Pitching Out of Trouble
The home, by design, has all the trappings of a standard suburban residence.
There are two cars parked in the driveway, and inside the house a pair of cats roam the hallway.
Cutouts of ballplayers and girls in bathing suits adorn the bedroom walls of teen-aged boys. Baseball caps sit on the shelf.
Photos from birthday parties are taped to the refrigerator. Three fish tanks, backlighted and bubbling, decorate the living room.
In one tank is a small, ceramic road sign for fishes that reads in jest:
Northridge 5 miles
Hell 6 miles
Jason Sipperley knows the way to the latter. Now he’s making a U-turn.
Sipperley’s home, located near Chaminade High, seems like any other in the quiet West Hills neighborhood. Look closely, however, and there are subtle tip-offs that Ward and June Cleaver do not reside in this particular domicile.
On a living room wall, for instance, is a list of curfews for each of the six boys who live there. The place is called an emancipation house by Tom Martinez, 28, one of two supervisory adults who live there full time. In layman’s terms, it is a group boys’ home, owned and subsidized by Catholic Charities.
“It’s for kids who don’t have a home of their own,” Martinez said.
For Sipperley, a senior left-handed pitcher at El Camino Real, the home represents the first long-term stability he has experienced in years.
“I needed it,” Sipperley said. “It’s like a normal life.”
The street on which the home is located dead-ends a few yards away. But for its occupants, the home is designed to help them walk the straight and narrow. It provides direction.
El Camino Real is Sipperley’s seventh high school. In previous years he moved around the high desert like a Bedouin, never settling down long enough to establish roots. Lancaster, Mojave, Rosamond . . . Sipperley called all of them home at one time or another.
About the only constant was baseball. He started playing the game as a youngster in Reseda at age 7. It remains his escape hatch.
“Right now, I’m trying to live a halfway normal childhood playing baseball, something I’ve done since I was a kid,” Sipperley said.
Baseball might have helped Sipperley turn the corner. While staying in another boys’ home two years ago, Sipperley tried out for the Woodland Hills West American Legion team and was encouraged to enroll at El Camino Real, the school most West players attend. Sipperley was admitted and is the only one among the six boys at the home who does not attend continuation school.
This spring, he is 2-2 with three saves in 12 appearances and has an earned-run average of 1.53. He has been used in relief and as a starter at El Camino Real, which he has attended for the past two years. He has accepted his dual role with nary a whimper.
“I have nothing but positive things to say about him,” El Camino Real Coach Mike Maio said. “He wants to please others so much that he sometimes puts too much pressure on himself.
“His whole attitude is, ‘I’ll do whatever it is you need me to do.’ ”
All Sipperley wanted, of course, was a chance. Last season, playing for the junior varsity, he was selected the most valuable player of the West Valley League. He threw a no-hitter and won eight games.
There is no small degree of irony in the fact that Sipperley is a pitcher. Nowhere else does a ballplayer stand so completely alone, receiving signals that he can accept or ignore. For much of his childhood, Sipperley felt isolated.
He and his mother bounced around the region throughout his early teens, living in a never-ending stream of motel rooms, he said. It was a painful time for Sipperley, an only child who rebelled and ran away on several occasions.
“We parted ways for good when I was 15,” he said. “I’d walked out the door several times before. The home resources just were not there.”
As often as he left, he was hauled back. Once, while living in Rosamond, he ran away with a friend and spent the night in a dank desert cave. The temperature dropped below freezing. Snow fell during the night and the pair was found by a search-and-rescue unit the following day.
His mother and father were divorced when he was a year old. She now lives in Houston, and his father, whom he met for the first time at age 10, lives in San Diego. His father has remarried and has two daughters.
“He checks in every once in a while,” Sipperley said. “He called the other day, asking about baseball. He can do that without getting too personal.
“People start getting defensive when they feel guilt, and he’s not good at handling that. I’d like to see my relationship with my dad get stronger, but I’ve been saying that for a long time.”
Before Sipperley moved into the boys’ homes, his life often was volatile and unstructured. Without much supervision at home, he went through a period in which he had several scrapes with the law.
“I was doing little things to get recognition from somebody,” he said. “Anything to get anybody to notice me.”
At age 14, he moved in for a short time with the family of a Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputy in Lancaster, but things didn’t work out there, either.
“I guess it was too stable and I wasn’t ready to settle down yet,” he said.
The series of moves throughout the desert with his mother followed, and he eventually ran away to live with a friend in Bakersfield. He later was ordered back to L.A. County and placed in a boys’ home.
Becoming self-reliant has forced Sipperley, who will turn 18 on May 21, to grow up in a hurry.
He has a part-time job at an ice cream parlor and, with an eye toward attending Cal State Northridge and covering tuition, has filed for state and federal grants-in-aid. With considerable hard work, Sipperley has caught up academically and is on schedule to graduate this summer.
“He has about four times as many responsibilities as a normal 17-year-old,” Martinez said. “He has a job, he’s getting good grades, he’s saving for the future.”
Without question, Sipperley is excited about the prospects of living on his own. It took time, but he has accepted the fact that he is now solely responsible for his future. Sipperley plans to move out of the group home this summer and hopes to rent an apartment while he attends school.
“The place has given me a roof over my head and given me stability,” Sipperley said. “It’s helped me become a responsible person. It’s kind of hard living there sometimes, but when you don’t have a parent . . .”
In his room at the boys’ home is an album containing photographs of happier days. In one shot, taken about 10 years ago, a beaming Sipperley is decked out in a tiny blue sport coat. Behind him is a radiant Christmas tree.
Sipperley spent last Christmas at the home, celebrating the holiday without any members of his family. He no longer waits for the telephone to ring.
“It took me a long time to get out of that dependency frame of mind,’ he said. “Only about a year ago did I really realize that I was on my own, that I don’t have a mom or a dad.”
When discussing the past, Sipperley pulls no punches and makes no excuses. He has accepted it and is ready to move forward.
“He’s not looking for sympathy,” Maio said. “He wants to be treated like anybody else. To tell you the truth, he doesn’t need any (sympathy) because he’s a popular kid with a whole lot of friends.”
Beyond high school, the world awaits, and Sipperley cannot wait to get started. This time, he will have friends in his corner.
Over Sipperley’s twin bed is a framed, hand-drawn poster, sent to him by a buddy. In the center of the poster is a caricature of Sipperley in the role of movie star Kevin Costner. In the background, a baseball diamond and rows of waving corn.
Hands on hips, feet crossed, Sipperley stands in his field of dreams. He is smiling.
The poster is hand-lettered and bears a personalized inscription: If you believe the impossible, the incredible can come through.
“It’s kind of my motto, you know?” Sipperley said.
He smiled again.