Ex-Titans Take Shot at Pro Baseball : Experiences: Coombes and Clark say the Silver Bullets women’s team came at just the right time for them.

K.C. Clark was working at a grocery store in Fullerton and Missy Coombes was teaching at Montclair High when they heard about the Colorado Silver Bullets.

Both of them jumped at the chance to try out for the first women’s professional baseball team to play against men. Both made the team, and now, halfway through the Silver Bullets’ first 50-game season, they’re calling this experience one of the best of their lives.

There hasn’t been anything quite like this since the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League of the World War II years, which was depicted in the 1992 movie “A League Of Their Own.” And Coombes and Clark, two former Cal State Fullerton softball players, are enjoying being a part of it.

They say it has been tiring, a bit frustrating at times . . . but always fun.

The team already has traveled more than 21,000 miles, mostly by airplane, but with a few bus trips, as well.

“We’re having a great time,” Clark said. “The only drawback is all the travel. It’s probably more difficult for me than the other players because I really don’t like to fly. If I had my choice I’d do it the John Madden way in a big mobile home bus.”

Coombes echoed the woes of so much travel: “It does seem we’ve been living out of our suitcases at lot, and that’s rough.”

Any frustration comes from the fact that the team has won only twice in 25 games.

“We’ve really been close in a lot of games, but just haven’t won many,” Coombes said. “When you come from a winning softball program at Fullerton the way I did, it’s really hard to lose. We’ve lost something like seven games by only a run, and I know there were four games I pitched where we could have won with a break here or there.”

The team is sponsored by the Coors Brewery Co. as a promotional venture. The Silver Bullets generally play semi-pro or all-star teams of former college and high school players in the area where the games are scheduled. On a couple of occasions, however, the Bullets came face to face with some former major leaguers. Oil Can Boyd pitched for one rival team and Jerry Reuss for another.

Coombes is enjoying her return to the mound after being away from pitching for 11 years. She was an all-star pitcher in Little League and Pony League in her hometown of Arcadia. Later at Fullerton, she was an All-American softball player at first base, hitting .359 and driving in a team-leading 29 runs in 1989.

“My roots are really in baseball, not softball,” Coombes said. “I started pitching to my father when I was just a little kid, and I really love baseball. But pitcher was never my position in softball. Softball provided me an opportunity to go to college and get an education, but I missed playing baseball. I felt a part of me was missing when I wasn’t able to pitch for that long of a time.”

Phil Niekro, who won more than 300 games in the major leagues as a pitcher, is the Silver Bullets’ manager. Coombes says he and his brother, Joe, the pitching coach, have helped her get back on track as a pitcher.

“They’ve helped me learn to set up batters with my pitches,” Coombes said. “I knew some of that instinctively, but they’ve helped me refine it a lot. I’ve been throwing a slider, curve, changeup and fastball. Phil has helped me learn, too, that you don’t have to have a lot of speed to get batters out.”

Phil Niekro said Coombes has become one of the team’s better pitchers. “We feel she’s a solid hitter, too,” he said. “We’ve used her as a pinch hitter occasionally, and once as our designated hitter.”

Niekro also has been impressed with Clark’s play defensively. “She’s definitely our best outfielder from that standpoint,” he said. Clark’s problems have come mostly at bat. “But that’s true of most of our players,” Niekro said. “We’ve been doing a lot of things well, but we’re having trouble getting the bat through the strike zone.”

Clark agreed. “We’ve faced some nasty pitching,” she said. “Hitting is more of an issue for us, but I think we’ll do better from that standpoint with more game experience. This is the first year for us on this level of play, and we’ll get better.”

Both players are confident the Silver Bullets will be around for a while.

“They’ve already told us that they’ll have a team next year for sure, and there’s been talk about maybe starting some farm teams,” Clark said.

Clark said each player is being paid $20,000 for this season. “Several of the players on this team left jobs where they were making good money to play this season,” she said. “They did it for the love of the game. I think there will always be players interested in doing it.”

There also has been some speculation that an entire women’s league might emerge, but Coombes has her doubts that a women’s league would gain as much interest as the women’s team playing against men.

“I think the time will come when there will be women playing on the regular pro teams,” she said. “I don’t see any reason why a woman can’t be a successful pitcher in the regular pro leagues once they have the opportunity to develop. You don’t have to throw the ball 90 miles per hour to be an effective pitcher.”

Both players said they’ve been pleased by the reception from fans around the country, especially in Colorado. The Bullets have played in several major league stadiums before regularly scheduled games. But they’ve made most of their appearances in smaller cities.

“Everybody has really been positive,” Coombes said. “I think the fans have been cheering for us a lot more than for the guys. There were 33,000 fans at Mile High Stadium in Denver when we played a Colorado semi-pro team there on the Fourth of July night.”

Both players said they’ve had no problems from fans or opposing players.

“A lot of times the guys will come up to us after the game and tell us how well we played,” Coombes said. “Or they’ll just say something like: ‘You guys can really play this game.’ That’s really been great.”