U.S. OLYMPIC FESTIVAL : Erasing Doubt : LaCour’s Concerns Over Facing Hard-Throwing Pitchers Vanish in First Two Times at Plate

Bryan LaCour had the look of a hungry ballplayer.

Disappointed when he wasn’t a starter for the West team in its first Olympic Festival game earlier this week, the former Chatsworth High shortstop quickly produced once he was inserted into the lineup.

LaCour turned two grounders to short into outs and had two hits, including a double, in his only plate appearances.

“I was kind of (angry) I didn’t start, so I wanted to show something,” he said.

His ninth-inning double, a line drive down the left-field line, was just one of several highlights in a long but memorable day.

LaCour arrived at Busch Stadium at 4 p.m., three hours before the start of the game. His team’s pregame routine included a 4:45 batting practice and a long series of warm-up drills which the some of the players did not anticipate.

“We’re used to showing up an hour before the game and warming up then,” LaCour said after the West dropped a 4-2 decision to the North. “Shoot, I’m starving. I haven’t eaten since noon.”

Gobbling up grounders and feasting on a couple of fat pitches didn’t resolve that appetite. However, it did help settle his stomach in another sense.

“I was tight,” LaCour said. “Thank God it didn’t show. When I made the play on that first ground ball, all the nervousness went away.

“I just wanted to prove that I could play here. I had my doubts going into the game.”

Doubts? Whoa! LaCour seems like an unusual candidate for an inferiority complex. In his senior season at Chatsworth, he batted .481, drove in 41 runs and scored 36, stealing 17 bases without being caught.

“Yeah, but that was high school,” LaCour said. “This here is the real world. All these players here put up numbers. It didn’t matter what I did in high school once I got here.”

LaCour’s primary concern was being able to catch up with the pitchers. “Some of these guys are blowing gas,” he said. “I’d seen only one guy this year like that--Randy (Wolf).”

Wolf, LaCour’s former rival from El Camino Real High, is one of his West teammates.

Another factor in deflating LaCour’s confidence was the professional draft and his place in it: left out.

“People were saying, ‘You didn’t get drafted?’ It gets to your head sometimes,” LaCour said.

Truth be told, LaCour didn’t even know what days the draft was being held. Having already accepted a scholarship to Stanford, he didn’t consider himself much of a professional prospect.

“Not many scouts even talked to me,” LaCour said. “I didn’t think they were going to fork out the money to get me away.”

Then again, LaCour had been pleasantly surprised before.

After his outstanding junior season, he had declined an invitation to enroll in a summer camp at Stanford.

By passing on the offer, LaCour assumed he would be crossed off Stanford’s recruiting list.

“Basically they said . . . they weren’t going to recruit players that didn’t go to the camp,” LaCour said. “They wanted to see me there.”

Instead, he stayed home and enrolled in summer school.

“I thought, ‘That’s the end of Stanford,’ ” LaCour recalled.

To his surprise, Cardinal coaches contacted him again toward the close of the summer. He signed an early letter of intent with the Cardinal last November.

And he is glad he did, because despite his impressive statistics, LaCour wasn’t all that satisfied with his final high school campaign.

“I got hits, but my swing was mechanically messed up,” he said. “I wasn’t hitting the ball well at all, even though I was putting up the numbers.”

LaCour felt like he still was struggling early this summer at the start of the American Legion season.

“I was just up there swinging, so mentally tired I didn’t care,” he said.

A well-deserved respite seemed to energize him. For a week, LaCour went to the beach, spent time with his girlfriend and didn’t worry about planning his life around baseball.

“I didn’t touch a baseball or a bat,” he said. “I just kicked back.”

Rejuvenated, LaCour hit a home run in his only Legion game before leaving for the Olympic Festival.

“The break helped me,” he said. “I’m hitting the ball better now then I have in a month or two.”

That much was obvious against the North’s Brad Jaster, a 6-foot-2 left- hander from Rock Island, Ill.

In four shutout innings, Jaster allowed two hits--both to LaCour, who said experience facing Wolf came in handy.

“I just looked out there and said, ‘I think Wolf’s tougher than that lefty,’ ” LaCour said. “That helped.”

Wolf probably also could have helped Jaster, had the pitcher inquired.

Asked how he approached LaCour during the high school season, Wolf replied, “Very carefully.”

“You don’t want to give him anything too good,” Wolf said.

“He’ll take advantage of every mistake you make. I always thought if I worked around him and he got a walk, well, then he got a walk. I wasn’t going to get careless.”

LaCour fought off a good pitch by Jaster in his first at-bat, managing to loop a single into center field.

“He almost broke my hand he jammed me so hard,” LaCour said. “I got lucky on that one.”

The next time up, Jaster left a pitch over the plate and LaCour ripped it into the left-field corner for a stand-up double.

In the short term, LaCour hopes his hitting will earn him a starting assignment for now on--even if it’s back at third base, a position he hadn’t played in three years.

Long range, the United States will select a team to compete in the World Championships from the field of participants at the Festival.

LaCour is approaching the selections with a wait-and-see attitude.

“If it happens, that’s great,” he said. “But if I do well here and they don’t pick me, then they’re the ones missing out and that’s fine.

“I’m happy with the way I’ve started off here, and if I’m happy with the way I’ve played and I have fun, that’s all I need.”

For now, at least. Some day, LaCour said, he would like to return to Busch Stadium and perform wearing a professional uniform.

Watching the Cardinals play the last game of a home stand earlier this week drove the point home.

“We were there when the players came walking in,” LaCour said. “It was awesome. I’d love to live their life. Come in at 3, rest, go out and play and go home. Awesome.

“This is where I want to be.”