Taft’s Swinging Spectors Are Three of a Kind at Plate

There’s just no pitching around the Spector brothers of Taft High.

Mitch, Jason and Jeff, all starters, are enjoying their first full baseball season as teammates while helping Taft (13-6) improve on last season’s 9-21 record.

Mitch, a junior right fielder, entered the week batting .391. Sophomore twins Jason, who plays third base, and Jeff, a pitcher and first baseman, were batting .327 and .405, respectively. Jason entered the week leading the team with six doubles, and Jeff and Mitch had combined for 24 runs batted in.

Last week, the brothers combined for 10 hits and eight RBIs in an 11-4 victory over Granada Hills.

“The Spectors had a good week in one day,” Taft Coach Rich McKeon said. “Mitch is the hottest of them all.”

Mitch said the brothers played together only briefly on Little League all-star teams. That makes this season--and looking forward to next--something special.

“It’s interesting having one-third of the lineup being Spectors,” Mitch said. “That’s going to be big for me to remember, playing with my little brothers.”

Lively bats: The Kilpatrick baseball team has six starters hitting better than .400 and a team batting average of .394--impressive numbers considering the Mustangs do not take live batting practice.

No facility at Camp Kilpatrick, a Malibu probation camp for juvenile offenders, is big enough to allow hitting against pitching. The Mustangs play all road games and their only batting practice is by soft toss or hitting off a tee into a net.

Yet Kilpatrick (9-2, 3-1 in league play) is the surprise team in the Alpha League. Right-hander Ronald Martinez is 3-0 with a 1.29 earned-run average and has 33 strikeouts in 21 innings. He is batting .583 with a home run and six doubles.

Wrong number: Ventura High baseball Coach Dan Smith left his house recently to run errands, taking a phone to make some calls on the way.

But when the phone wouldn’t produce a dial tone, Smith stopped at the high school and called his wife in frustration.

“I said, ‘What the heck is the matter with this darn thing?’ ” Smith said. “And after a minute she told me that I’d taken the portable phone off the kitchen wall and left the cellular phone on the table.”

Labor force: Reg Welker, in his 17th year as the Hueneme baseball coach and in his 32nd year at the school, is thrilled with his team’s work ethic.

“The last couple of years we asked for commitment and the players wouldn’t do it,” said Welker, who last won a league title in 1981. “But this group is exceptional. “

Hueneme, which is in first place, has nine seniors and six juniors. Three seniors--Jess Sanchez, Ruben Neri and Philip Mijares--returned after sitting out last season for personal reasons.

Powerful start: Freshman Monique Acedo of Kennedy has two home runs this season, and each was the only run scored in softball victories for the Golden Cougars.

She beat defending City Section 4-A Division champion El Camino Real, 1-0, with an eighth-inning home run in a Northwest Valley Conference opener. Another homer beat Carson, 1-0, in a tournament.

“She’s looking good so far,” Kennedy first-year Coach Eric Moorman said.