Best Part of His Success Story Is That Glendenning Can Read It : Baseball: After learning he has dyslexia, Crespi High graduate improved his grades and may land a scholarship.

Mike Glendenning can thank Crespi High baseball Coach Scott Muckey for the guidance that has put him on the verge of receiving a baseball scholarship to the University of Nevada.

But Muckey’s tip had nothing to do with baseball.

Glendenning was enrolled in Muckey’s physiology class during the spring of his junior year when the teacher noticed something seemed wrong, so he talked to Glendenning’s parents.

“He made a comment something to the effect that he never saw a kid try so hard to do good on a test and still fail it,” said Vikki Noblitt, Glendenning’s mother.

So Glendenning’s parents had him tested for a learning disorder, and he was diagnosed as having a form of dyslexia. A year of tutoring later, Glendenning, 17, has graduated from Crespi and is close to that Nevada scholarship.

“He hung in there,” Muckey said. “That was kind of a nice success story, I guess you’d say.”

For the first time in four years, Glendenning is not in summer school. He is playing American Legion baseball for Woodland Hills West and Connie Mack ball for the Glendale-based Valley Rangers.

He is also waiting for a special permit to gain NCAA academic eligibility. He scored the NCAA-minimum 700 on his fifth try at the Scholastic Aptitude Test, but his cumulative grade-point average at Crespi was 1.9. The NCAA requires a 2.0.

He is seeking the special permit based on the fact that he didn’t learn he had dyslexia until after his junior year, and he maintained a 2.5 GPA throughout his senior year, he said.

Glendenning, a 6-foot, 205-pound catcher-infielder with exceptional power, said he expects to receive the permit within a week, and will consider Nevada’s scholarship offer.

He also has been hounded lately by area junior college coaches. If he chooses that route, he might be able to sign next spring with the St. Louis Cardinals, who drafted him last month.

Choices.

Glendenning didn’t have many a year ago.

He was always a two-sport athlete, drawing attention as an All-Del Rey League tight end at Crespi. Glendenning considered baseball his primary sport, but football was the one he was able to play at Crespi.

Summer school each year would raise his GPA high enough in the fall to play football, but by spring, it had always dropped.

Glendenning played junior varsity baseball as a freshman, then was ineligible his sophomore and junior years.

His parents grew frustrated with his poor grades, and Glendenning grew frustrated with his parents.

“They said, ‘Quit being lazy. Do your homework,’ ” Glendenning said. “They’d say, ‘Go sit in your room and study for a few hours.’ I’d tell them I did study and they’d say, ‘No, you didn’t because you didn’t get a good grade on the test.’

“It was just a back-and-forth thing. I’d tell them I was studying hard and they’d say I wasn’t.”

Said his mother: “I thought he was just a lazy kid because if I would sit down with him and explain something to him, he understood and he would do well on the test. But if he would do his own studying, he wouldn’t do well. But that was because he didn’t understand what he was reading.

“I feel bad now. He kept saying, ‘Mom, I’m trying. I’m really trying,’ and I wouldn’t believe him.”

As Glendenning explains it, he has trouble reading because the words sometimes seem out of order to him. He said he can read a paragraph fine, then the words in one sentence will appear out of order, and he will have to read it again. And again. And again.

“I could read it, but I couldn’t comprehend what I was reading,” he said “That’s why I didn’t do so well on tests.”

Glendenning’s parents had him tested last spring, at a cost of nearly $1,000, his mother said. Once the diagnosis was made, he began hour-long tutoring sessions after school two or three times a week.

With the tutor’s help, Glendenning became eligible to play baseball during his senior season at Crespi, but it wasn’t all he expected.

He hit .356 for the varsity with 11 runs batted in and one memorable home run. Although it was technically an inside-the-park homer because there is no fence in left field at North Torrance High, Muckey assures that Glendenning’s shot “would have been out at any field. He crossed home plate before the cutoff man got the ball.”

Glendenning’s power is perhaps what impresses college coaches and scouts the most. This summer, he has nine homers, two in Legion ball and seven for the Valley Rangers. None were more important than the four he hit in six games at the Sierra Nevada Classic last month in Reno, though.

Playing with the Rangers, Glendenning put on a power display in front of Nevada coaches, who had shown interest him last summer but seemed to lose it by spring.

“I did think they gave up on me,” Glendenning said, “but when I went to the tournament they started talking to my coach and my dad. That’s when things started happening.”

Glendenning was named the tournament’s most valuable player, but more important, he had an partial scholarship offer from the Wolf Pack, he said, pending his NCAA eligibility.

Not bad for a kid who was lucky if he made it through a page in a book a year ago.

“I’m proud that there’s still a school interested,” Glendenning said. “It shows that you shouldn’t give up. No matter what, keep working hard because there are still opportunities.”