Glendale Hit Its Stride After One-Sided Defeat : Baseball: After a slow start, American Legion team won 17 of its last 19 games to reach the District 20 postseason tournament.

They present themselves in various guises. Sometimes, for example, they are subtle, almost indiscernible events or instances that spark change in an athletic team’s performance and fortune.

Other times, they are obvious, the watershed moment that athletes can identify without hesitation.

Turning points, regardless of their nature, are experienced by virtually every baseball team during the course of a season, whether it’s a 162-game major league schedule or 23-game American Legion calendar.

The turning point for the Glendale American Legion team this summer came after an early 12-2 loss to Burbank, a defeat that dropped the talented but apparently uninspired Glendale club to 1-3.

“The players and coaches spent about 30 minutes afterward addressing, ‘What . . . . are we doing out here?’ ” recalled Glendale Coach Mike MacDonald. “I think the majority of the players made the decision, ‘OK, we’re going to do this right.’ ”

Glendale went on to win 17 of its last 19 games, finishing the regular season 18-5 and earning a berth in this week’s District 20 playoffs. The playoffs are taking place at two sites, Birmingham High in Van Nuys and Pierce College in Woodland Hills.

The field for the eight-team, double-elimination tournament included defending World Series champion Woodland Hills West; Sun Valley; Quartz Hill; Woodland Hills East; Panorama City; Lancaster; and Saugus/Newhall in addition to Glendale.

Glendale lost its playoff opener to Woodland Hills East, 2-1. on Tuesday. The team played Wednesday in an elimination game but results were not available at press time.

The winner of the District 20 tournament advances to the area playoffs July 26-29 at UCLA’s Jackie Robinson Stadium. The area champion advances to the state tournament Aug. 4-7 in Yountville, where it will play for the opportunity to compete in the World Series Aug 11-14 at Corvallis, Ore.

“We felt all along that Woodland Hills West is going to be the team to beat,” MacDonald said. “You’re talking about a team that just got finished (last year) winning the whole ball of wax. That type of pressure, tournament baseball is going to be a big plus for them.”

Glendale has been led all season by a nucleus of talented players rather than an individual standout.

“We don’t have the .500 hitter or the one or two phenoms that all the colleges are trying to recruit and the pros are trying to sign,” said MacDonald, who is in his fifth season coaching the team. “That’s kept us focused because we haven’t had those kinds of interruptions.

“We just have 17 pretty steady ballplayers.”

Leadoff batter Mike Regan, who played at Glendale College last season, has been the team’s top hitter most of the season, batting .388 with a .517 on-base percentage.

Shane Cowsill, a Times’ all-Glendale player from Crescenta Valley High, is batting .367 and, on the mound, has won seven of eight decisions while posting a 1.98 earned-run average.

Danny Gray of Glendale High, The Times’ Glendale area player of the year, is 4-1 and former high school teammate Brent Overfelt is batting .320.

Glendale closed its regular season with 10 consecutive victories, including last weekend’s doubleheader sweep of Sun Valley, which entered the twin bill 18-2.

Glendale won the first game, 3-2, behind the four-hit pitching of Gray, then held off a seventh-inning rally to win the second game, 6-4.

Sun Valley Coach Les Riley was impressed, but not surprised, by Glendale’s performance.

“We knew they were going to be tough,” Riley said. “They started out slowly with those four or five losses, but every time we looked in the paper in the weeks leading up to the doubleheader, they still had four or five losses.”

With the District 20 tournament under way, MacDonald is hoping his team can maintain its consistency and earn a spot in the area playoffs. After its opening loss, however, Glendale will have to accomplish it the hard way, passing through the losers’ bracket.

Glendale won the district tournament title in 1986 and players on this year’s team believe they can do the same thing.

“We have to go in there (to the tournament) with a little bit of cockiness and let them know we’re here to play,” Overfelt said.

“We’ve always had the talent. We just needed something to click and get us going.”