Parents Turn Child’s Play Into Field of Schemes

The Little League of my childhood was as American as peanuts and Cracker Jack. Nothing fancy, just three ball fields and a snack bar. We’d start our careers in the peewees and work our way up through the minors and majors.

My glory days came early. One season my batting average was a gaudy .721. In one game I slammed three home runs. Honest.

Maybe “slammed” isn’t the right word. Fact is, all my homers were inside the park. One started as a slow roller. The third baseman fielded the ball and threw it past the first baseman. The first baseman then skipped it past the shortstop and the left fielder heaved it past the catcher. When I was 8 I ran like the wind.

Perhaps you think that wasn’t a homer at all, but three errors. Well, this is now and that was then. In peewees the odds of a thrown ball being caught were maybe 50-50. “Nice try,” the coach would say. Every game was a comedy of nice tries. We were just learning, after all, and so our parents, most of them, lovingly accentuated the positive. The score-keeping was generous because the point of baseball was to have fun, not to find fault and assign blame.

Yes, that was then and this is now. Once again we are reminded that Little League baseball is not just a game. Little League is a human potboiler, a mystery rich with dirty little secrets and charges of deceit. Or at least that’s how it’s played on the San Fernando Valley’s field of schemes.

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The players may not be peewees, but they’re still young enough to be granted the presumption of innocence. Parents, however, are another matter. If you’re looking for a moral in the current brouhaha between the Little Leagues of Woodland Hills and Encino, perhaps it’s just that sometimes it’s hard to find somebody worth rooting for.

What a mess. On Wednesday the Woodland Hills all-stars were joyously celebrating a 7-4 victory over Encino that clinched the Valley-area championship. They must have been wondering whether they could follow in the footsteps of the storied “Earthquake Kids” of ‘94, the Northridge all-stars who won the national championship in Williamsport, Pa., and were runners-up for the world title. The Earthquake Kids, you may recall, wound up chatting with Jay Leno and had a parade thrown in their honor.

For Woodland Hills, the thrill of victory was followed shortly by the agony of allegations. Encino officials filed a protest with Williamsport officials claiming that Woodland Hills had a player who was in violation of Little League residency rules.

And what a player. Junior Garcia, the alleged ringer, is the reigning Babe Ruth of his age group and area, awesome as a pitcher or hitter. He hit a game-winning three-run homer to beat Encino.

Little League officials would find a second player with a dubious address, Garrett Feig, but suspicions about Garcia had been hovering for weeks. Woodland Hills officials had assembled rental receipts and bills that supposedly showed Juan Garcia and his son had moved from Van Nuys to an apartment within their league’s domain. Encino parents were suspicious enough to snoop around the apartment and Junior’s mother’s residence in Van Nuys. They even searched through the Garcias’ trash in search of damning documents.

Woodland Hills parents called the Encino protest “sour grapes,” but Little League officials on Friday decided to the contrary. They reviewed a 45-page report filed by an Encino attorney, asked some questions and ruled that Garcia and Feig were indeed ineligible. (Woodland Hills has appealed, with a decision due today from Williamsport on whether the pair will be reinstated.)

A Woodland Hills-Encino rematch was scheduled, but the game was not played, the Encino parents saying they were satisfied simply to have proven their point.

Their point being, I suppose, that it’s not whether you win or lose but how you play the game. That expression, of course, applies to behavior off the field too. It’s hard to dig through somebody’s trash and come out smelling like a rose. Maybe they’d say that protecting the honor and integrity of Little League is a dirty job and someone’s got to do it.

And then maybe they’d also say that, all considered, those heroic Earthquake Kids of ’94 should renounce their title. Northridge, after all, went even further than Woodland Hills with a key player, a starting catcher, who was in violation of residency rules. They had defeated Whittier when Little League officials in Williamsport received an anonymous letter alleging that the player lived outside the Northridge league’s boundaries.

As The Times’ David Wharton reported later: “The infraction was serious enough to disqualify the team. But, according to Little League rules, only the team that Northridge had last defeated could lodge the necessary protest. Little League officials declined to notify Whittier.”

Little League administrator Merle Sanders said at the time, “I asked myself, what is my moral duty? Based upon the way the rules are structured, my knowledge can’t be used [by Whittier].”

So Sanders decided his moral duty was to keep silent. But was that fair to Whittier? Was it fair to Woodland Hills and other teams Northridge had knocked off with the help of their ringer?

The allegation must have been true, because Northridge benched the catcher for the remainder of the playoffs. But the incident was quickly forgiven, if not forgotten, and the Earthquake Kids went on to have their storybook season.

It could have had a very different ending. No “Tonight Show.” No parade. Nope, our gritty team of earthquake survivors could have had their season end with the kind of third-rate scandal that has now placed the Valley’s 1997 Little League championship in dispute. The kids have learned that there is crying in baseball after all--that’s one harsh lesson the parents taught them. These are the kind of tears that taste bitter.

Scott Harris’ column appears Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays. Readers may write to him at The Times’ Valley Edition, 20000 Prairie St., Chatsworth, CA 91311, or via e-mail at scott.harris@latimes.com Please include a phone number.