Long Games Shortchanging Marmonte?

Friends don’t let friends miss “Friends.”

So, when a scoreless Marmonte League softball game last week between Thousand Oaks and Newbury Park highs reached the 21st inning and threatened to prevent players from tuning in to their favorite television program, an accord was reached between the teams: One more inning; if neither team scores, call it a tie and head for the TVs.

Thankfully, Newbury Park resolved matters by pushing across a run in the bottom of the 21st--more than four hours and 481 pitches after the contest began. The game ended at 7:42 p.m., leaving 18 minutes for players to scurry home.

“We just made it,” said Newbury Park pitcher Kristi Fox, who threw 244 pitches in going the distance. “That’s a pretty popular show, especially with high school students.”

And softball is very competitive in the Marmonte League, where going the distance often means going long distance.

The marathon between the Panthers and Lancers wasn’t the first, just the lengthiest in a league season that has had seven extra-inning games in its first two weeks.

On Friday, Simi Valley defeated Agoura, 1-0, in 13 innings. Meanwhile, Camarillo and Newbury Park--ranked first and second in The Times’ regional poll--played to a scoreless tie at Camarillo in a 13-inning game called because of darkness.

“I’m frustrated that we didn’t win,” said Camarillo pitcher Cindy Ball, who has been involved in two extra-inning games this season. “We could have been out there forever if we had lights.”

Illumination prolonged matters in the 21-inning game at Borchard Park in Newbury Park. Dusk arrived during the 10th inning, but the park’s lights were activated and both teams were forced to re-energize.

Sometime about the 20th inning, Newbury Park players began doing push-ups, and graham crackers and candy bars arrived in the dugout. Parents began talking with players through the fence, reminding them of the time and the evening’s regularly scheduled programming.

When it was over, Newbury Park’s Amy Berman, who drove in the game’s only run with a hard grounder, raised a triumphant arm in the dugout and exclaimed, “We made it in time to see ‘Friends’! “

“The kids were getting pretty bored in the dugout,” Newbury Park Coach Mike Morgan said. “It must have been pretty frustrating for them.”

With several talented pitchers in the league this season, frustration likely will continue. And talk of tiebreakers could increase.

Tournaments typically include a so-called “international tiebreaker” in which a runner is placed at second base to begin an inning of a tie game. The tiebreaker is necessary since tournament games have time limits.

However, Southern Section rules do not allow for tiebreakers in league competition, or the continuation of tie games at a later date.

A tie is a tie. Most Marmonte League players and coaches appear to be opposed to tiebreakers.

“I like it for tournaments, but I don’t like it for league play,” Thousand Oaks Coach Gary Walin said. “I think it’s an artificial way to win a game.”

Morgan agrees.

“I would hate to have it [resolved] that way,” Morgan said. “Really, of all the extra-inning games, only two have been long, drawn-out things.”

Still, Morgan and Walin concede a tiebreaker might be necessary.

Fox, who went the distance Friday, said extra innings have not harmed her arm. But she would welcome a tiebreaker, if only to settle matters more quickly.

“With all the extra-inning games, I don’t know why we don’t use it,” Fox said. “I think it would be better for both teams.”

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Around the horn, the Barretts are a baseball family.

Denny Barrett, second-year coach at Chaminade, is a former second baseman for Notre Dame High. His father, Jim, played first base at Notre Dame before embarking on a brief minor-league career with the St. Louis Browns, and brothers John and Jim played shortstop and third base for Notre Dame.

This season Jim, a 62-year-old retired firefighter who hadn’t coached in more than 10 years, resurrected his baseball career by signing on as the Eagles’ junior varsity coach.

“We wanted it to be more like a family,” Barrett said. “In the past, it was always the varsity and junior varsity, and nobody knew who the freshmen were. We’re aiming for togetherness.”

Chaminade, ranked fourth in The Times’ regional poll, appears to have its act together, darting to an 11-1-1 start and a 5-0-1 Mission League mark after a two-game sweep this week of Harvard-Westlake. The junior varsity is 9-2 under the Barretts’ patriarch.

“Denny asked me and I said, ‘Geez, I’ve been out of it a long time,’ ” the elder Barrett said. “I thought maybe the game had passed me by. But you know, it hasn’t and that’s what makes this the greatest game in the world. The way you hit a ball, the way you catch a ball . . . it’s the same way it was when I was a little boy.”

Yet some things have changed.

“The kids will throw names at him like Ken Griffey Jr.,” Denny Barrett said. “And he’ll mention names like Frank Howard and Harmon Killebrew.”

Said Jim Barrett: “I was telling one pitcher--he was having trouble with his control--’I’d like to have you try the Bob Turley method, like when he was throwing with the Yankees.’ I might as well have been talking about Moses.”