Simi Valley Reaches Top With a Bang : High school baseball: Pioneers are heard--and heard from--in Orange County tournament.

As the clock approached midnight, a single word kept cropping up in the discussion of Simi Valley High ballplayers, coaches and fans.

Simi Valley, averaging 13.5 runs a game entering the final of the Upper Deck Classic at Cal State Fullerton on Thursday night, survived a nine-inning battle with Irvine in the final and won, 7-6.

Practically left for dead, Simi Valley scored four times in the seventh to erase a two-run deficit, then turned around and allowed Irvine to force extra innings.

The Pioneers also shook off the effects of four errors. They played an Orange County team behind the Orange Curtain before a partisan, overflow crowd of more than 2,000. The team had been tested.

We showed character , they all said, over and over.

The word also defines Mike Scyphers, the bombastic and colorful Simi Valley coach whose damn-the-torpedoes style again ruffled a few feathers.

Simi Valley (14-1) won the title but probably didn’t win many fans. The Pioneers are expected to be anointed the top high school team in the nation next week by USA Today, which ranked the team second entering the event.

In terms of bluster and bravado, the Pioneers were No. 1 all along and loving every minute of it.

Examples abound. In the final against Irvine, the team’s vocal bench was admonished by umpires for leaving the dugout and was told to simmer down.

Scyphers wasn’t in the dugout for the last few warnings--he watched the last 3 1/2 innings from the stands.

After Simi Valley batted in the top of the sixth, Scyphers was ejected for arguing with an umpire, and he didn’t leave before creating a scene. A second umpire grabbed the fiery coach in a bearhug and hauled him into the Simi Valley dugout.

According to Scyphers, Simi Valley assistant Shaun Murphy was arguing with the second-base umpire after the top of the inning had ended. Scyphers quickly entered the fray to defend Murphy, a former Pioneer standout who had taken exception to a called pitch in the top of the sixth. The umpire heard Murphy complaining, walked several yards toward first base and ejected the assistant, Scyphers said.

“I went out to protect (Murphy),” Scyphers said. “What’s (the second-base umpire) doing way over here, anyway?”

Scyphers said the umpire then swore at him, raising the temperature another notch. According to Scyphers, he attempted to speak to the umpire but was grabbed by the first-base umpire, who ejected Scyphers and pulled the coach into the dugout.

“I tried to get around (the first-base umpire) and he caught me,” Scyphers said. “Then he said, ‘You’re gone too.’

“I never said anything. It’s a joke. It’s incredible how I got hooked.”

The coach was ordered off the field, with Murphy in tow.

Suddenly, first-year assistant Dave Taylor was running the team from Scyphers’ spot in the third-base coaching box.

Scyphers’ parting advice?

“ ‘Good luck,’ ” Taylor said.

Taylor needed it. His mettle was tested almost immediately. With two out in the top of the seventh and Simi Valley trailing by two runs, Britten Pond singled and Taylor waved both runners home to tie the score, 4-4. Simi Valley added two more runs in the inning on doubles by Kevin Nykoluk and Ryan Hankins but failed to hold the lead in the bottom of the seventh.

That set the stage for Taylor to again try his hand at crisis management. With two out, pinch-runner Paul Prendeville on first and the score tied, 6-6, in the ninth, Jeff Michael sent a bloop double down the line in right. Prendeville was waved home by Taylor just as right fielder Scott Seal mishandled the ball for an error.

“With two out, you’ve got to roll the dice,” Taylor said. “He was coming all the way. Luckily, (Seal) bobbled it twice.”

Lucky for Taylor. Scyphers fidgeted nervously as the game went into extra innings. Not that fidgeting, in itself, is anything new.

“I didn’t plan to be up there (in the stands) that long,” Scyphers cracked.

“I surrounded myself with good people. They made every move that I would have made.”

The Irvine uprising wasn’t the first tournament run-in for Scyphers. In the seventh inning of a 13-4 blowout of Mater Dei on Tuesday, Scyphers began chirping at the plate umpire about the strike zone, prompting the latter to remove his mask and take several steps toward the dugout.

Barked the umpire several times at the coach: “Shut up!”

Scyphers, asked afterward if he knew the umpire and whether the pair had had any previous run-ins, said: “I’d never met that guy before in my life. He was a jerk.”

When Scyphers walked to the team bus moments later, he was greeted by a good-natured chorus of “Shut Up!” from his players.

Had the boisterous boys of Simi Valley played tournament favorite Westminster Christian of Miami in the final, tournament officials had a preemptive plan.

Westminster quickly established itself as the vocal equal of the Pioneers, so tournament officials discussed adding extra security if the teams met. However, Westminster, which entered the event ranked No. 1 by USA Today, fell to Irvine in the semifinals.

Yet Simi Valley more than had its hands full with Irvine, which almost beat the nation’s top two teams in as many days. Nonetheless, the Pioneers regrouped.

“We definitely got tested,” Scyphers said. “A game like this was long overdue. We didn’t know what kind of character we had, and it takes a game like this to show what you’ve got.”

Character by the bushel, it seems.

Staff writer Vince Kowalick contributed to this story.