AMERICAN LEGION NOTEBOOK / STEVE ELLING : West Reserve Castillo Plays a Leading Role

Woodland Hills West reserve Chris Castillo was having a quiet summer watching baseball and chewing sunflower seeds when he was thrust into the starting lineup for West’s critical American Legion District 20 Western Division doubleheader with rival Woodland Hills East on Sunday.

But a dearth of at-bats for the outfielder is hardly breaking news. Last summer, Castillo was used primarily as a designated runner as West rolled through postseason play en route to a World Series title.

An injury to a teammate opened the door for Castillo on Sunday, however, and he showed he is good for more than an occasional 90-foot dash and a headlong belly-flop into second.

Castillo was three for four in the first game as West rallied from a four-run deficit to win, 8-6.

Anybody for a repeat? Castillo was three for four in the second game as West (12-4 in district play) won behind right-hander Sean Boldt, 7-3, and moved to within striking range of Woodland Hills East (14-3) in the divisional standings.

“I guess I had a career day,” said Castillo, an outfielder and recent graduate of El Camino Real High.

Entering the game, Castillo had three hits in 17 at-bats for a .176 average, which he boosted to .360 in one afternoon.

Marine’s corps: Woodland Hills West might need similar production from reserves this week. Starters Bobby Kim, Pat Treend, Jeff Marks and Jason Cohen are vacationing in Hawaii and West has five district games scheduled through Sunday.

Then again, the old guard has been holding its own. West third baseman Del Marine was four for five in the two games against East and raised his batting average to .396. Marine appears to be in the same groove he found last summer, when his hot bat earned him the trophy as the 1989 national Legion player of the year.

In fact, a coach who saw Marine last year thinks he’s playing at the same level this season. The Billings, Mont., team that West faced in the Northwest Regional playoffs last summer traveled to the Valley two weeks ago to play West in a series of interdistrict games.

“Their coach said that in all his travels, Del might be the finest Legion player he’s ever seen,” West Coach Don Hornback said.

Second add West: West, the defending Legion World Series champion, started district play with a 1-3 record--surprising, considering that the team’s cumulative district record in 1988 and ’89 was a superlative 41-5.

West (16-5 overall) had won 11 of its last 12 and nine in a row in district play. Coupled with the 21-3 record of El Camino Real High--for which most of the Legion team played in the spring--West has a combined mark of 37-8, a winning percentage of .822.

“Last year at this time we were 12-3,” said Hornback, West’s third-base coach last summer. “When we lost three of our first four (this year), all I kept hearing was, ‘What’s wrong?’

“We weren’t getting bombed or embarrassed. We were in every game--we just didn’t win. I think we’ve played pretty well all year.”

Rising Sun: If the West/El Camino Real connection sounds daunting, the Sun Valley/Poly High record might really spin some heads.

Sun Valley’s team is composed primarily of players from Poly, which concluded its season at 22-4. Sun Valley holds the district’s best record of 14-2 for a combined record of 36-6 (.857) this year.

It seems as though a different player contributes each game. In Sun Valley’s doubleheader sweep of Burbank on Sunday, infielder Marlon McKinney (3-0) tossed a one-hitter in a 6-0 victory in the opener and hit a grand slam to key an 8-7 comeback in the second game.

Rising son: If the name sounds familiar to Valley baseball aficionados, it should. Dave Snow coached at Valley College before moving on to Loyola Marymount and then to Cal State Long Beach, where he has built one of the most respected programs in the nation.

His son Casey lives in Woodland Hills and played last season for the Crespi High junior varsity. Snow, who will be a sophomore in the fall, is a starter on the Encino-Crespi American Legion team.

“He has great fundamentals, as you can well imagine,” said Encino-Crespi Coach Scott Muckey, who also coaches the high school team. “He has an excellent arm for a kid his size--he might even have the best arm on the team.”

Snow, 5-foot-7, is the likely successor to 1990 Crespi High graduate Mark Maurizi, a slick-fielding shortstop who signed a letter of intent with Notre Dame.

“The way Casey’s been playing, we may not even miss a beat there,” Muckey said.

Snow isn’t Muckey’s only youthful standout. Right-hander Jeff Suppan, who also will be a sophomore in the fall and pitched a no-hitter last season at Crespi High, allowed four hits, struck out 10 and walked two over seven innings in Encino-Crespi’s 5-3 loss to first-place Woodland Hills East in a Western Division game Saturday. Suppan allowed two runs and was not involved in the decision.