

“She shows a lot of stamina out there,” Reutz said. “She could pitch every day if we need her to.”

Park emphasized that women have to work just as hard as men to excel in sports.

“I hope that one day women’s sports are recognized for what they are,” she said. “They are just as well played as the men’s sports. One day we will go all the way and have our own professional leagues.”

Right now, Park said, the only thing women’s sports gives her is an education. A graduate of Banning High School and now a Long Beach resident, she is attending Dominguez Hills on an athletic scholarship.

Softball also lets her travel free and be with her friends on the team.

“Traveling around with my friends is probably the best part of the whole thing,” Park said. “It’s definitely one of the reasons that I’ve stayed with it for so long.”

There is a downside, though: It’s hard to find time to keep up her grades. Taking 18 units and having a social life is basically impossible these days, she said.

“There is never enough time to do all of the studying that I want to do, but I usually get what studying I need,” Park said.

At Banning High, she said, she could coast, playing on the softball team and not paying much attention to classes.

But now she realizes that there isn’t any future in softball after college. There are no professional leagues for women to enter, and coaching doesn’t pay very well.

So Park, a physical education major with an emphasis in physical therapy, is shopping for a graduate program in physical therapy and hopes to get into sports medicine.

One thing she would like to do in her last season is beat Cal State Northridge. She has never done it, and this is the last season Northridge will compete with Dominguez Hills on the Division II level. Park would like to send the Lady Matadors a goodby present.

“It’s their attitude that makes me want to beat them,” Park said. “They’ve been No. 1 in the conference for a long time--they were even state champions a couple of years ago--and it makes them think that they are better than everyone else.”