Legendre Pitches His Way to Contract With Dodgers

Robert Legendre didn’t really start to think about his baseball future until early in the evening of Memorial Day.

He had an eight-hour bus ride home from Sacramento that May 27 to ponder what the summer and beyond would hold for him. He and his Cypress teammates had won the State baseball title in Sacramento over the weekend. Legendre, a freshman right-hander, had two victories and had been the co-most valuable player with third baseman Troy Babbitt.

Legendre, a freshman right-handed pitcher, was 5-4 in the regular season and didn’t wonder about his future a great deal. He figured to be back at Cypress for his sophomore season.

But in five postseason games, he went 5-0, and his stock rose greatly in the draft. Opponents hit .212 against him in the regular season and .156 in the playoffs.

“I figured that everything changed for me in the playoffs,” Legendre said. “That was when everything started to come together for me. I made a lot of bad pitches during the regular season, but in the playoffs we played good defense and I made better pitches.”

After the playoffs, the Dodgers made a pitch to Legendre.

He was selected Monday in the 14th round. The Dodgers made an offer Tuesday that Legendre turned down. But Wednesday, the Dodgers came back with a second offer and Legendre signed.

By signing, Legendre got another long trip to consider his baseball future, but this time with a minor league contract in his mitts. Legendre flew Saturday to Vero Beach, Fla., where he will take part in the Dodgers’ minor league camp for a few weeks before being sent to a Class-A team.

Toward the end of the regular season, Legendre’s confidence increased and he was Cypress Coach Scott Pickler’s choice to open the playoffs against Cuesta.

Legendre responded by allowing a run and five hits in 7 1/2 innings as Cypress won, 14-4, in the opening game May 10. Cypress beat Cuesta the next day, 8-4, and advanced to the Southern California Regionals the next weekend.

Legendre started the first game against Los Angeles Harbor, the top-seeded team in the Southland. L.A. Harbor was playing on its home field, but Legendre stopped the Seahawks on five hits as Cypress won, 7-3.

He was needed Sunday as well. Cypress and L.A. Pierce were tied, 4-4, in the sixth inning and Pierce had the bases loaded and two outs. Legendre entered and got a strikeout to end the threat. He allowed no runs and struck out six in 3 1/3 innings, and became the winner when shortstop Jason Bates hit a ninth-inning home run to give Cypress a 5-4 victory and a berth in the State tournament.

“He is a young man who is totally focused,” Pickler said after the L.A. Pierce game. “He threw today on courage and stamina, and went way above and beyond anything we should have expected from him.”

Legendre also got the start in the first game of the State finals, but another victory seemed unlikely. Cypress was up against Sacramento City, which came into the game with a 49-1-2 record and the top ranking in California. Plus, the Panthers would be playing on their home field.

Legendre allowed a three-run home run in the second, but Cypress rallied for two runs in the top of the ninth to take a 4-3 lead and Legendre struck out the side in the bottom of the inning.

Cypress defeated Chabot, 4-3, Sunday and faced Sacramento again Monday for the title.

Legendre entered in the ninth, pitched three shutout innings and became the winner when Babbitt hit a home run to give Cypress an 8-7 victory.

“It was nothing new,” Legendre said about coming back on short rest. “I’d done that a lot in high school.”

Legendre came to Cypress after two fairly undistinguished seasons at Western High School. He had played his first two years of high school baseball at John W. North High in Riverside, but his family moved to Anaheim before his junior year.

Legendre managed a 3-5 record as a senior as Western went 8-15-1. He wasn’t a high profile player by any means, but Pickler was aware of him.

“We talked to the coaches in the Orange League,” Pickler said. “And they all said that he was a good pitcher. Western’s team just didn’t have a good season so he tended to get overlooked.”

Legendre started to develop into a quality pitcher last summer, while playing for a Connie Mack team coached by Vince Brown, Tustin High’s baseball coach. John Verhoeven, a former major leaguer, was the team’s pitching coach and helped Legendre with his concentration.

“That was my main problem at Western,” Legendre said. “We would make errors and I would worry about that more than pitching. Over the summer, I got the idea that all I need to do is concentrate on what I need to get done and not worry about anything else.”

At His Best When It Counted

When the playoffs came around, so did Cypress pitcher Robert Legendre:

G GS W-L CG IP R H BB SO ERA Regular Season 14 11 5-4 3 78 1/3 40 67 51 49 3.91 Playoffs 5 3 5-0 2 32 7 17 22 35 1.69 Overall 19 14 10-4 5 110 1/3 47 84 73 84 3.26