The Kid-Glove Treatment

Jon Schaeffer knows double the baseball of John Puccinelli, who knows triple the baseball of Bryan Otey.

With enough trips to West Coast Baseball School, Otey, an 11-year-old aspiring pitcher from West Hills, might attain the level of Puccinelli, 15, an infielder who played on the Notre Dame High varsity as a freshman.

And a few years of West Coast’s comprehensive off-season program might make Puccinelli the equal of Schaeffer, 20, a slugging Stanford catcher with a promising future as a professional.

Schaeffer has been a West Coast devotee since he was Puccinelli’s age and attending Harvard-Westlake High, and last week he took hitting instruction from West Coast owner Nez Balelo before leaving for the Cape Cod summer league.

“This school takes a person with marginal to good talent and brings him to the next level,” Schaeffer said. “If someone has the desire to get better, this is the way to do it.”

Since 1988, several thousand young ballplayers have done it the West Coast way, their parents merrily plunking down fees for camps and private lessons at the school’s six locations. The main facility is in Agoura Hills, with others in Santa Clarita, Burbank, Granada Hills, Simi Valley and Santa Barbara, making West Coast by far the largest baseball instructional operation in the area.

None of the locations use big-name, big-league ballplayers to attract clients. Partners Balelo, 33, a former Seattle Mariners minor leaguer, and Bryan Maloney, 30, who played at Westlake High and for a short time at Moorpark College and Cal Lutheran, quietly built the business by combining their love of baseball with a love of children.

“My son was not as good as other kids when he started here but Nez’s encouragement has built his confidence,” said Linda Otey, whose son has taken lessons at West Coast for five years. “I can’t imagine us stopping.”

Puccinelli, already brimming with the confidence that comes with being an athletic, 6-foot-4 teenager, uses West Coast to hone skills he hopes will gain him a college scholarship.

“Nez has made me better because he works me real hard,” he said. “He doesn’t allow me to let up or lose my concentration. He always has a plan for what we need to get done that day.”

The business has a plan as well, having grown from a few batting cages in Agoura Hills to the current organized network of schools recently appraised at about $750,000. More expansion is planned.

Balelo and Maloney employ a staff of 22 instructors, mostly former minor leaguers in their 20s and 30s. This year West Coast began offering softball lessons through instructor Melissa Thatcher, a two-time Southern Section player of the year at Agoura who went on to star at Fresno State.

“Most of our ideas have come to fruition,” Maloney said. “We kept all our notes from when we started and I was going through them last week. We thought we were reaching a little at the time, but everything we wrote down we have accomplished.”

As West Coast has grown, clients have become more sophisticated. The market for private baseball lessons has mushroomed, yet the expectations of parents are increasingly realistic.

“When we first started out, parents were getting kids lessons because they believed the kid could make $15 million,” Maloney said. “Now they are taking lessons for the right reason: to help improve their child’s self-esteem and confidence.

“I used to be asked, ‘You think he has a chance to make the major leagues?’ Now I don’t hear that. They are just trying to improve themselves for tomorrow.”

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Skepticism is surprisingly minimal about paying as much as $40 an hour for kids to learn the game parents remember playing in a vacant lot with tattered gloves and taped-over bats.

“My parents told me from the beginning they’d make the financial commitment as long as I made the commitment of time and effort,” said Schaeffer, who is heir-apparent to Stanford All-American A.J. Hinch. “It was like an investment for them, an investment that paid off.”

In addition to individual lessons, Balelo has tailored an intensive off-season program for the most serious high school and college players that includes membership to a health club, nutritional guidance and attention to the psychological aspects of the game. At $1,150 the program isn’t cheap, but the list of alumni grows more impressive every year.

Schaeffer took the program four years ago along with Gabe Kapler, now a Detroit Tigers minor leaguer, and Stacy Kleiner, who signed with the St. Louis Cardinals after being drafted last month.

At the other end of the spectrum are weeklong summer camps for players as young as 6. A broad range of summer-camp competition has forced West Coast to supplement instruction with trips to amusement parks and Dodger and Angel games.

“We’ve given the camps a face-lift, but the primary appeal is still the baseball instruction,” said Maloney, who resigned last month after three years as Agoura High baseball coach.

The daily grind of teaching baseball is anything but glamorous, hours upon hours of repetition and making subtle adjustments in a player’s swing or throwing motion. Perhaps that’s why many current and former major leaguers who try it quickly burn out.

Kris Kaelin is a typical West Coast instructor, with roots in the area and a solid baseball resume. He made all-league teams at Thousand Oaks High, Moorpark College and Eastern Oregon, then after a short stint in a Class-A independent league, hung up his spikes--only to take them down and lace them on again with the careers of others in mind.

“It’s fun to pass onto kids something maybe I didn’t have,” Kaelin said. “If I’d had an avenue like this to learn the game, maybe I would still be playing.”

Kaelin has built a strong clientele in his four years as an instructor at the Agoura school, and he could probably make more money as a free-lance instructor. The appeal of working for West Coast is that he can concentrate solely on baseball and leave administrative headaches to Balelo and Maloney.

“I like the arrangement because this is a quality facility,” he said. “Everything is here: cages, tees, soft-toss machines. I can focus on the kids.”

Balelo and Maloney bought the Agoura Hills school in 1988 from a handful of partners that included major league pitcher Bret Saberhagen, Kansas City Royals pitching coach Guy Hansen and Pepperdine Coach Dave Gorrie.

“They were sort of absentee owners and we decided from the beginning that we would put in the work necessary to make it flourish,” said Balelo, who is in his office by 9 a.m., begins giving lessons at 4 p.m. and doesn’t stop until 8 or 9.

He also coaches the Westoaks 18-year-old club team and is a part-time scout for the Seattle Mariners. Maloney coaches a 12-year-old club team and is a part-time scout for the Kansas City Royals.

“I believe in the concept, that kids can get better with proper instruction,” Balelo said.

The concept has proven marketable. Balelo and Maloney plan to expand West Coast beyond, well, the West Coast.

“We are approached monthly by people who want to buy our formula,” Balelo said. “And it is for sale. We’ll do the promotion and paperwork, and teach how and when to hold lessons.”

The schools in Santa Barbara, Burbank and Granada Hills have existed for several years. The Santa Clarita facility opened in 1995 to a brisk business and the Simi Valley location opened last month.

“I run the show and [Balelo and Maloney] contribute things I can’t do here, like computer record-keeping and developing brochures,” said Ron Dale, manager of the Granada Hills facility for nearly four years. “There is a lot of potential in this business.”

True enough. Yet developing a chain of franchises is not why Balelo and Maloney report to the office each morning. Their fulfillment comes simply from spending an hour with an eager ballplayer and filling him with technical know-how and positive reinforcement.

“Our motto is to teach kids to think about what they should be doing correctly rather than pointing out what they are doing wrong,” Balelo said.

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The owners try to ensure that their instructors adhere to the same philosophy, so that regardless of who is giving the lesson it is being done the West Coast way.

“The No. 1 criterion to become an instructor is a love of working with children,” Balelo said. “A baseball background important, but it is secondary.

“This business is about building relationships and being part of the community. It’s about helping an 8-year-old kid learn and believe, and then finally watch him hit a line drive up the middle.”