Mounties’ Season in the Drink : Montclair Prep Players Try to Come to Grips With Playoff Ban

Practice was about to begin for the Montclair Prep baseball team a week ago, and Brad Fullmer leaned on his white import car in the parking lot of Encino Field. He slid off his blue baseball cap and gave it a long look.

Sweat stains and smudges soiled the cap, which looked as if a dog had dragged it around an infield. Fullmer has a system for each cap: One year he wears it for games and keeps it looking new, the second year he wears it at practice and lets it get as dirty as it may.

Then the scruffy cap is hung on a rack and left behind, much like the Mounties have been left behind this season as the Southern Section playoffs begin.

Fullmer’s cap began collecting dust last Thursday night, the eve of what would be the Mounties’ final game of the season. They finished 18-5-1 but are banned from competing for the 1-A Division title--which they won each of the past two seasons--because of recruiting violations in the school’s football program.

In addition, Montclair Prep has been ousted from the Alpha League and must compete as a free-lance team next fall unless the school can find a league that will accept it.

The Mounties have been gathering at each other’s houses this week to play catch. They work out at school and prepare for the upcoming American Legion baseball season. They talk about car-pooling to the 1-A championship game and watching a contest they believe they should be playing in.

They share common experiences and a common disappointment, yet their feelings are as diverse as the blotches on their caps.

Justin Paperny is candid about how much baseball means to him and, consequently, how the playoff ban has affected him.

“Baseball is my life right now,” he said. “It’s all I want to do.

“Since Saturday, it’s really kicked in,” he said. “It’s upsetting. It’s ludicrous is what it is.”

It controls the way he lives, from what he eats to the way he wears his hair. Out of superstition Paperny, who batted .474 this season, refuses to eat junk food during the season. He has not cut his hair in four months because he believes its length is directly related to his batting average.

“A lot of my friends play at other schools and it’s going to be no fun driving around the Valley watching their games,” he said. “My friends are playing and practicing, and I’m missing that. It’s no fun. It’s just not right.”

Paperny, a junior third baseman, is one of several Mounties who plan to return next season. He is confident no one will transfer, but with no league games next year the Mounties’ schedule could be short. And free-lance teams have no assurance of being invited to the playoffs.

“The (Southern Section) would be under us like a microscope if we transferred. We would have to move, and every move we made they’d be watching us,” Paperny said. “Plus, there’s just no way I’d leave.

“People don’t give us respect but I love playing at Montclair Prep. We play for probably the best coaches in the Valley.”

Senior Scott Katz has been attending Montclair Prep baseball games since he was in seventh grade. Last year, from the stands, he watched each of the Mounties’ playoff games.

He attained a long-standing goal this season when he made the varsity.

It did not matter much that Katz was a backup at second base, behind Fullmer, which at Montclair Prep is akin to backing up Ryne Sandberg at Chicago. Fullmer leads area players in home runs (10) and runs batted in (40) and has a .538 batting average.

Katz had worked to make his peace with the team’s playoff ban, but he had not planned for a final indignity.

The Mounties were scheduled to end their season at Maranatha in an Alpha League makeup game, and Coach Walt Steele proclaimed it “Senior Day.” Katz would play the entire game rather than Fullmer.

When the Mounties arrived at Sierra Madre, only eight players had shown up for Maranatha. The game was forfeited, and Maranatha refused Montclair Prep’s offer to play the game using one of the Mounties’ players.

So ended Katz’s career.

“We knew all season long we wouldn’t be in the playoffs,” Katz said. “It really hit me when we got out to Maranatha.”

Russell Ortiz is not dwelling on, or even acknowledging, the void that has begun to settle upon him. Each of the past two years he pitched the Mounties into the championship game, beating Paraclete in the semifinals two years ago and San Jacinto in the semifinals last year.

Ortiz, who finished his high school career with a 26-2 record, will attend Oklahoma next year on a baseball scholarship. Still, there are things he wants to accomplish beforehand. He needs work on “staying on top of the ball,” he said. And he needs to quicken his slide step, the motion he uses with runners on base.

“We didn’t work on that at all this year,” he said. “Some of the teams we play you don’t need to pitch from the stretch.”

As far as Ortiz is concerned the season is not over. He will work out at the school, lifting weights and throwing from the mound to anyone who cares to catch. Steele and assistant Tim Montez will continue to work with him.

“We knew from the beginning there would be no playoffs,” Ortiz said. “We expected a short season all along. Now we have two extra weeks of practice before Legion ball.”

Fullmer will spend the upcoming weeks at the batting cage near his home, trying somehow to improve after a stellar junior season. He had five home runs, three doubles and two triples in 27 league at-bats. And despite having 10 home runs overall, he struck out only twice.

Fullmer hit a line-drive home run to right field during practice last Thursday. As the afternoon wore on, more than a few players were wondering if any parents would come by with good news. There was a legal hearing that afternoon, and if a final-hour, longshot attempt at a temporary restraining order was successful, someone would have come during practice to tell them they would be in the playoffs after all.

No one came.

“We were really prepared for this,” Fullmer said. “We knew right from the beginning: ‘Don’t even think about it.’ ”

Practice was in full swing when Encino neighbors John and Dorothy Cappella, both 78, strolled by on their daily afternoon walk. An 11-year-old yellow Labrador, Rogue, led the way.

“This is my team,” John Cappella said, nodding toward the Mounties.

He has been a fan since Steele arrived five years ago. He watched the team practice in preparation for its past two titles.

But 1992 is a different season, and the players are preparing for something different.