BACK IN THE GROOVE : Game Is Fun Again for Boone : College baseball: When USC’s sophomore third baseman shook batting slump, his play in the field also improved.

Aaron Boone perused the USC baseball team’s stat sheet and found much of it to his liking.

A batting average of .299. Not bad, considering Boone’s four-for-30 start. His 27 runs are third best on the team. The power statistics--12 doubles, two triples, three homers, 22 runs batted in--are decent.

Then the sophomore third baseman gets to the fielding statistics and winces. One number jumps out at him like a bad-hop grounder.

Twenty-one errors.

Ouch!

“I look at that and think it’s a typo or something,” Boone said.

It’s no typo. And what you can’t tell from the sheet is an even more remarkable statistic--17 of those errors came in the first 17 games.

Not even Steve Sax at his wild and wacky worst or Jose Offerman at his bobbling best could put up numbers like that.

“It was like, you could flip me the ball and I’d drop it,” said Boone, son of former major leaguer Bob Boone, grandson of former major leaguer Ray Boone and brother of former Trojan Bret Boone. “It was a nightmare. I was boggled by it.”

So was USC Coach Mike Gillespie, who watched Boone make a successful transition from second base to third early last season. Boone made 13 errors as a freshman, but only seven at third base.

But for most of this February, it seemed Boone couldn’t catch a grounder. And on those rare occasions when he snagged one, it seemed he’d err on the throw.

“Once it started spiraling, his confidence evaporated,” Gillespie said. “A ball would be hit to him, he’d tighten up and allow balls to play him. When he caught a ball, he’d worry about throwing it away.

“If your confidence goes it’s hard to do things well, because you have a tendency to freeze when the ball’s hit to you. Then you lose that step that helps you get a catchable hop. Then the ball owns you. It eats you up.”

Had Boone been hitting .450 and knocking in runs left and right, doing something to help the team, his defensive slump might have been a little easier to stomach. But to compound matters, the former Villa Park High standout was batting only .246 with eight RBIs through 21 games.

“I was a wreck,” said Boone, 6 feet 2, 185 pounds. “It was amazing the easy plays I screwed up. It got to the point where I didn’t want the ball hit to me. It was not fun coming out to play.”

Boone tried to keep a positive attitude. He went into every game thinking this would be the day his slump would end.

Then he’d make another error and wonder how baseball, this game he had grown up with and loved and played so well until now, could torment him like it was.

“I wasn’t suicidal or anything,” Boone said. “But I had never been through something like that.”

Fortunately, Boone lived to tell about it. His season turned, thanks, in part, to a turn his ankle took rounding a base against Westmont early last month.

The slight sprain forced Boone to sit out the first two games of USC’s three-game series at Arizona State, and that gave him some time to do a little soul-searching.

“I was sitting there thinking, ‘Gosh, I can’t believe this is happening,’ ” Boone said. “Then I picked up a bat, started doing things with my stance, and the next day, all of a sudden, I felt comfortable again at the plate. I had three hits and things began to turn around.”

As Boone gained confidence at the plate, he began to feel more comfortable in the field. He’d make a routine defensive play, and that would give him the confidence to make a tougher one.

Gradually, he regained the form that made him the Century League’s co-most valuable player in 1991 and earned him berths on the 1991 U.S. Junior National Team and Sports Festival West team.

“His confidence came back in bits and pieces,” Gillespie said. “He deserves a lot of credit for overcoming this, because there was a time when I wondered if he’d ever solve it.”

In 18 games since returning to the lineup March 14, Boone has hit .342 with nine doubles and 14 RBIs. More important, he has only four errors in the last 21 games. The first-place Trojans (23-18, 12-9) hold a half-game lead over Arizona State entering this weekend’s Pacific-10 Southern Division series against the Sun Devils at Dedeaux Field.

Any doubts about Boone’s ability were put to rest Saturday when Boone hit two homers and made two outstanding defensive plays to lead USC to a 6-4 victory over Stanford.

With runners on first and third and the Trojans clinging to a one-run lead in the middle innings, Boone made a diving stop of a grounder to his left and turned it into a double play. USC got out of the inning with no runs scoring.

Later, Boone made a nice back-hand grab of a grounder and threw the runner out. The plays helped USC salvage the final game of the series after losing Friday and Saturday.

“The two homers were nice, but the thing that excited me was I helped out with some big defensive plays in crucial situations,” Boone said. “It reinforced in my mind that I’m back, that I’m over my defensive woes.”

Boone has always carried the extra burden of living up to his family name. Ray was a 12-year major league infielder, Bob was a Gold Glove catcher who is now coaching the Oakland Athletics’ triple-A team at Tacoma, and Bret is a former El Dorado High and USC standout now playing triple-A ball in the Seattle Mariners’ organization.

But Aaron said he never felt any added pressure during the slump because he was a Boone. If anything, his family was a major factor in him overcoming his problems.

“There’s a certain understanding there--they’ve all gone through tough times,” Boone said. “They were real supportive. They just said to keep plugging away, work hard and eventually it would pass.”

Yeah, like a gallstone. They never said it would take that long, but Boone persevered.

“I always knew in the back of my mind that it was just a matter of time before I got it going,” Boone said. “Now, I want the ball to be hit to me, and if I make an out, I can’t wait to get back to the plate. The game’s fun again.”