Incredible Rise of Stevenson Mind-Boggling Even in Review : Prep baseball: Chatsworth bench-warmer emerged at midseason to bat .407 and make All-City team and Bernie Milligan All-Star Game.

David Stevenson, at least in a regional ball-playing sense, ranks near the top of a list of never-say-die types.

Bend ‘em, break ‘em, cut off their heads. Here is an unofficial list of some who refuse to go without a fight. The resilient, the persistent, including the occasional pain in the neck:

* Police Chief Daryl Gates: More comebacks than Steve Howe, another guy who has proved popular among the men with a badge. More headlines than the other Darryl in blue--Strawberry--which takes some doing.

* Texas Gila monster: When one of these fanged lizards sinks its teeth in your boots, lopping its body off at the neck will only lighten the load.

Like a pair of vice grips with legs, it won’t let go.

* Larry Holmes: His heavyweight comeback has consisted of a series of bouts with cadavers in tasseled trunks.

A mortician’s dream: He’ll jab ‘em, we’ll slab ‘em. Big purses, zero pulses.

* David Stevenson: A first baseman at Chatsworth High who went from the bench to benchmark, thanks to a head-spinning assault with the stick and a dose of stick-to-itiveness to match.

At the high school baseball season’s midpoint, Stevenson was on the pine. In keeping with the economic euphemisms of the day, just say that his bat was mired in a deep recession and that his stock had experienced a correctional downturn.

Two months later, after considerable personal travail, Stevenson was in the stratosphere. The 6-foot-2, 200-pound senior has been named to a handful of all-star teams and will play for the West in today’s Bernie Milligan All-Star Game at Cal State Northridge at 4:15 p.m.

Those who witnessed the turnaround still search for the words to describe it.

“I’m still not sure it’s sunk in yet,” Chatsworth Coach Tom Meusborn said. “I haven’t seen a streak like that and don’t know if I will again. It’s going to be very, very tough to match.”

Chalk it up, in large part, to Stevenson’s matchless perseverance.

Two years ago, he tried out for the Chatsworth junior varsity as a sophomore but was cut from the team. He spent that spring playing youth baseball instead, trying to hone his game. But the first cut was hardly the deepest.

Stevenson gave the junior varsity another shot as a junior, and again was axed. Stevenson was so upset that he considered transferring to Canoga Park, another City Section school. Consider the implications of such a rash decision: Canoga Park is 4-52 over the past three seasons.

“I was going to Canoga because I wanted to play,” Stevenson said. “I was really bummed. But Coach (Meusborn) said to stick around.”

Luck, for once, was a double-edged sword. Stevenson was given his first chance in high school when the blade of another sort fell. Several players on the Chatsworth junior varsity were declared academically ineligible in the spring of 1991, and Stevenson joined the team and soon started at first base.

He was soon back to ground zero, though. Stevenson was left off Chatsworth’s varsity roster for the L.A. Watts Summer Games last year, and initially hoped it was a mistake.

Said Stevenson: “I asked Coach, ‘Does this mean I’m not on the team?’ ”

Bingo. Meusborn’s answer was predictable--and the decision appeared sound. Minus Stevenson, Chatsworth won the Summer Games championship and was more than prepared to enter the 1992 season without his services--even though it was one of the greenest Chancellor teams in recent history. Stevenson, again, spent the summer playing in a local youth league.

Stevenson was steadfast, however. He enrolled in a class for varsity newcomers last fall, played with the varsity during the winter-league season and impressed Meusborn with his long-ball potential. He tried out for the varsity, made the team and was installed as a starter at first. At long last, he was on top of the world--which only set him up for a lengthy tumble.

Stevenson staggered out of the box, managed just two hits in his first 19 at-bats, drove in zero runs and was benched. Once more, he was on the outside looking in.

It got worse before it got better. Meusborn divided the team into three hitting groups and Stevenson was tossed in with the non-starters. Repeated mistakes meant laps around the field as punishment.

“It got to where I could hardly throw the ball,” said Stevenson, who admits to plenty of mistakes and plenty of extra laps. “I got real tired of running.”

It was hellish. Eight laps one day, seven another, six on yet another occasion. Meusborn admits he was trying to light a fire under his first baseman.

“I think he needed to be more aggressive,” Meusborn said. “He needed to become mentally tougher. We thought, ‘Let’s take this tack and see what happens.’ ”

In short, the tack meant attack . Eventually, Stevenson responded. And though the demotion wasn’t a pleasant experience, he understands the rationale behind it.

“After the year, Coach told me he thought I was scared,” Stevenson said. “He was trying to make me or break me as a player. He was either going to make me quit or make me into a baseball player.

“It got to the point where I wondered whether I’d ever step on the field again except for infield-outfield (drills).”

When Stevenson caught his second wind, he didn’t blow it. After serving a short stint as part-time player and pinch-hitter, he finally was reinserted in the starting lineup at midseason and responded with a streak that bordered on the improbable.

Wrong term, perhaps.

The unlikely.

Doesn’t do it justice.

The incredible.

Anybody for adjective-defying?

Said Meusborn, taking his best shot at encapsulating Stevenson’s torrid stretch: “He went from one extreme to another, from not playing to being named All-City Section in half a season. Amazing.”

In a 10-game span, Stevenson not only turned his season around, he helped point Chatsworth in the right direction. The Chancellors won nine of their final 10 games of the regular season to finish tied for the West Valley League title.

Stevenson’s assault began in earnest April 20, when he had three hits against Reseda. He finished the regular season with a flurry, going 21 for 31 with three home runs and 20 runs batted in.

Stevenson’s season went from the Outer Limits to Twilight Zone. Every morning after a game, his mother was up at the crack of dawn to document Stevenson’s most recent cracks of the bat.

“I’d look up from bed in the morning and she’d be standing there,” said Stevenson, who plans to play next year at a junior college. “She’d be up at 5 waiting for the paper guy. She’d highlight my name in the paper and hold it up to me when I woke up at 7.”

On the field, he didn’t wake up for a long, long time. In one particularly important game against league rival El Camino Real on April 29, Stevenson delivered what may have been the team’s biggest blow of the regular season.

The score was tied, 2-2, in the fifth inning when a catcher’s interference call on the third out instead gave the Chancellors new life--not to mention another baserunner. After a walk loaded the bases, Stevenson stepped in to face left-handed reliever Jason Sipperley, an all-league selection.

Sipperley, who was named the junior varsity league MVP a year earlier, had struck out Stevenson in the latter’s final at-bat of the 1991 season.

This time, though, Stevenson crushed a ball over the 385-foot sign in right-center for a grand slam, handing Chatsworth a 6-2 victory. Chatsworth and El Camino Real later would finish in a tie for the league title.

“It was a bomb ,” Meusborn said.

Stevenson’s dynamite stick continued to provide the pop that fueled the team. Chatsworth, in fact, advanced to the City 4-A semifinals before losing to Poly. A few days later, Stevenson was selected to the All-City first team and was asked to play in the Milligan game alongside the region’s best seniors.

Fact and fantasy remain blurred.

“I didn’t even know there was such a thing,” Stevenson said. “I knew there was an all-star football game, but not one for baseball.”

He was named to The Times’ All-Valley team, posted a final batting average of .407 and finished tied for fourth among area City players with 23 RBIs.

The season’s ending was so improbable, so implausible, that he could become Chatsworth’s Robert Louis Stevenson, for it seems that his story will soon be embroidered into baseball lore.

“The Dave Stevenson story will be heard for many years to come,” Meusborn said. “It goes to show you that if you want something bad enough and work hard enough to get it, good things can happen.”