Life With La RUFFA : Fountain Valley Coach Commands Respect With Winning Ways

Ron La Ruffa, Fountain Valley baseball coach and everyone’s favorite enigma, seems to have so many reputations to maintain.

His assistant coaches call him “the Great Communicator.” There’s more than a hint of sarcasm involved.

At Edison High, where he coached for 12 seasons, people once referred to him as traitor. They weren’t always joking.

A former college teammate and current coaching colleague calls him, “Mr. GQ.”

But no one has put him on a higher pedestal than Jason Liuzzi, former Fountain Valley pitcher. On his college questionnaire, in the spot asking for his high school coach, he wrote one word: God.

It was meant as praise.

Still, it’s enough to make a coach cringe, especially a quiet guy who’s somewhat shy and just wants to run a baseball program. But life with Fountain Valley baseball is a day-to-day examination under the microscope.

The Barons have won five league championships in his seven years as coach. Those are Sunset League titles.

If that wasn’t enough, La Ruffa took Fountain Valley to the very top last season, winning the Southern Section Division I title. The Barons became the first top-seeded team to win the division since Lakewood in 1970.

This season, Fountain Valley (21-3-1) is seeded second and could become the first Orange County team to win back-to-back titles. There’s no cloud on the horizon either. Fountain Valley won league titles on all levels.

It’s a shining picture of success, even if the man responsible bobs and weaves in the shadows.

“I’m not the kind of guy who’s going to ‘wow’ you in the first five minutes,” La Ruffa said. “I can be intimidating at first. I’m kind of quiet. It takes people awhile to get to know me. I’m just not a real outgoing person.”

Just about everyone has an opinion about La Ruffa, or at least his personality. A few even have it right. He’s a tough guy to get to know, even for those who know him.

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“Sometimes he gets a little moody,” said former Edison coach Paul Harrell, who has coached with La Ruffa and against him. “Whatever he’s thinking, he’ll let you know about.”

Said Marina Coach Paul Renfrow: “He doesn’t seem to let you inside. He’s very reserved, but he’s not rigid. I’ve seem his players mimic him. They’ll move their hats forward, then move them back, then kick the ground. Ron finds that funny.”

Said La Quinta coach and former La Ruffa teammate Dave Demarest: “Ron’s like Mr. GQ. He never has a hair out of place. He’s just smooth. He played the game smooth and he dresses smooth.”

All of which runs off La Ruffa’s back, like water off a tarp. He knows what he’s about and that’s more than enough.

There was never a doubt that coaching was his future. La Ruffa made that decision in the sixth grade. He has spent his coaching career hopping from Long Beach State to Boron to Colton to Edison to Rancho Santiago, skimming ideas along the way.

The latest and, he says, last stop is Fountain Valley. It has been his masterpiece.

Fountain Valley has evolved into a model for other programs--if those that can afford it. The facility, if not the best, is on the “A” list, with a locker room, coaches’ office, equipment room--all built in the last year. Next will be locker rooms for the junior varsity and freshman teams. The boosters’ fund raising is already in motion.

There is also an excellent feeder program, Fountain Valley Youth Baseball. The core of the Barons’ current team won the Colt League World Series in 1993. La Ruffa works closely with the organization and the quid pro quo is sometimes more than players. The league recently donated new bases to the Baron program.

“I had observed this program from Edison,” La Ruffa said. “Everyone knew Fountain Valley had as good of kids as anyone. They had a good booster club and great kids. It was just a matter of putting those ingredients together.”

La Ruffa runs the entire program, from top to bottom.

“I’m kind of like the director here,” La Ruffa said. “We got three programs going and that’s 60 kids to oversee. I’ve reached the point where I’ll delegate responsibilities.

“Tom [Hiroyasu], my freshman coach, has done a lot of the construction. He wheels and deals. Tom and I are always thinking, ‘What’s next?’ ”

But don’t begin thinking this is a total democracy.

“It’s definitely going to be done his way,” Harrell said. “That’s the way it works.”

And it does work.

No one is surprised at La Ruffa’s success. He did, after all, win four Sunset League titles at Edison and took the Chargers to the Division I title game in 1981.

He was so successful at Edison that he was called a traitor for taking the job at rival Fountain Valley in 1989. The Barons had not been to the playoffs since 1985 and were coming off consecutive fifth-place finishes. They won the league title La Ruffa’s first year, the Barons’ first league championship in 10 years. Four more have followed, including the last three.

Still, La Ruffa hasn’t always received much credit. People tend to focus on the resources, not what he does with them.

“It’s very easy to look at Fountain Valley’s talent,” Demarest said. “But I saw five games last year where he simply created runs. Ron doesn’t sit back with talent. He creates a lot of things.”

It’s a coaching style developed through years of study.

La Ruffa didn’t just play at Long Beach State in 1969-70, he absorbed the game. He wrote down every practice plan and studied the whys. His intense love for the game landed him a job coaching the 49er junior varsity in 1971, and he’s been coaching ever since.

That led to jobs at Boron and Colton.

“It’s funny, but my son is a senior in high school now and doesn’t really know what he wants to do,” La Ruffa said. “I never had to go through that. Coaching came to me early.”

La Ruffa landed the Edison job in 1976. There was no doubt who was in charge. Twice he dropped players who were considered the team’s best.

His dealings with opposing coaches were not abrasive, but they were not always pleasant. To this day, his assistant coaches call him the “Great Communicator” for his distinct lack of chit-chat.

Opposing coaches can find him exasperating. La Ruffa once angered then-Lakewood Coach John Herbold by insisting that Edison be allowed to join the same Connie Mack League, a summer league made up mostly of college-level teams. La Ruffa saw that as a big reason for Lakewood’s success and wanted to duplicate it.

Herbold, now the coach at Cal State Los Angeles, and La Ruffa developed a mutual respect. Dealings with other coaches have had that same tough, yet never personal, spin.

In the early 1980s, Edison was playing at Huntington Beach on a field that wasn’t in the best shape. It had rained earlier in the day and even Oiler Coach Mike Dodd said he did little to dry it out in an attempt to slow down Edison baserunners.

“Ron was really angry before the game,” Dodd said. “He was livid. Then he comes out to coach third base and he’s wearing plastic covers all the way up to his knees. He looked hilarious. After the game, he said it’s nice to have a guy like me in the league and that he would have done the same thing.”

Dealings with his players have followed the same pattern: gruff, then funny.

Said Fountain Valley senior Chris Ponchak: “We were all scared of him when we were freshmen. He yelled a lot. But when you get to know him, he’s pretty lighthearted. He’s just intense about baseball.”

Yet this intense guy gave the Barons most Wednesdays off during league play. La Ruffa and the other coaches would play golf. The players would play “Dunk Ball” on low baskets at a local school.

“If my kids had gone and played dunk ball in the past, I’d had gone nuts,” La Ruffa said. “I’ve mellowed. Kids who played for me come by and say, ‘You weren’t like that with us.’ But that style won’t work in the ‘90s. You can’t be a dinosaur.”

Nor is La Ruffa ready for extinction.

Early this year, he was telling his assistant coaches this would be his last season. He has since reconsidered, even though the Barons will lose seven starters, including their top three pitchers.

“People think they are going to hammer on us,” La Ruffa said. “Our freshmen won the league. Our JVs won the league. Next year is going to be fun because we’ll sneak up on a few people.”

Which was reason enough to return.

“I can’t sing, I can’t paint and I can’t play the piano,” La Ruffa said. “Baseball is my creative expression. My teams are my living sculpture. It’s the one gift I have.”