A Pastime for Altar Egos : Queen of Angels Is in the Business of Turning Out Priests, but in the Process the Mission Hills School Has Managed to Win a Baseball League Championship

It’s a Wednesday afternoon and the five seniors on the Queen of Angels High baseball team are missing from practice again. But Coach Tom Murry has no plans to discipline the players. After all, one of those boys might someday be his priest.

Besides, the players have a good excuse. What coach--especially a God-fearing, church-going Roman Catholic such as Murry--could reject this explanation: “Sorry about missing practice, Coach, but I was out doing God’s work.”

The seniors at Queen of Angels in Mission Hills fan throughout the community on Wednesdays performing apostolic work such as catechism instruction at Catholic elementary schools. That might be an unusual way for a teen-ager to spend a weekday afternoon, but when considering Queen of Angels, one grows accustomed to the uncommon.

The four-year all-boys’ school is more than just one of the area’s only boarding schools, it’s the largest high school seminary west of the Mississippi. Students endure an arduous daily schedule that begins at 7 a.m. with morning prayers, ends 15 hours later with evening prayers and leaves nearly no time in between for the devil to exploit idle hands.

The school, which sits on 40 well-groomed acres adjacent to the San Fernando Mission, is a training ground for future priests. But that doesn’t mean the school’s baseball team turns the other cheek on the diamond.

The Angels carry a .372 batting average, average nearly 10 runs a game and have waged their own crusade through the Liberty League. The Angels posted a 12-0 league mark and will bring a 12-4 overall record into the first round of the Southern Section Small Schools Division playoffs that begin Friday.

Queen of Angels competes interscholastically only in baseball, but given the positive impact the team has had on campus life, Father Al Burnham, the school’s principal, may consider reviving the track and basketball programs that were scrapped in the 1970s.

“The baseball team is great for the whole school,” he said while watching the Angels beat Oakwood in a recent league game. “It’s a great morale builder. It gives us a chance to meet other kids from other schools and that interaction is good. Some fellows have a lot of talent and we want them to develop that as well as their spiritual life.”

Despite the school’s interest in athletics, it’s unlikely that Queen of Angels will start stealing top players from other schools. Burnham realizes that the rigorous, Spartan program at his school is a tough sell. Still, the campus abounds with converts.

“You get past the strict stuff pretty fast,” said Bernardo Osuna, a senior outfielder from Pasadena. “All the masks go down pretty soon and you get to know a person for who they are. You learn that there are more important things in life than free dress.”

Students are given only a few elective subjects from which to choose and are given no choice about dress. They are allowed to go home on weekends and are encouraged to maintain active social lives (Yes, dating is permitted.), but on campus their lives revolve around the classroom and chapel.

Currently, enrollment stands at 132 and has hovered near the 150 mark for the past five years. The school draws from throughout Southern California and enrollment reflects the region’s Catholic population: About 50% of the students are Latinos and 25% are Anglo. Southeast Asians and Filipino account for an additional 15%.

The school opened for the 1953-54 school year and enrollment peaked in the mid-1960s at more than 400. Nearly half of all applicants are rejected and those who gain acceptance face a tough academic load and a strict regimen for the next four years.

And that’s only the beginning. Queen of Angels is the first step in a three-tiered process leading to the priesthood.

Nearly half of its graduates enroll at St. John’s College in Camarillo, a seminary sponsored by the Archdiocese of Los Angeles. After four years of undergraduate work, students may apply to the graduate school, which offers a four-year program that culminates in ordination.

Students claim they are not pressured to pursue the priesthood, and only about 8% to 10% of the school’s graduates complete the process and become priests. But that’s a batting average the church leadership accepts.

“Even those who don’t persevere to the priesthood have a strong connection to the church throughout their lives,” Burnham said. “They often take leadership roles as laymen and work on other ministries such as parish councils.”

Senior pitcher Steve Steger, who said he is not interested in the priesthood, may move into the lay ministry in the future. Steger, a 6-foot-1, 195-pound right-hander, attended a Catholic grade school in West Los Angeles and dreamed of playing football at Loyola. But when he was invited to attend a retreat at Queen of Angels, he felt a tug.

Steger comes from a religious family; his father is a lifelong Roman Catholic and his mother was raised in Thailand as a Buddhist before converting to Catholicism soon after she married.

“The idea of being a priest was in my mind and the discipline at the school appealed to me,” Steger said. “I was into a lot of wild stuff when I was in the eighth grade and I knew that if I went to high school with about 4,000 other wild guys it would have been crazy.”

Still, Steger floundered his first year and thought about leaving. Baseball helped turn him into a true believer.

“I didn’t play as a freshman and went out for the team as a sophomore,” he said. “Baseball made me start liking the school. But it was the school and the friends I made that kept me here.”

That’s a common theme among students. As a group, they appear more mature, calm and focused than the average high school student, and they speak about themselves as though introspection were a required course.

Steger credits the school with affording him the opportunity for self-discovery. To demonstrate the point, he alludes to the secluded nature of the school.

“There’s only one entrance here, only one way in,” he said. “We’re closed off and there aren’t many outside forces. You have time to learn about yourself. At other schools, you might be thinking about girls, or drugs or which friends to make. Here, you’re kept busy and you concentrate on what you’re doing.”

If you wander from the path, there’s always a friend to guide you back. If friendships are made quickly here, and connections run deep, necessity could be the cause. Freshmen, away from home for the first time and thrown into a demanding environment, need support wherever they can find it.

“When I first came here the transition was tough,” Osuna said. “When something went wrong I wished I had my dad to talk to. But then you get to know these guys and you open up to them.”

Still, these Angels aren’t always angels, according to Murry, a second-year coach. He’s a walk-on coach who arrives at school each day from the General Motors plant in Van Nuys, driving the 1974 Pontiac GTO that he watched roll off the assembly line.

Murry, 42, is a 1965 Alemany graduate who was introduced to Queen of Angels through his mother, who worked as a bookkeeper at the school. He understands he is dealing with a special type of student but often loses sight of that while watching the team practice.

“These guys are a lot better behaved than most kids, but they can be just as rowdy and crazy as any other kids,” he said. “I have to sit on them sometimes.”

He also has to keep his ears open--in two languages, if that’s possible. Apparently, the Third Commandment occasionally takes the afternoon off. “A lot of these guys speak Spanish and I sometimes hear them take the Lord’s name in vain or swear at an umpire in Spanish,” Murry said.

Obviously, the Angels are not immune to frustration, and sometimes they direct it at the school. Senior pitcher Danny Herold is the team’s pitching ace, a 6-foot, 160-pound right-hander with a 7-2 record and 2.13 earned-run average. He was drawn to Queen of Angels by his uncle, Mike Crowley, who runs the school’s afternoon intramural athletics program.

Baseball runs in Herold’s bloodlines. Crowley pitched for two years at USC and was a member of the school’s 1963 national championship team. Crowley’s father, Dan, scouted for the Yankees after completing a career in the minor leagues that included membership on the Hollywood Stars teams in the 1920s.

Baseball, not the priesthood, is Herold’s priority, and he sometimes wonders about his decision to attend Queen of Angels. The Angels play on the periphery of the area sports scene at the lowest competitive level in the Southern Section. He also feared that a member of a seminary school team would be subjected to merciless abuse from bench jockeys.

“I thought that we’d get teased as holy boys, like we were almost girls or a softball team, but that hasn’t happened at all,” he said. “But I thought a lot about going to another school, a bigger one that would enhance my chances of playing baseball after high school. I think there are more advantages to playing at a bigger school.”

Still, Herold returned for his senior year at Queen of Angels and brought few regrets with him. In fact, he credits the school with his improvement as a pitcher.

“I’ve grown from the discipline here, especially on the pitcher’s mound,” he said. “It can be rough out there and you’re all by yourself. I have a temper and can get down on myself. But I’ve learned that when things go wrong, you have to realize that it’s not your fault.

“Sometimes, I have regrets about coming here as far as baseball goes. But as far as friendships and getting a good education, I’m glad I came here.”

Chalk up one more Queen of Angels convert.