THE HIGH SCHOOLS : Gordon Decides to Wait Before Giving College Baseball a Try

Former Simi Valley High second baseman Joe Gordon, who hit 15 home runs last spring to equal the second-highest season total in Southern Section history, will attend Moorpark College this fall but will not play baseball for the Raiders.

Gordon, who expressed interest in attending USC and UCLA, said he will use the next year to improve his strength with a weight-training program and concentrate on academics. Gordon contracted mononucleosis this summer and his weight has dropped from 160 to 145 pounds.

“He’s been really sick,” Buddy Gordon, Joe’s father, said. “But it turns out that it’s kind of nice that he’s not getting right back into baseball.”

According to Buddy Gordon, his son received only an offer of a partial scholarship from USC. Joe Gordon said that if he does play junior college baseball after next season, he would play at Pierce for Coach Bob Lofrano.

“I’d just like to work out on my own for now,” he said. “I’m only 17, so I’m still pretty young. I could use the time to mature, and still be an 18-year-old freshman when I enter college (competition).”

Gordon hit .377 last spring and his 15 homers tied former Simi Valley player Scott Sharts for second on the Southern Section list. Channel Islands’ Arnold Garcia set the single-season record with 16 homers in 1981.

Cal Lutheran and UC Riverside also expressed interest in Gordon, but he rejected both because of their NCAA Division II status.

“We just weren’t interested in the Division II level,” Buddy Gordon said.

This one’s for you, coach: Simi Valley baseball Coach Mike Scyphers returned from a vacation Sunday with the game ball from the first major league win of Chicago White Sox pitcher Scott Radinsky, who pitched for Scyphers at Simi Valley. Radinsky, the Southern Section 5-A Division Player of the Year in 1986, earned the win in relief on April 10.

“I told him he should be hanging on to it, but he gave it to me anyway,” Scyphers said, “I told him I’d give it back to him in 10 years, when it will probably mean a lot more to him.”

Scyphers and his wife, Sally, attended four White Sox games last weekend, including one in which Radinsky earned his fourth save. “There were a couple of rain delays, so it was about 1:30 in the morning when he got it,” Scyphers said.

Feeling better: Canyon running back David McDivitt, hospitalized in intensive care less than a month ago, is almost fully recovered and is practicing with the Cowboys, according to Coach Harry Welch.

McDivitt, who sustained a concussion during a passing-league game July 18, is expected to start at tailback for Canyon on Aug. 30 in Honolulu’s Aloha Stadium. The Cowboys open their season with a nonleague game against Hawaii’s St. Louis High, winner of 54 consecutive games.

“He’s looking real good,” Welch said. “He may not be 100% yet, but his recovery has been great.”

In 1989, McDivitt gained 459 yards in 84 carries and scored four touchdowns. He lost consciousness after landing on his head last month and was taken to Henry Mayo Newhall Memorial Hospital.

Caught short: North Hollywood football Coach Fred Grimes thought he had resolved the problem of a weak preconference schedule when he added games with Notre Dame and St. Genevieve the past two seasons. The games with the tough Southern Section schools prepared the Huskies for the Valley Pac-8 Conference season and also helped North Hollywood at the gate because the schools are located in neighboring communities, Grimes said.

But the Huskies enter the 1990 season with the shortest schedule in the area. North Hollywood will play only eight games, none with Notre Dame or St. Genevieve.

Grimes attributes the loss of the two games to the protracted battle over releaguing that tied up schedules for Catholic schools until late winter. When the Southern Section finally approved the Catholic school releaguing proposal, neither Notre Dame nor St. Genevieve had room for the Huskies.

“It’s too bad we’re not playing because it was a good situation for all three schools,” he said.

North Hollywood then scrambled to find two new teams to join Palisades on its preconference schedule. A series of miscommunications with a number of other City Section schools left the Huskies on the short end, Grimes said.

“It was a nightmare because of the releaguing thing and then the problems with the City schools,” he said.

Staff writers John Lynch, Brian Murphy and Jeff Riley contributed to this notebook.