Lunceford Is Putting Only One Foot Forward Now : College softball: Former Trabuco Hills star’s new stance is productive at Long Beach State.

Imagine Brett Butler switching to the right side and hitting like Mike Piazza, Luis Polonia turning around and batting like Tim Salmon, and you have an idea of the transformation Linda Lunceford underwent last year.

Lunceford spent her freshman and sophomore seasons on the Long Beach State softball team as a left-handed slap hitter. She’d get a running start in the batter’s box while the pitch was coming in, flick her bat at the ball and rely on her speed to beat out infield singles.

The ploy made softball purists cringe, but it was effective. Lunceford, a former two-sport standout at Trabuco Hills High School, led the 49ers with a .316 average and scored 22 runs from her lead-off position in 1991, and she batted a team-leading .312 with 26 runs in 1992.

But those who saw the frosh-soph version of Lunceford might not have recognized her as a junior and senior.

The left-handed slap has been replaced by the right-handed rap. Lunceford has gone from the lead-off position, where her role was to get on base and score, to the cleanup or No. 5 spot, where she’s expected to knock runners in. Now when she swings, her back foot is planted firmly in the box, not moving toward first base. She’s more power, less finesse.

“There are not many switch-hitters in softball--you have to have a lot of talent to do that,” Long Beach Coach Pete Manarino said. “But she’s a very gifted athlete. Because of her power, we decided to turn her around and hit right-handed full time.”

It was a difficult adjustment for Lunceford, even though she was a switch-hitter in high school. She spent two full seasons as a left-handed slap hitter, and the swing from the right side seemed a bit foreign, as evidenced by her batting average dip to .244 as a junior in 1993.

But Lunceford has found her offensive groove again. The senior shortstop leads the team with a .447 average and has nine RBIs in 16 games. She’s well ahead of last year’s run-production pace, when she had 22 RBIs in 66 games. She recently broke the school career record for hits with her 217th.

“It was hard to turn around and remember how my swing was right-handed,” said Lunceford, who helped Long Beach advance to the College World Series in each of her first three seasons. “But I’m a lot more comfortable from the right side now.”

The switch was more necessity than choice, the result of three major factors converging to slow Lunceford down and render her slapstick obsolete:

* The Summer of Love: During her freshman year at Long Beach, Lunceford met Scott Sanders, a pitcher from Nicholls State University in Louisiana who had completed his first season in the San Diego Padres’ minor league system in 1990.

The two fell in love and are engaged to be married next October, which is good. But Lunceford also fell in love with the Cajun food preferred in Sanders’ hometown of Thibodaux, La., which wasn’t so good.

Sanders, expected to be Padres’ third or fourth starter this season, and Lunceford spent the summer of 1991 together, and for Lunceford, it was the first summer she hadn’t played on traveling all-star soccer or softball teams.

“We just ate all summer and hardly worked out,” said Lunceford, whose younger sister, Christy, is an outfielder at Creighton. “Scott’s a great cook, but all that Cajun food is fattening, a lot of fried stuff and cheeses. I came back (for my sophomore year) heavier.”

How much heavier?

“I don’t want you to put that in the paper,” Lunceford said, laughing.

A slower Lunceford was able to work off many of those extra pounds during her sophomore season and was nearly back to full speed until . . .

* The Summer of Pain: The big toe on Lunceford’s left foot had bothered her since her sophomore year of high school, but after her sophomore year of college, the pain had become unbearable. A doctor examined the toe and found that, much to Lunceford’s surprise, it had actually been broken four years earlier and never healed properly.

“There were a lot of bone fragments and calcium deposits, and the ligaments were twisted around,” said Lunceford, who scored 31 goals in her senior season on the Trabuco Hills soccer team and was named Pacific Coast League most valuable player.

Lunceford underwent two toe surgeries, one after her sophomore season at Long Beach and one after her junior season.

“That slowed me down two or three steps to first, plus I couldn’t run or workout during those summers,” Lunceford said.

Lunceford tried some slap-hitting at the beginning of her junior season but was not nearly as effective, primarily because of her loss of speed and . . .

* The Lunceford Shift: It didn’t take long for opponents to catch on to the slap. When Lunceford came to bat, some teams would bring the third baseman and shortstop in, the first baseman in so far she could shake hands with the pitcher, and move the second baseman to first base.

“It wasn’t a surprise at all anymore,” said Lunceford, 21. “It’s not effective unless you’re unbelievably fast.”

Lunceford, no longer the speed demon she was earlier in college, scrapped the slap and went to a more traditional style of hitting. Her offense has helped Long Beach to an 11-6 start this season, including a 7-1 performance in the recent Texas A&M; tournament. She is also one of the best defensive shortstops in the Big West Conference.

A three-time Big West all-conference selection and a third-team All-American pick in 1992, Lunceford has been mentioned as a possible candidate for the 1996 U.S. Olympic team. But she doubts she’ll be representing her country in the Atlanta Games.

Lunceford, who will graduate with a criminal justice degree this spring, plans to start a family soon after her wedding and hopes to attend law school in a few years.

“I don’t really want to try out for the Olympic team because I’m burned out on softball and (the Olympics) are not for two more years,” Lunceford said. “I’m going to be married, and I just don’t think I have it in me to keep playing.”