St. Augustine Takes Some Lumps, Wins : Baseball: The team has improved and can respond to some taunts with victories, academics.

Sticks and stones may break my bones, but . . .

You know the rest. So does any St. Augustine athlete who dons a uniform for one of its 11 interscholastic sports programs.

“We hear it all the time,” said Paul Hernandez, three-year varsity baseball letterman. “People are always popping off in your face.”

These St. Augustine athletes have learned how to deflect and eventually ignore the verbal volleys that come with attending an all-boys school.

St. Augustine, with an enrollment of no more than 500 students, has learned to deflect it by having one of the better baseball teams in the county.

After a 2-2 start--the losses were to El Capitan and Mission Bay--the Saints have won 16 consecutive games, including victories over Poway, Escondido, La Jolla and Chula Vista, teams that make short work of the accusation that Saints “never plays the tough teams.”

In the recent Lions Tournament, St. Augustine tore through the A Division, outscored its opponents 52-6 and won two games in five innings and one in six en route to the title.

But the piece de resistance came in a 5-4 victory against arch-rival USDHS, a team that has dogged the Saints for as long as anyone can remember. USDHS Coach Dick Serrano’s memory was equally fuzzy, but he was impressed with St. Augustine’s latest outing against the Dons.

“They are much improved,” Serrano said. “They’re better athletes than in past years, and they’re playing better. They have more confidence, and they’ve seemed to rise to the occasion this year.”

Senior center fielder John Mozerka labeled the game “a turning point. It’s been at least six or seven years since we’ve beaten them.”

Mozerka and Dominic Giammarinaro are two of four seniors who returned to a team with nine juniors, and was expected to do little more than win the Harbor League, a humble feat the Saints have already accomplished in its two-year existence.

Now, here they are, 16 victories in a row later. Who would have thought?

“I didn’t expect such a quick start,” said Mike Stephenson, the Saints’ coach since 1985. “I think one of the big differences (in this team) is their athletic ability is superior to any group I’ve ever had.”

As a result, Stephenson has cut the roster from the usual 16 to just 13 players.

“They can all play other positions,” he said. “I don’t have to worry about not having a second baseman because I have two other guys who can play there.”

For example, junior pitcher Marco Inzunza (7-1)--he has given up one run in his last three starts and has walked only four in the last 38 innings--is the closest thing Saints have to a position player, “and he played in right field and hit a ground-rule double today,” Stephenson said after a recent Harbor League game.

Stephenson juggles his lineup like a clown, but does so because he has the personnel to get away with it. While he expected Mozerka to be the centerpiece of the team, everyone else has raised their level of play.

“I never have to say, ‘Oh, I wish John was up now,’ ” he said. “We have a lot of other guys I have confidence in. We have no real outs in the lineup.”

Chris Da Luz, Mozerka and Memo Lopez, St. Augustine’s 3, 4 and 5 hitters, were hitting between .404 and .438 going into Friday’s game against La Jolla. Lopez (23) and Mozerka (20) have 43 RBIs between them.

Stephenson only put Da Luz in the No. 3 spot after four other batters watched their averages plummet there.

“We called it the black hole,” he said, “but Chris didn’t start hitting until we put him there.”

Giammarinaro, who has a 63% on-base percentage (42 out of 67 times up) as the leadoff hitter, has played all but two positions this season. Against Marian he sat the bench along with two other starters who all arrived late.

“It’s one thing if it’s a job and another if you forget your uniform for a game,” Stephenson said. “But it’s still one of life’s little rules, and they were late.”

Far more important than league titles and section championships, it is life’s basic lessons that St. Augustine’s faculty tries to instill in its student body.

The team is still learning. This wasn’t the first time Stephenson’s had to flex his disciplinarian muscles. He sat out key players against El Capitan for similar reasons.

“Maybe they wouldn’t have lost any games had (Stephenson) not disciplined the kids,” Athletic Director Rick Stewart said. “It all goes back to the philosophy of the school.”

Where academic excellence is second to none. Success is important, but no one’s lost sight of what is the primary purpose here.

“The student body isn’t buying into going anywhere athletically,” Stewart said. “They’re buying into having to make good grades and go somewhere with that. Because of that philosophy, athletics becomes an outlet and it’s more enjoyment, and not so much pressure.”

The players seem to appreciate that the priorities were designed with their futures in mind. Players have their grades checked frequently, and “they’re real strict. If you have under a 3.0 (GPA), they won’t let you play,” Mozerka said.

But the school has blended its priorities enough that players said they can adjust to the competitive college level as easily as athletes from public schools.

“Sure,” Mozerka said. “Besides, if you don’t do well academically, you won’t go to college anyway.”

Said Stewart: “The kids that stay around buy into the philosophy that they want to win, but it’s above the shoulders. That’s what gets you through life . . . We all have dreams, but we have nightmares, too.”

The only nightmare St. Augustine has is not getting the respect it feels a 18-2 record deserves. The traditional powers, it fears, are sometimes rewarded for their reputations.

“I think some of those schools are ranked higher maybe just because of that tradition,” said Hernandez, who has thrown out six of the last seven runners attempting to steal. “Playing those schools gets us fired up, because we want to have that tradition, too.”

A tall order in the City Harbor League, which Serrano said the Saints have outgrown.

“I’d like to see them get back into a bigger league,” he said.

The players, who are trying to start a little tradition of their own, insist their schedule is no walk through the park.

“We’re playing a lot of the same tough teams as the bigger schools, and we’re playing as well as they are,” Giammarinaro said.

And concentrating like crazy. Hernandez said the Saints have turned setbacks into comebacks more than once.

“One of the things they’ve done is managed to stay focused even if the other team has a lead. They haven’t folded,” said Stephenson. “We respect every team we play, but we’re not in awe of anyone.”

Which was what the underclassmen were last year, where the seniors led the team through a touch of intimidation. These seniors have taken the opposite approach.

“We decided that we were just going to have fun, not worry about averages or errors,” said Giammarinaro. “This year, everyone’s more relaxed.”

And that makes the game more fun.

“Well, it’s always fun when you’re winning,” Mozerka said.