Pitcher Has Found the Silva Lining : Preps: Although he’s not overpowering, the Redondo right-hander leads the area in strikeouts. His magical pitch is a slider.

Ted Silva has been making hitters look bad since Little League, when he defied coaches’ warnings and began throwing curves and sliders, probably ending prematurely the careers of some humiliated young batsmen.

Now a senior at Redondo High, Silva is still embarrassing opposing batters. Although curveballs are commonplace at the high school level, Silva is armed with what must be the finest slider in the area and is fast becoming the South Bay’s King of the K.

A true slider comes toward the plate looking like a fastball. But just as a wide-eyed batter uncorks a swing, it dives to the side (with a right-handed pitcher like Silva, it breaks away from a right-handed hitter, toward a left-hander). The hitter usually ends up swinging at a ball out of the strike zone. If he decides not to swing at the next one, it might be a fastball right down the middle.

After a run-in with Silva’s nasty slider, the batter can usually be seen walking back to the dugout with his head down.

“You just can’t hit that thing,” Redondo Coach Tim Ammentorp said. “If he’s throwing that slider well, nobody can hit it.”

It would make for a great story if Silva took pleasure at making opponents look silly at the plate, but that’s not the case.

“I don’t care how they look as long as it’s a strikeout,” said Silva, a 5-foot-10 senior. “If they look bad, they look bad. That’s all.”

Although he’s not a power pitcher (his best fastballs register about 80 miles per hour), Silva has been a strikeout pitcher this year: 16 strikeouts in an eight-inning victory over Beverly Hills last week gave him 57 in only 34 innings, tops in the South Bay. Teammate Frank Bignami, another senior right-hander, is second with 43.

Silva’s earned-run average of 0.42 is also the best in the area among pitchers with at least 25 innings.

Along with Bignami, Silva is the main reason Redondo is in first place in the Ocean League with a 4-1 record. The Sea Hawks are 10-6 overall.

Silva’s numbers are not bad for a guy who sees himself as a basketball player. He averaged 12.7 points and 8.8 assists (second best in the area) as point guard for the basketball team and passed for 1,646 yards and 14 touchdowns as quarterback of the football team.

Silva’s dilemma is that his best sport is baseball, but in his heart he is not a pitcher--he’s a point guard.

“I know I’m not going to go as far (in basketball), but I love it,” Silva said. “I’ll probably have to give it up eventually. I guess that’s just life.”

Ironically, Silva’s versatility may be why he has not drawn more attention from colleges and scouts in baseball.

“I think a lot of (scouts) are concerned because he likes basketball so much,” Ammentorp said. “Plus, he hasn’t played for any scout teams and hasn’t gotten much exposure.”

Ammentorp has no problem with an athlete playing more than one sport. “It’s not fair to the kids for me to say, ‘You have to give me 11 months of the year and not play any other sport,’ ” he said. “In some ways, it’s beneficial. Ted knows how to handle the seventh inning of a tied ballgame because he’s been in pressure situations since September.

“It’s no different than being a quarterback in the fourth quarter or a point guard in the fourth quarter.”

It’s no coincidence that Silva is in a leadership position in all three sports. A quarterback, a point guard and a pitcher are variations of the same thing: the focus of the game, the man who starts the action on each play.

You have to be headstrong to play those positions, and Silva is. As a youngster, he threw sliders in Little League even after his coaches warned him that it could hurt his arm. “If you throw it right, it won’t hurt your arm,” Silva would answer.

Now Silva refuses to give up basketball for baseball, even if it means going to a smaller college.

There are no better words to describe Silva than “natural athlete,” but even that term can be as much a hindrance as a blessing. In some ways, it implies that the natural athlete doesn’t have to work as hard as other competitors.

On the other hand, Silva said there is some validity to that implication. “I think if I were to work harder, I could be a little better,” he said. “Sometimes I think I get by on ability.”

But Ammentorp said he can’t complain about Silva’s effort.

“Because he’s so good, people tend to forget how hard he had to work to get that way,” he said.

Or to put it another, paradoxical, way, “Ted works hard at being a natural athlete,” Ammentorp said.