Former Occidental Catcher Crossed Up by Mischief-Makers

It’s never too late to recount a good April Fools’ Day hoax, which is why the following prank, perpetrated a few years ago by a group of Occidental College baseball players, is worth passing along.

Professional baseball scouts feverishly scour the region for talent, but Occidental--a school where high GPA’s earn more praise than low ERA’s--is rarely a scheduled stop.

During his senior season in 1987, catcher Tim Klement was the closest thing to a professional prospect on the Tigers’ roster.

Before a home game against Colorado College, teammate Jim Delzell told Klement that a scout was in the stands. Actually, the mysterious onlooker was part of an elaborate prank.

Perhaps feeling the stranger’s gaze, Klement struggled during the early innings.

“He kept looking up at this guy and he had a miserable game,” recalled Doug Madgic, another teammate. Klement recovered, however, and blasted a game-winning home run.

The strong finish only primed Klement for Stage 2: the phone call.

The field house phone rang that evening and Klement snapped it up like a pitch in the dirt. Little did he know that the caller was about to deliver a wicked curve and his own ego was about to take a slider.

It was the scout.

“My heart got going a little bit,” admitted Klement, who initially was timid but soon unabashedly told the scout of his prowess behind the plate.

One by one, teammates headed into the next room, stifling laughter as they passed the phone. “I’m seeing all these guys disappear into the other room and it’s not dawning on me,” Klement said.

Mercifully, the caller finally informed Klement that he was a victim of an April Fools’ Day trick.

But to Klement’s chagrin, the conversation had been taped.

“The guys on the other lines in the clubhouse lost their lunch, they were laughing so hard,” Madgic said. “We played the tape in the field house as we were getting changed for the next couple of weeks.

“Tim didn’t dress with us.”

Klement, now a sheriff’s deputy in Sylmar, said that the situation could have been worse.

“Thank goodness for small miracles that the machine was not as high-tech as they thought and it was very poor quality,” he said, laughing. “That’s all I needed, having the recording played over the college radio station at lunch.”