It’s a Whole Different Ballgame When They Take It to the Streets

“OK, guys,” said Dennis Bayless, “let’s melt some butter.”

With that, Bayliss grabbed a broomstick, a modified tennis ball--one without the fuzz--and stepped into the middle of Seventh Street and took his at-bat for Hot Buttered Elvis, one of 40 teams competing Saturday amid high-rises in downtown San Diego at the third annual West Coast Stickball Tournament.

It’s a cross between New York City stickball and West Coast Over-The-Line.

“This is going to take off,” declared John Comas, 31, who came to San Diego 4 1/2 years ago from Philadelphia. “This is the first time I played this game since I was 10.”

Comas was not alone. The tournament has grown steadily from 19 teams its first year and 25 last year on an OTL weekend. At least 10 teams were turned away this year and plans call for 60 teams to participate next year, some of which have already registered.

Comas watched the championship game on B Street between The Knights, a group of transplanted New Yorkers, and FCC Construction, a local group of former collegiate baseball players whose average age was 29. He cheered for the East Coast team.

“These guys play the way it’s supposed to be played,” Comas said, no mistaking his quick, East Coast accent. “That’s why I’m rooting for them.”

The Knights, the defending champions, beat FCC Construction in the title game, 23-14, behind the play of tournament most valuable player Bob Ortiz, 47, his two brothers, Paul, 35, and Rich, 45, and Pablo Tores, 48, and Willie Blas, 31.

Blas, a 1978 graduate of Kearny High, is the only Californian in the group. He and Paul Ortiz, a high school English teacher and baseball coach who works three blocks from Yankee Stadium, are the only two players with a baseball background. The others are stickball purists. Rich and Bob Ortiz grew up playing in the Fort Apache area of the Bronx, and they refuse to wear baseball gloves.

“We played for money,” recalled Rich, who goes back to the old neighborhood every Memorial Day with Bob for a stickball tournament. “You started off as a kid and you’d get a team together and everyone would put in 50 cents or a dollar and play another team. When you were an adult, each side was putting up $150, $200, $300. This is going back to the ‘60s.”

The stakes weren’t nearly that high for the teams in San Diego--Sununu Travel, Only Girls Can Beat Us, Say Hey Kids, Road Warriors--except for the occasional player who tried too hard to catch a foul ball and found himself hooked up with a newspaper rack.

Teams scored points by hitting the ball past single, double and triple markers in the street. A fly ball over the fifth fielder’s head was a homer. Each base was worth a point and each team played three games. The Knights had 107 points entering the finals. In the third round of games, FCC Construction overtook Hot Buttered Elvis for second place with a 25-7 victory and then won a playoff game with the tournament’s first champion, North Park Trophy, which also had 75 points after three games. FCC won the playoff, 18-14.

FCC Construction finished third last year. One of the players was Bill Hayer, 34, an architect in Del Mar and former pitcher for the University of Cincinnati.

“It’s interesting for me to see the city use the streets and buildings, albeit for bank boards,” he said during the game against Hot Buttered Elvis. “You get good bounces off the granite-clad buildings. The older block buildings give off some funny bounces.”

And then Hayer and his teammates went out and melted some butter.