Hitting High Notes : Former Dodger and Angel Pitcher Bill Singer Is Giving Something Back to Youth Baseball

As Bill Singer pulls a lever on the transformer box at UC Irvine, he illuminates both the baseball field and his own role as a citizen.

Once known as the Singer Throwing Machine, a 20-game winner with both the Dodgers and Angels, Singer is an anomaly in an era when pampered players have developed a reputation for taking their money and never being heard from again.

Maybe it’s because he retired after the 1977 season, on the eve of big money, but Singer has been giving back almost ever since, founding and overseeing youth baseball leagues that stretch from San Diego to San Bernardino to the San Fernando Valley.

“My industry (real estate development) is in something of a slump, so I have the time,” Singer said with a smile, the truth being that he found the time even before his industry slumped.

It started in the early ‘80s when his sons, Randy, now 20, and Jason, 18, expressed an interest in playing Little League but found that there was no program in the Newport Beach area, where they lived. Singer helped create a program that he estimates has grown at least 10% every year, with 1,200 kids now playing on 10 fields, all built since his involvement.

Randy Singer is at art school in Sarasota, Fla., now and Jason is a business major at Alabama, but their dad continues his youth baseball activities.

“All I’m trying to do is sell baseball, get some of the kids back who are playing other sports,” he said.

“I keep hearing people say that the talent’s not there anymore, but I don’t think that’s it.

“In the last nine years, I’ve seen amateur baseball from the bottom up, and I think there’s just as much talent as before, but a lot of it is drawn off by extended football, basketball and soccer programs.

“I mean, baseball was the only choice when I grew up, but now there’s a lot more, and I think major league baseball in general has to take a hard look at the amateur programs to see what can be done.”

Singer has developed a Pony League program with its steppingstone dimensions in the Newport area and worked with American League President Bobby Brown on the development of a program that employs the accuracy of pitching machines and hollow bats and balls to remove the fear factor for younger players.

Last year, on the urging of high school coaches in Orange County, he formed a Connie Mack summer league that has six teams composed primarily of the county’s premier prep players and a few college players who meet the age limit of 18. Former major leaguers Doug DeCinces, Bill Sudakis, Bob Johnson, Bob Boone and John VerHoeven are among the coaches.

“Mike Gillespie (USC’s baseball coach) was out last summer and said he thought it was the best youth league in the state,” Singer said. “He suggested I try to put a college league together.”

A suggestion was all Singer needed. His Greater Los Angeles Basin Collegiate League, a wooden-bat league consisting of eight teams from San Diego to San Fernando, is in its first summer as a local alternative to wooden-bat leagues in Alaska and on Cape Cod. “I’d like to see more wood-bat leagues because it’s a different game and the way it was meant to be played,” Singer said. “The managers tell me they have to think more baseball and do more of the small things, rather than waiting for someone to bomb one with an aluminum bat.

“There’s a smaller sweet spot, so the hitter has to get the bat head through quicker. Outfielders play shallower, infield fielding percentages go up and pitchers learn to work the inside half of the plate because they’re not afraid to jam a guy and have him bloop one over the infield, which you see a lot of with aluminum bats.

“I mean, one reason big league hitters overreact to inside pitching now is that they never experienced it as young players because they used aluminum bats and pitchers threw outside almost all the time.”

Singer estimated that on the average weekend he schedules 22 games involving more than 350 players. He coordinates umpiring assignments, verifies field maintenance, mails schedules to college recruiters and pro scouts and calls every coach of every team in both the Connie Mack and collegiate leagues each week to check on problems, besides watching games himself.

It costs $4,000 to field a Connie Mack team and $6,000 to field a team in the college league. Player registration covers some of the expenses, and Singer has received donations from major league baseball and other sources.

But he also said that the amateur programs represent a lifeline for the pro game, and that neither the major leagues nor the players’ union has been doing enough innovative fund-raising.

“With the new NCAA rules cutting down on coaching and the number of games a four-year college can play, these summer leagues become even more important,” he said. “The way budgets are now at the college and high school levels, it’s really necessary for the major leagues to play a role and for players to help where they can.”

Two back operations and elbow surgery curtailed an 11-year career in which Singer was 118-127.

He won 20 games with the Dodgers in 1969 and 20 more with the Angels in ’73. He threw a no-hitter with the Dodgers in ’70 and combined with Nolan Ryan to strike out 624 batters and break a major league record held by Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale in ’73. He made two All-Star game appearances and delivered the first official pitch in the history of Toronto’s expansion franchise.

Singer, 48, clicked off the memories and highlights as he watched a Connie Mack game on a chilly Saturday night at UC Irvine.

He reflected on that last year with the expansion Blue Jays and said: “It was a bad team and I wasn’t able to help it because I didn’t have much left. I was living out of a hotel room, and every time we came off a road trip, the cab driver would drop me at the entrance and say, ‘Welcome home.’

“The whole thing left a bad taste, and I guess I was like a lot of players who walk away thinking they’ll never get involved. But then my sons jarred me when they said they wanted to play, and I came to realize what I was missing and the enjoyment I’d had and have continued to have doing this.”

With grass-roots emotions reawakened, Singer now would like to return to the pro game in player development, although it would be hard for him to top the contributions he has already made to player development.