Tate Seefried Shows No Mercy With a Bat : Prep baseball: The El Segundo star leads the South Bay in homers and RBIs. He’s also an ace pitcher.

When El Segundo High School’s Tate Seefried uncoils his smooth, left-handed swing at a pitch, others often pay the price.

“His mother had to put up with a lot of broken windows and broken vases,” said Gary Seefried, Tate’s father.

Sunday, Tate Seefried added his dad to the list of damaged goods.

As the elder Seefried pitched batting practice to his son at El Segundo’s field, Tate ripped a line drive toward the mound.

“I told Tate to concentrate on going up the middle,” said Gary Seefried, a former minor league player with the Boston Red Sox. “I always have a screen in front of me. I thought the ball would hit the frame. It didn’t.”

Tate’s liner just missed the protective screen and hit his father flush on the left arm, breaking his wrist.

“My eyeballs were ready to hit the pavement,” Gary Seefried said.

Seefried’s hitting exploits for El Segundo this season have opened many eyes. The pitcher-first baseman leads the South Bay with nine home runs and 34 runs batted in, and his .456 batting average is among the best on a productive team that has scored 223 runs in 17 games.

His play is a big reason the Eagles own a 15-2 record heading into today’s second round of the San Luis Obispo Tournament.

The 6-foot-4, 180-pound senior, a transfer from Central Valley High School in Spokane, Wash., has been a valuable addition to a team that was expected to be strong because of the return of 10 players from last season’s Southern Section 2-A championship squad.

Seefried has made a good team even better.

In El Segundo’s most important game to date, last Friday against Camino Real League rival St. Bernard, Seefried recovered from a rocky start--he surrendered back-to-back home runs in the first inning--to pitch a complete game in a 13-4 victory. It raised the right-hander’s record to 5-0.

But Seefried’s long-ball hitting draws the most attention. After all, his nickname is Tater, baseball slang for home run.

He hit perhaps his longest home run last summer in an American Legion game at Rogers High School in Spokane. The scoreboard in right-center field is 350 feet from the plate. Past the scoreboard is an alley, and beyond the alley is a row of houses. Seefried hit the ball over the houses, a blast measuring 450 to 500 feet.

Then there is the home run he hit earlier this season against Bosco Tech in a game at Recreation Park, El Segundo’s home field. Eagle Coach John Stevenson estimated the ball traveled “well over 400 feet.

“It was so high,” Stevenson said, “it just about brought rain down with it.”

Seefried credits his hitting prowess to several individuals:

His father, whose regard for Ted Williams led him to teach Tate, a natural right-hander, to bat from the left side.

Former Angel Rod Carew, who has worked with Tate for several years at his hitting camp in Yorba Linda.

Coach Stevenson, who in 31 years at El Segundo has helped turn out dozens of outstanding players, including George Brett.

Of course, Stevenson would be the first to admit that Seefried was already an accomplished hitter before he arrived at El Segundo last fall.

As a junior last year at Central Valley High in Spokane, Seefried gained a reputation as that area’s finest major league prospect since Ryne Sandberg by leading his team to the quarterfinals of the state playoffs. He batted .415, was 8-1 as a pitcher and played shortstop late in the season after the team’s regular shortstop began making too many errors.

Seefried would have stayed in Washington if his father’s plans of building a sports bar had ever gotten off the ground. But unable to find a reasonably priced piece of land, Gary Seefried decided to move his family back to Southern California last summer.

The Seefrieds had previously lived in Rolling Hills Estates, where Tate attended Rolling Hills High as a freshman and sophomore.

“We were going to go back to Rolling Hills,” said Gary Seefried, who grew up in Seattle and is now working as a sports marketing director after 27 years in the insurance business.

Instead, the family relocated in El Segundo. Several factors entered into the decision, not the least of which was the fact that Mark Lewis, Tate’s best friend at Rolling Hills, had transferred to El Segundo as a junior and starts at shortstop for the Eagles.

“My parents gave me a choice of what school I wanted to attend,” he said. “When I was going to Rolling Hills, all I heard was, ‘El Segundo going to the finals in this and El Segundo going to the finals in that.’ I wanted to be of that winning tradition.

“And it helped that Mark was here. He introduced me to a lot of people.”

One of the first people he met at school was El Segundo basketball Coach Rick Sabosky. The next day, Seefried was enrolled in basketball class.

“Basketball is really not my sport,” he said. “But I like basketball so much. I’ve played it all my life.”

Seefried earned a starting spot at forward and helped El Segundo finish fourth in the competitive Camino Real League and reach the semifinals of the Southern Section 2-A playoffs. He averaged 16.5 points a game, second-best on the team.

“I think he gained a lot of respect as a basketball player,” Stevenson said. “He came through in clutch situations.”

When basketball was over, though, Seefried knew he had to prove himself to a new set of teammates in baseball.

“When I came here, it’s not like they said, ‘Here’s a spot for you.’ ” he said. “I knew I had to work for it.”

Seefried opened the season at first base and batting third in the lineup. He also earned a spot in the Eagles’ pitching rotation with right-hander Rob Croxall and left-hander Jason Wayt, both returning varsity players.

“There could have been some distasteful feelings toward him because he moved someone out of a starting position,” Gary Seefried said. “But he’s produced. That helps.”

With 10 regular-season games remaining, Seefried is on a pace to threaten Southern Section records for most home runs and RBIs in the season. His nine home runs are seven shy of the record of 16 set by Arnold Garcia of Channel Islands in 1981, and his 34 RBIs are closing in on the section record of 58 set by Redondo’s Scott Davison in 1987.

Seefried credits his fast start to El Segundo’s balanced lineup. With a dangerous hitter like catcher Garret Quaintance (.491, four home runs, 25 RBIs) batting behind him, teams can’t afford to pitch around Seefried.

“They have to throw to me, and they have to throw to Garret,” he said. “Everybody in the whole lineup is getting good pitches.”

Seefried’s hitting numbers in the last two years have helped attract the attention of major league scouts and college coaches.

“I’m impressed with him,” said Paul Fryer, a scout for the Baltimore Orioles. “He swings the bat real well and he seems like a hard-working kid.”

Practice is something Seefried has never shied away from.

“I started off hitting tennis balls to him out in the street when he was 3 or 4,” Gary Seefried recalled. “I used to hit them up in the air. He tried to catch them, but more landed on his head than in his mitt.”

Gary Seefried originally had intended his son to be a tennis player. But after several years of playing the junior circuit, it became apparent that Tate’s true love was baseball.

“He liked the uniforms and caps, and all that kind of stuff,” the elder Seefried said. “He liked spitting and chewing gum. Playing tennis, he had to show a little more (etiquette) on the court.”

Today, Tate Seefried shows no mercy when he swings a bat.

Just ask his dad.