Simi-L.A. Game Scores Again for Harmony

The coach of South Los Angeles’ Foshay Junior High School softball team surveyed his 20 players seated in the middle of Simi Valley’s Santa Susana Park on Saturday. And then, he laid down the rules.

“No leadoffs, no stealing, no sliding,” he said sternly, as a chorus of moans went up. “No fun!” responded a player from the middle of the antsy group, evoking laughs.

But once the first pitch was thrown, participants said the third America’s Games softball tournament was a fun day in the park that demonstrated again how residents of South Los Angeles and Simi Valley can embrace each other in a show of racial harmony.

The tournament began in 1992 when two Inglewood co-workers--one from Simi, one from South Los Angeles--decided that a goodwill game between their communities could help ease tensions and dispel racial stereotypes in the wake of the Rodney G. King beating trial verdict and Los Angeles riots.

Simi Valley was the site of the first King beating trial that ended with verdicts acquitting four white Los Angeles police officers. South Los Angeles was the flash-point for the riots that followed.

“Naturally due to the trial and so forth there were hard feelings,” said Foshay Dean Stephen Moore on Saturday. “(But) after being here the first time we were welcomed warmly and the second time, it was like, ‘Hey, we’re just here to have a ballgame.’

“All of the other stuff, as far as I’m concerned, is behind us,” he said.

Although organizers were disappointed at this year’s turnout, the daylong tournament has broadened to include dance performances, karate demonstrations and an exhibit on an old Wells Fargo stagecoach.

And the various activities, in turn, spawned new friendships.

Alicia Littleton of South Los Angeles and Elaine Parker struck up a conversation while watching Littleton’s 4-year-old daughter practice her modern dance routine that became part of the featured entertainment between the children and adult softball games.

“She explained to me that she has a love for dance and she took dance lessons for ballet and jazz,” Littleton said.

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And that common interest helped form a bond that both women said would likely last, adding they planned to exchange phone numbers.

Chandra Backstrom of Hawthorne said she was a bit nervous about bringing her young dance students to Simi Valley. “I wanted to make sure it would be all right for my girls,” she said. “Now that I’m here, I think it’s nice to see everybody from different cultures coming together to just have fun.”

Lori Beppu, 14, of Simi Valley said she and classmate Breeanne Hodges had befriended some South Los Angeles teen-agers at the last game for young players in October. Lori and Breeanne called on Friday to make sure their friends were coming. “They’re really nice,” she said.

The youngsters’ softball contest came off without a hitch, as did the whole day. The final scores saw Foshay Junior High beat the Simi Valley team 10-8.

In the adult game, the Simi Valley All Stars defeated the Los Angeles Community All Stars 10-4.

Co-organizer Susan Davenport of Simi Valley said the hometown turnout was disappointingly low--about 30 spectators.

But about 425 residents came from South Los Angeles to Simi Valley in six chartered buses, said co-organizer Jan Hardy.

Davenport and Hardy were co-workers and friends at an Inglewood computer company when they originated the idea for a softball game.

They said the turnout has declined from the first year when media attention was more intense. “Everyone came to support us, because they didn’t believe it could happen after what happened on April 29, 1992,” Hardy said.

At the second year’s game between the adult teams, held in South-Central, only about 100 or so people turned up, with only about 15 from Simi Valley, Davenport said. “We didn’t get the publicity out far enough ahead,” she said.

Jan Caldwell, 41, of Simi Valley brought a hand-held video recorder to film her 13-year-old daughter Kristi play center field. She said if it weren’t for her daughter playing in the game she would not have come. But now, she said, she plans to make the America’s Games an annual outing.

“The people from South-Central, they don’t seem any different than we are, they’re friendly,” she said.