Teams Replay Night of Malathion Rain for Activist Group

Players made great catches. Fans cheered in the grandstand. It was a typical game in the Pony-Colt League the night of April 17--until the pesticide malathion rained on the baseball diamond at Holifield Park in Norwalk.

“It was a madhouse out here,” said Kevin Sanders, manager of the Orioles, a Pony team of boys 13 and 14 years old. “People were just running everywhere.”

Many coaches, players and fans returned to the field last Saturday night to re-enact the spraying incident for a commercial produced by anti-malathion activists.

“With children involved, there would be more of an emotional impact,” said cameraman Monty Rowan, a member of Action Now, a group opposed to pesticide spraying. Rowan said he hopes to persuade movie theaters to show the 30-second commercial as a public service announcement.

Sanders, 28, the Orioles manager, recalled the night of the game between the Orioles and Cardinals, when the helicopters arrived about 9:15 from beyond left-center field.

“It was the third or fourth inning,” he said. “They were flying in military-style formation. I said to the ump, ‘Hey, we got malathion coming.’ He put a halt to the game.”

As the spray--used in an effort to eradicate the Mediterranean fruit fly--descended, players and fans ran behind the backstop to the shelter of the snack shack; many huddled beneath trees.

“Some of the kids were laughing and kind of making a joke out of it at first,” Sanders said. “As it fell you could taste it, it sticks to your clothes. They didn’t think it was too funny after a while.”

Andrew Gutierrez, 8, a player in the league who had been a spectator at the game, recalled: “It was sticky, I had to take a bath.” His friend, Jesse Jones, 10, said: “It felt like rain. I looked at the choppers and started running.”

Irene Garcia, 30, sat in the stands that April night. She was 3 1/2 months pregnant at the time. “I got nauseated,” she recalled. “It was dripping from the trees. It was on the benches. We had to get rags and wipe them off. The smell was awful.”

Her husband, Eddie, an assistant coach with the Orioles, said: “It was like an assault scene from a Vietnam movie.”

Many of the people who were at the game reported becoming ill after the spraying, according to a survey by Jean Hinsley, a Norwalk resident who said she suffered laryngitis after a spraying last December.

In Hinsley’s survey, 67 of 159 people at the game--39 children and 28 adults--told her they felt sick, either that night, the next day or during the next week. The most common complaints were of headaches, sore throats, irritated eyes and nausea.

But Jim Stratton, an epidemiologist with the state Department of Health Services, questioned whether those symptoms could be attributed to malathion. “They could have been caused (by exposure to) a virus at the ballgame,” he said.

“Based on what we know of the toxicity of malathion and the application rate, this ought not to represent an acute health problem for the folks involved.”

Kim Koons, director of the Los Angeles County Health Department’s malathion evaluation clinic project, said that exposure to the spray “could cause possible allergic effects and eye irritation.”

Koons said the clinic has asked Hinsley for her information but has not yet received it. “Our department has been doing surveys and collecting illness reports, and we are analyzing them for patterns of illness in the spraying areas,” Koons said.

Hinsley said she has not given her survey to the clinic project, but has shown it to a state Department of Food and Agriculture committee that meets to discuss malathion spraying. She added that she challenged the evaluation clinic to conduct the same surveys she did.

The black sky above the ballfield held only a full moon last Saturday night. Players and spectators were told by a film crew to make believe that helicopters were swooping down.

The youngsters, on cue, tore off the field. Caught up in the filmmaking, they laughed as they reached the snack stand, their spikes scratching the concrete.

The klieg lights were turned on. A camera was positioned atop a light tower. Director Pascal Franchot, 28, who has worked on other commercials, began casting.

“Were you scared the night of the spraying?” he asked Jake Sanders, 12, a second baseman.

“A little bit,” was the shy reply.

“Would you be able to act scared again?” Franchot asked.

Jake nodded, then was given an audition. He ran in front of a dugout and when Franchot shouted, “Now! Helicopters!” the boy stopped and scanned the sky with a look of terror.

“Excellent,” said Franchot, and he gave Jake the part.

Later, with the camera rolling, a crowd of about 60 people, bathed in white lights, ran screaming from the stands toward the snack shop.

The commercial, Rowan explained, will include footage of soldiers running along a river to avoid Agent Orange being dumped in Vietnam, and a farmer fleeing crop dusters in a grape vineyard.

Rowan said the commercial would normally cost about $150,000 to make but is being done for almost nothing because of donations.

“Our major concern is informing the public about abuse of pesticides,” Rowan said.

A slow-motion shot of Jake Sanders looking up at helicopters will open the malathion segment.

“We liked his shyness,” Rowan said. “It enabled us to capture the sense of fear we wanted.”