Shepherd Hoping for a Late Break

Chapman baseball player Cale Shepherd has proved he is an exceptional NCAA Division III hitter and nearly got a chance to show he had Division I talent.

But what Shepherd most wants is an opportunity at the next level, the minor leagues. “I’m very, very, very hopeful to sign this year,” Shepherd said. “Without any offense to Chapman, I want to sign and go pro.”

Shepherd, a junior transfer from Dixie College in Utah, might be giving pro scouts something to consider. A 6-foot-4, 215-pound third baseman/outfielder, he is batting .359 with a team-high eight home runs, 13 doubles and 40 runs batted in.

Shepherd, who probably would be a first baseman as a pro, is also the Panthers’ stopper. In 12 innings, he has struck out 11 and given up only one run. He has eight saves in eight chances.

“He’s been our Mark Kotsay, so to speak,” Chapman Coach Rex Peters said.

Of course, Cal State Fullerton’s Kotsay, last season’s Division I player of the year, will get his shot in the pros. Shepherd is more of a longshot. His age--24--causes some scouts to shy away. “If he were 21, he’d definitely get a chance to go,” Peters said.

If Shepherd does get his chance, it would be his second. The Kansas City Royals offered him a contract after he graduated from El Modena High in 1989, but Shepherd already had committed to a Mormon mission in the Philippines.

He spent his two-year mission living “literally in the middle of a rice field,” helping his neighbors with their work and exposing them to his religion. He occasionally got in a game of pickup basketball, but didn’t play baseball.

Even after returning to Orange County, Shepherd stayed off the baseball field, figuring that his career was over. His parents had moved to Salt Lake City, so he decided to move to Utah and go to college.

After enrolling at Utah Valley State, a junior college in Orem, he decided to try out for the baseball team on the spur of the moment. Without any preparation and wearing a pair of old football cleats, he made the team.

However, he didn’t figure in the plans of the team, which was made up largely with scholarship players, and transferred to another Utah junior college, Dixie in St. George.

Shepherd led Dixie to the junior college World Series last season, batting better than .400. His season got him noticed and he accepted a full scholarship from the University of the Pacific.

Then he hit a roadblock. In 1989, Shepherd had enrolled as a full-time student at Rancho Santiago, but dropped his classes when he left for the Philippines about a month into the semester. Shepherd didn’t realize that under NCAA Division I and Division II rules, he had five years to play four seasons from that point.

Because his Division I eligibility had expired, Shepherd landed at Chapman. Through it all, Shepherd said, he wouldn’t change his original decision.

“If tomorrow the same decision was in front of me,” he said, “I would go on my mission. Yeah, in my heart I sometimes wonder what would have happened if I decided to play ball then, but if it works out that I can still play ball now, it will be a dream come true.”

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Chapman beat Occidental, 4-3, Tuesday when Matt Marquez doubled in a run in the top of the 14th inning. The victory improved the Panthers’ record to 19-15 but they almost certainly won’t make the Division III playoffs.

Chapman has shown potential--beating Cal Lutheran and Claremont, two of the better Division III teams in the area--but has been inconsistent, losing three times to Menlo, an average team.

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The Southern California College softball team will not win its fourth consecutive Golden State Athletic Conference title. The Vanguards (24-20-2, 12-6 in conference play) are four games behind first-place Azusa Pacific (39-9, 16-2) with two remaining.

SCC finishes the regular season today at Cal Baptist (23-19, 11-7).

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By defeating Point Loma Nazarene, 5-2, Tuesday, the Southern California College men’s tennis team won a share of the Golden State Athletic Conference title.

It was the second consecutive regular-season conference title for the Vanguards (16-3, 6-2), who shared first place with Westmont. Next week at the GSAC tournament at Point Loma, SCC will battle Westmont and third-place Point Loma for the conference’s automatic bid in the NAIA national tournament.

The SCC women’s team, which finished in a tie for second with Westmont behind undefeated Point Loma, will compete for a national tournament berth at the NAIA Far West Regional, next week, also at Point Loma.

Notes

Concordia cross-country Coach David Saltin has resigned. Saltin, who took over the team in 1990, has been accepted to the physicians assistant program at St. Francis College of Pennsylvania and plans to begin two years of course work in the fall. . . . For the second consecutive week, Chapman’s Natalie Neat broke her school record in the long jump. Neat jumped 16 feet 6 3/4 inches at the Pomona-Pitzer Invitational, breaking the mark she set a week before by three inches.