Off the Streets and Onto the Field : Compton: Coach who says sports kept him out of trouble puts together a baseball team and finds a league that accepts his players.

For the boys from the Compton ‘hood, the four-inning exhibition contest played recently in a modest Lynwood park was a chance to be big-league, a chance to show that kids from Compton could get together for some reason other than running with a gang.

The team of 13- and 14-year-olds didn’t have a name. The players brought borrowed bats, one old practice baseball and barely enough jerseys for the starters. They had found the old jerseys stacked in a storeroom of a Compton park.

Their opponents, the Blue Jays, didn’t bother to wear uniforms for this game at Dymally Congressional Park. The contest was just a tuneup for the Lynwood recreation league team, an opportunity to stay sharp for league and tournament play. They had little reason to fear the outcome.

The Compton youths had been hanging out at Burrell-McDonald Park, near the west border of the city, when the man who would become their coach, Robert Carr, started playing catch with them one afternoon about three months ago. The teen-agers remembered Carr as a successful coach at Enterprise Middle School from 1989 through 1993.

Carr had lost his job at the school and, with time on his hands, had decided to work out with youngsters who had lots of energy, too many temptations and too little else to do.

He used to be just like them.

“Sports kept me out of the streets,” he said. “We wouldn’t have all these problems if the older boys would put down their beer bottles and guns and help these little kids like I remember the big kids helping me.”

These days, competing with the gangs is often harder than winning games on the field.

“I had a Latino kid at Enterprise who had an 80-miles-per-hour fastball as an eighth-grader,” Carr said. “He was almost unhittable, but he turned to gang violence. And he’s now dead. He was killed last year in a gang shooting.”

Carr started running and fielding drills in the park. The students hit baseballs off tees. They learned the mechanics of playing different positions. They played pepper. And they began to think of themselves as Coach Carr’s team.

“The time I knew I had a team was when the kids started coming every day,” he said. “They were showing up to practice even when I didn’t show up.”

Carr, 30, had been a standout athlete in three sports at Compton’s Centennial High. His own athletic career was cut short by injuries, including a severely broken leg. His 6-foot-4 frame remains lean and muscular.

He was working in a warehouse when he first began volunteer coaching at area schools, which led to a job as a walk-on coach and teaching assistant at Enterprise. From 1991 to 1993, Carr’s baseball teams finished first twice and second once in their league with an overall record of 17 wins and 4 losses.

Carr also won two championships in football, said Assistant Supt. LaVonne Johnson, who had hired Carr when she was the Enterprise principal.

Current Principal Gipson Lyles refused to provide any information about the past or current performance of the school’s sports teams. He would not discuss why Carr was replaced as coach.

Carr lost his job last fall after being involved in a scuffle that began when he left school grounds to retrieve a belligerent student. Carr said a school official had directed him to bring back the student. He wrestled the student to the ground when the boy started kicking him, Carr said.

School administrators decided to fire Carr shortly after the incident. District officials said they had no comment on the matter. Carr has been doing part-time maintenance work and odd jobs while looking for full-time employment.

“He was better than all of the coaches I ever played for,” said shortstop-pitcher Juan Diaz, 13. “He motivates people. I felt bad when he left.”

Diaz was eager to learn from the coach, and like the other players, he also wanted to play some real games. Carr feared that the teens’ enthusiasm would flag without competition. He said he called about a dozen parks to ask about joining a league.

Some leagues were full. Others told him they didn’t accept teams from outside the area, or that he had missed the entrance deadline.

“When they hear you’re from Compton, it kind of scares them off,” Carr said.

Finally a Lynwood city league agreed to set up the June 1 practice game, which would be an unofficial audition. If Carr’s boys were not embarrassed too badly, they might be allowed to enter the league.

“We’ve waited three months for this,” Carr told his players before the game. “There’s no pressure on us. If it’s not fun, we’re not doing it right.”

Lynwood pitcher Hector Hernandez, 13, used a mitt-popping fastball and a sweeping curve to strike out the first six batters. Meanwhile, the cagey Lynwood squad turned a few hits and a running game into three first-inning runs.

All the while, Carr was teaching: showing his third baseman how to set his feet for a tag play, directing his shortstop to hold baserunners closer to second base, telling his catcher when to throw through to a base. Carr made sure every player batted and took the field.

The score was 4-0 before Compton broke through against Lynwood’s backup pitcher for a couple of hits and a run in the third inning. Diaz got the big hit, a rocket to left center that went for a triple.

But this game would have no fairy-tale ending. The Lynwood team won, 8-1.

The performance was good enough, however, to satisfy Blue Jays coach Oscar Flores, 21, a recreation leader for the city of Lynwood. He said his league would welcome Compton’s participation.

That’s just what Carr wants. The news also pleased Sherille Cheatham, the mother of 14-year-old Compton catcher Dante Green.

“If he wasn’t here right now, he might be in the streets somewhere hanging out, smoking cigarettes, smoking weed,” Cheatham said of her son. “So many kids are going bad. The gangs are waiting for them with open arms. And if the streets get ‘em, there ain’t no coming back.”

Dante Green had practiced with the team only five days because he was recovering from a broken arm he got in a fight, Cheatham said.

“I’d rather be here at the park watching him play than at home not knowing where he is and praying,” she added. “If I had to go to Cucamonga to buy baseballs for this team, I would do it.”