Outfielder No Longer an Outcast : South Coast League: El Toro’s Jason Santoro spent most of last season trying to fit in. Now, he’s a Charger standout.

Jason Santoro was an outfielder on El Toro High School’s baseball team last year. He had a spot in the starting lineup and a varsity uniform hanging in his locker to prove it.

Santoro hit almost .350 in his first varsity season. He knocked in 17 runs and helped the Chargers to the semifinals of the Southern Section 4-A playoffs.

But for almost half of the season, he felt like an outsider because he was a junior on a senior-dominated team.

He didn’t really feel as though he belonged until the first South Coast League game of the season. Santoro came to the plate with the game on the line against Irvine. Facing Mike Seal, one of the league’s top pitchers in 1991, with runners on second and third, Santoro came through with the game-winning hit.

When he reached the dugout, he was greeted by high fives from all the seniors.

“Here’s (senior standouts) Chad Hoelker and Rob Johnson congratulating me ,” Santoro said. “That was the best because it felt like I helped them get that victory.”

By season’s end, Santoro felt like one of the guys. Now, with his senior season about to begin, he’s the guy at El Toro.

“He could be one the best we’ve had here and we’ve had some good ones,” El Toro Coach Dan DeLeon said.

“What makes him so attractive to scouts is that he’s 6 feet 2, 195 (pounds). He runs very, very well. He’s a switch hitter who can play third base. How many switch-hitting third baseman do you know?”

It took a while for Santoro to develop into a player with noteworthy skills, though. When he entered El Toro as a freshman, he was simply a good player with exceptional potential. What he needed most was a little seasoning on the Chargers’ freshman and sophomore teams before he began to shine on the varsity.

DeLeon likes to bring players along slowly. Better to allow a young player time to mature without the extra pressure of playing with the big boys, DeLeon says.

“Jason was always going to be a standout,” DeLeon said. “It was just a matter of time before he became a varsity player.”

When DeLeon finally promoted Santoro to the varsity last season, it wasn’t long before he began rapping out hit after hit, and catching everything that came his way. But even as he was showing he belonged, he was plagued by doubt.

On nights before some games early last season, Santoro found himself wondering, “What am I doing here? I don’t deserve to be up here.”

He relaxed only when he stepped into the batter’s box. It might sound a little unusual, but Santoro said he is at his best when he goes to the plate with nothing on his mind. It has something to do with thinking too much and goofing up all his preparation.

His mechanics would figure to be nearly flawless, considering a batting cage has dominated the back yard of the Santoro home for the last three years.

He spends an hour or two in the cage each day perfecting his swing. Sometimes, neighbors come by after work to “relive their high school glory days and take out their frustrations on the ball,” Santoro said, smiling.

With that much work on hitting, Santoro rarely strikes out--except, perhaps, when he steps in against his girlfriend, Jodi Smith, a pitcher on the Charger softball team.

“It’s hard to hit her,” Santoro said. “She really buzzes it. And she’s only 40 feet away.”

All that work seems to have paid dividends. In a doubleheader scrimmage against Laguna Hills last weekend, Santoro had five hits and drove in nine runs.

This season, there’s simply no question that Santoro is the Chargers’ key figure.