Simi Valley, South L.A. Ball Teams Make Pitch for Unity

Gene Hostetler planted his sneakers deep in the dusty red clay of the Simi Valley ball field, waving an aluminum bat just above his head.

He was manager of a Simi Valley ballclub assembled to take on a well-organized South Los Angeles team Saturday in a game designed to build unity and improve relations between the two communities after the Los Angeles riots.

He was also the team’s pitcher and resident funnyman. But he did not fool the youths from the projects bused in to watch a contest billed as “America’s Game.”

“He’s a cop,” said one African-American youngster in a voice low enough so only his friends could hear. “That man’s a cop, I know he’s a cop.”

Hostetler is a cop. He’s a detective who works auto theft in Simi Valley, where a jury found Los Angeles police officers not guilty on 10 of 11 counts in the videotaped beating of Rodney G. King. He also is the one who recruited fellow police officers and other community members to play softball.

On the ball field Saturday, before about 300 people from both communities, Hostetler and his team went down to defeat rather quietly, 6-1, at the hands of the KJLH-FM All Stars.

“We’re coming back,” Hostetler said after failing to get a hit in three at-bats. “We’re going into South-Central L.A. in November for a rematch.”

Simi Valley police in South-Central Los Angeles? That is what the America’s Game concept is all about.

A community service project spawned by the riots, Saturday’s softball game was billed as a competition between city dwellers and suburbanites. But it was more than that.

It was black and white people talking to one another. And it was the healing of two communities, often misunderstood and deeply troubled in recent months.

“This is the way it’s supposed to be,” said Jan Hardy, an African-American Los Angeles resident who helped organize the game. “See all these people talking and eating together? This is the way it should be.”

Susan Davenport, a white Simi Valley resident who works with Hardy at an Inglewood computer company, came up with the idea after she and her co-workers discussed the rioting.

Davenport--who approached Hostetler with her idea--said she had received some negative comments from local residents about the game.

“I think some people were apprehensive that there would be problems,” she said. “But do you see any friction here? There hasn’t been one incident. People are . . . having a good time.”

Davenport said the game will show residents of Simi Valley that South Los Angeles is made up of more than looters and gang members. And it will show South Los Angeles residents that Simi Valley is not a city of racists.

Hardy, who manages the KJLH team, initially balked at the idea of a softball game between the communities.

But she eventually warmed up to the idea as a way of dispelling stereotypes. “You have to start somewhere and this is a good first step,” she said.

In a park behind the ball field at Rancho Santa Susana Park, the game opened with a color guard of Simi Valley Girl Scouts.

A quartet sang “The Star-Spangled Banner” and the spiritual, “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” known as the Black National Anthem.

The Rev. Edgar Boyd of Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church in South Los Angeles opened the game with a prayer.

About three months ago, “the eyes of the world were focused on Simi Valley, on a trial that separated our communities,” he said. “Now they are focused on Simi Valley, not for division but for unity. We now realize that we may have come to this country in different ships, but we now find ourselves in the same boat.”

Three junior high school students from Los Angeles sitting in the bleachers said they knew little about Simi Valley except that it was the site of the King trial.

They were impressed with the city’s open spaces.

“This place looks like a place in the mountains where you would have horses,” said 13-year-old Angel Jones. “Our parks are small.”