Big-Time Coach in Little League

Jim Gattis was running on empty on the well-manicured practice fields below Howard J. Lamade Stadium the day before the start of the Little League World Series.

The manager of the South Mission Viejo Little League team hadn’t had much sleep in the last few weeks, and it showed. His voice was nearly gone and his eyes were red.

Gattis took a pinch of chewing tobacco and put it between his cheek and gum. He appeared irritated that the batting cages on the compound were old and rusty. He leaned against one of them and reflected on the amount of work it had taken to get this far.

He said he has learned quickly that once you get to this level in the Little League system, the manager’s role becomes a job, not so much a labor of love the way it was back home.

Then he paused.

“I wouldn’t change this for anything I’ve done,” Gattis said.

There is no question who’s in charge of the South Mission Viejo Little League team, which is one game away from the U.S. championship game. In a youth sport where coaches and managers have distinct job descriptions, it is Jim Gattis, 44, the manager, who stands in the third base coaching box, gives most of the orders and runs the team like a combination scout master and drill sergeant.

“Nothing I have ever done compares to this,” he said. “These are 12-year-old kids. You expect 20-year-olds to be able to understand what you’re trying to get across, but for 12-year-old kids to do it, it’s amazing.”

Those who know him say it’s no surprise Gattis has South Mission Viejo (19-1 overall) playing so well.

“He has a great rapport with players and he’s very intense,” said Kevin McKinney, University of Wyoming sports information director and a Little League coach in Laramie, Wyo. McKinney met Gattis in 1993, when Gattis coached the university’s baseball team. “He has a good eye for where to put guys,” McKinney said. “I can just imagine what he is doing with those little 12-year-olds.”

Many Little League managers coach their own children, and Gattis is no exception as his son, Gary, is South Mission Viejo’s third baseman. But not many Little League managers have professional-baseball resumes.

Gattis, a graduate of North Hollywood High, earned a scholarship to play football and baseball at Nevada Las Vegas but eventually returned to the Southland to play third base at Los Angeles Valley College.

He was a first-round pick of the Baltimore Orioles in 1972 and later played in the Atlanta Braves’ system.

When his minor league career stalled in 1980, Gattis took jobs managing minor league teams in Victoria, British Columbia, and Utica, N.Y., then coaching the Salt Lake City Trappers. He also was an assistant baseball coach at Pepperdine from 1985-89.

He coached in the Alaskan League during the summer of 1987, when Dodger Eric Karros was among the future major leaguers on his team. Over the next two years, he coached in fall and winter short-season instructional leagues in Tucson, Ariz., where he decided to settle.

Gattis gained a reputation as a fiery manager, not afraid of making his points with umpires.

“He was a very likable guy, a real competitor,” Pepperdine Athletic Director Wayne Wright. “As an assistant coach you don’t always have the opportunity to argue with umpires like a head coach would, but I remember he was quite a competitor.”

Gattis, who has an 18-year-old son by a previous marriage, met his second wife, Karen, in 1982 in Tucson. They were married two years later and eventually moved to Woodland Hills. But Jim wasn’t home much.

“He was always doing his baseball thing and I had a job,” Karen said. “Our whole relationship has been that. He was always traveling.”

Karen followed Jim to his final coaching stop in the minors--in Miami with the Miracle of the Florida State League in 1989. She was pregnant with their second child--Maggie Jean--and when the season ended that fall, Jim decided he wanted to spend more time with his family. They moved to Mission Viejo and he opened a small chain of espresso cafes, which he named after Maggie Jean. He still operates them.

A couple years later, Gattis got the baseball itch again. Wyoming was looking for a replacement for longtime Coach Bill Kinneberg, who left to coach at Arizona State. Gattis was hired in late December, less than a month before the season began.

Gattis moved to Laramie. Gary joined him in April and finished out the second grade, but Karen remained behind to work, run the cafes and raise Maggie Jean.

Gary also began his Little League career in Wyoming and cried when his father announced he was leaving at the end of the 1994 season. In two seasons, the Cowboys had a 51-54 record.

“We had a great time there,” Jim said. “I had no desire to go into professional baseball again. I’m too high-strung and it gets to me. But Wyoming was great.”

Gattis returned to Mission Viejo and signed up Gary, then 10, for Little League. Gattis volunteered to coach, but then-Mission Viejo South Coach Ed Sorgi told him he would never get a team because the league had a pecking order and the waiting list for dads to coach their sons was backlogged.

“They asked me if I had any baseball experience,” Gattis said. “I told them I did, and then I didn’t hear anything else.”

One day the phone rang.

“They said they had this opening in the Major [under-12] Division and they wanted me to take it,” Gattis said. “I told them I didn’t want to coach in the Majors because my son was only 10 and he was small. It turned out to be a real rough deal because the competition level was so good.”

Both father and son endured. Today, Jim is highly regarded in the community as not only a quality volunteer but also a fine youth baseball coach.

“Because of his background in baseball, it’s hard to argue with him,” said Michael Nieves, father of South Mission Viejo utility player Andrew Nieves. “No one can question his baseball ability.”

Gattis credits his coaches.

“The secret to success is in practice,” he said. “Yeah, I run the games, but Al Elconin and Ed Sorgi, the coaches, are awesome in practice. That’s what makes us a good team.”

Gattis has impressed his peers in Williamsport.

“You can tell his players like him,” said Dyer, Ind., Manager Vern Baker, a 23-year Little League veteran. “He’s done a great job and you can see the rapport he has with the kids. I know if you can get into the little fellows’ heads, you will be successful, and he appears to have done that.”