THE COLLEGES : Two Good Men : Moorpark College Calls Out the Marines--Brothers in Arms

It is a father’s dream and a mother’s nightmare.

This season, the Moorpark College football team frequently will line up with not one, but two Marines on offense. While Pete (Butch) Marine III will be bursting his buttons with pride, Rosa Marine will be beside herself with fear every time one of her boys takes a hit.

“I can’t stand it,” Rosa said. “I get real nervous. I have to walk out of the stands. I have to close my eyes.”

Their mother notwithstanding, freshman quarterback Del Marine and sophomore wide receiver Pete Marine IV are hoping to put together some eye-opening statistics.

The Marine brothers have not played competitive sports together for 2 1/2 years, but now, somewhat improbably because Del seemed baseball-bound, they are once again teammates.

Like the quarterback and catcher he is, Del is more outgoing than Pete, and a natural leader. The brothers have managed to be competitive without becoming jealous, in part because they are such different athletes. Del (6-foot, 196 pounds) is stocky and strong, Pete (6-1, 180) is lanky and extremely fast.

As Pete says: “I’m a runner, he’s a gunner,” and as brother acts go, they aren’t too bad.

More in tune than the Everly Brothers, the Marines are hoping to put on an aerial circus that would rival Ringling Brothers.

They have been waiting in the wings long enough. Del and Pete started their college careers a year apart at Valley, but neither played in a game for the Monarchs.

Pete began classes at Valley in 1988, dropped out of school and returned in January of ’89. He participated in some spring football workouts but was taking classes at Moorpark by summer.

Del played fall baseball at Valley in 1989 but was burned out on baseball and beset by injuries. By the next spring, Del had joined his brother at Moorpark and was working out with the football team.

Moorpark Coach Jim Bittner talks about building a team that’s a family, but isn’t this going a bit far?

“We share a room,” Peter said. “Our beds are about this far (arm’s length) apart. We lay in bed every night with a football, just throwing it back and forth. Sometimes we have the gloves, throwing baseballs.”

At 20, Pete is only a year older than Del, but they seldom have played together in anything more organized than back-yard leagues. Pete always seemed to be a league ahead in youth sports, and, other than a disappointing football and partial baseball season at Canoga Park High, when Pete was a senior and Del a junior, the coming season will mark one of the few times they have played on the same team.

The Marine corps also includes two younger brothers. Ryan, a senior defensive back at El Camino Real High, provided defensive coverage when Del and Pete worked on Moorpark’s pass patterns this summer. The youngest, Justin, is a junior at El Camino Real.

Rosa jokes that with four boys athletic equipment has “sort of become part of the decor,” but, the family that plays together stays together.

Pete began selling Del on football while they watched bowl games during Christmas vacation last year. Now, Del is trying to convince Pete to try out for the baseball team.

Talk about Marine recruiters.

“I think about it a lot,” said Pete, who played center field for Canoga Park High. In baseball, “I don’t have to take all those hits across the middle.”

If Pete can earn his associate of arts degree by the end of this semester, he will be able to matriculate to a four-year college and participate in spring practice. Otherwise. . . .

“I’ve seen Pete play, and the guy can fly,” Moorpark baseball Coach Ken Wagner said. “We’d like to take a look at him if he’s still around in the spring.”

Pete is a football player who might try baseball; Del is playing football but is known for his baseball skills.

Del, a late-round draft pick by the Seattle Mariners after his senior year at El Camino Real (to which he transferred from Canoga Park), attends Moorpark on the $2,000 scholarship he won in 1989 as the American Legion national player of the year. He can play catcher, third or outfield, and Wagner says, “We’re going to have to get him into the lineup.”

With their baseball and football talent, the Marines joke about one-upping Bo Jackson and becoming the first brothers to play two professional sports. Of course, if they did so, what better teams than the Phillies and Eagles--in the City of Brotherly Love?

First, though, Del has to work his way into the starting lineup at Moorpark. Del has always been a quarterback--he is such a John Elway fan that his family called him “Delway” when he played youth football--but he has not played organized football since his junior year of high school.

Some wondered why he would return to football just when his baseball career seemed to be on the rise.

“I think I’m a football player, too,” said Del, who threw for 843 yards and six touchdowns his junior season at Canoga Park. “I’m still young. I’m not going to rush into one sport just because I had one good season. I was happy to have a chance to still get into another sport. After this year, I’ll know whether I’m really good enough to be a Division I quarterback.”

He is battling returning sophomore Kris Dutra and freshman Chris Gadomski for the starting job. Moorpark Coach Jim Bittner said Dutra likely will start in the opener (Saturday at 7:30 p.m. at East Los Angeles), but added, “Del Marine is starting to come on now. He looks pretty good.”

Del is relearning the position; Pete is merely refining his craft. A lean sprinter with 4.4 speed in the 40-yard dash, Pete could become one of the top wide receivers in the state this season.

As a freshman, Pete broke into Moorpark’s four-receiver rotation and quickly established himself as the team’s big-play receiver. He finished the regular season with 23 catches for 629 yards and six touchdowns.

Pete, who also ran track last spring at Moorpark, is the third-fastest player on the team, and Bittner calls him “the best athlete we’ve had at the position.”

He will be a marked man this season, but before he was the invisible man.

“I didn’t know anything about him at all. He just showed up,” Bittner said. “He just started working out, and it didn’t take long to notice him.”

It wasn’t the first time Pete had surprised someone with his athletic ability. As a child, Pete liked to play football in Los Angeles, so over the hill and along with Del to grandmother’s house he’d go.

The Marine boys, wearing old East Valley Trojan uniforms, would take on the neighborhood kids and show them Valley guys could run and throw a little bit too.

They still are taking on the out-of-town guys, but now they’re doing it for Moorpark.