AMERICAN LEGION BASEBALL / STEVE ELLING : Sepulveda’s Fullmer Wins Triple Crown on 2nd Try

Move over, Yaz.

Brad Fullmer of Sepulveda became what is believed to be the first player to win the American Legion District 20 triple crown after finishing the final week of the regular season on a five-for-12 streak.

For just about anybody else, that late flurry would be a high-water mark. For Fullmer, it’s the skids. But it was enough for him to do what was last accomplished in major league baseball in 1967, by Carl Yastrzemski of the Boston Red Sox.

Fullmer, who will be a senior at Montclair Prep in the fall, finished with a district-high .613 batting average and 37 runs batted in over 23 regular-season games. He also slammed seven home runs to share the district lead with Bryan LaCour of Valley North.

Fullmer was expected to hit for average and power. As a Montclair Prep junior, after all, he nearly pulled off another triple crown.

Excluding players from the Southern Section Small Schools Division, Fullmer led the region in batting average (.538), was tied for the lead in homers (10) and was second in RBIs (40).

Crisscrossed: And you thought it was a long haul to Littlerock?

The Thomas Bros. Guide award for travel above and beyond the call of duty goes to District 20 entry Lancaster North, which played some of its home games at Edwards Air Force Base in the Mojave Desert.

The team took some lengthy road trips into the Antelope, Santa Clarita and San Fernando valleys for road games. But that isn’t the half of it. Even home games were a pain in the back seat.

The roster of Lancaster North, a first-year team, included players from Tehachapi, Desert, Boron, Mojave, Rosamond, Trona and Ridgecrest Burroughs highs.

Trona, for the geographically uninitiated, is a tiny town on a dry lake bed between Ridgecrest and . . . Death Valley.

District 20, the largest in the state with 30 teams, includes players from five area codes (818, 805, 619, 213, 310).

Stargazing: On a night of all-stars under the stars, there was a startling lack of hitting.

The West team pulled out a 2-1 victory in the District 20 all-star game Sunday night when Dan Rosenbloom of Las Virgenes singled home Carl Grissom of Quartz Hill to break a 1-1 tie in the seventh inning. Though the teams combined for a scant five hits, the game produced several highlights.

The West’s Stacy Kleiner of Woodland Hills East launched a solo homer to right in the second to tie the score, 1-1. Defensively, Sun Valley shortstop Frankie Medina of the East made a head-turning stop of a grounder up the middle to save a run in the eighth.

The defensive play of the game, however, was made by Sepulveda center fielder Chris Portugal, who hauled in a screaming liner by Woodland Hills East shortstop Gabe Kapler with a running, over-the-shoulder catch in the fourth.

One night earlier, Portugal kicked the lone extra point and recovered a fumble in the East’s 7-0 win over the West in the Daily News All-Star football game.

Iron-man award: Jake Loveridge (6-foot-3, 220 pounds) of Sun Valley made three Legion pitching appearances Sunday. In the morning, he pitched three scoreless innings in a 3-2 win over Palmdale West. In the afternoon, he pitched 4 1/3 innings in a 9-1 win over Quartz Hill. Sunday night, he pitched a scoreless inning in the District 20 all-star game.

Long-ball threat: Moments before Saturday’s District 16 battle with Westlake-Royal at spacious Moorpark College, Newbury Oaks Coach Chuck Fick had completed hitting infield grounders when he took a few steps up the third base line, tossed the ball in the air and jacked it over the fence in left.

He turned and strutted to the dugout while players eyeballed him with equal parts amusement and suspicion.

Showing off? Showing ‘em how it’s done? “Naw, I get frustrated because I can’t hit a decent pop fly,” said Fick, a former minor league catcher. “But there is no yard that can contain my fungo.”