‘No More Baseball,’ Ousted Little Leaguer’s Dad Says

Juan Garcia has seen his 12-year-old son linked to charges of cheating in newspapers and on television.

Garcia has seen Little League officials disqualify the boy, Junior, in response to claims that he lives in Van Nuys but used a false address to join the Woodland Hills Sunrise all-stars, one of the state’s best teams.

He’s tired of it.

“No more baseball,” an emotional Juan Garcia said Monday. “It’s too much for a little kid. He’ll play basketball now.”

But the adult managers of the Woodland Hills league refused to surrender in the battle over whether Junior Garcia--a hotshot player--is geographically eligible to play on their team.

Upon being notified that national Little League officials had denied yet another appeal Monday, an attorney advising the Woodland Hills league said he will seek a federal court order to reinstate Junior and another player, 12-year-old Garrett Feig, who was disqualified on similar grounds.

“The only victims so far are two innocent kids who want to play baseball,” said Don Roberts, a Calabasas lawyer whose grandson is a Woodland Hills player. “If [Little League’s] door slams shut, the courthouse door will pop open.”

Junior and Garrett were declared ineligible Friday after officials from the Encino league--armed with evidence including rent receipts, canceled checks and other documents--filed a protest with national Little League headquarters claiming that both players lived outside the Woodland Hills boundaries.

Since then, the procedural confrontation has turned a child’s game into an ugly give-and-take.

Vandals broke into the Encino league’s ball fields over the weekend, spreading powdered chalk on the bleachers, flooding the diamonds and writing graffiti on the fences.

Meanwhile, Woodland Hills saw its first appeal denied Sunday. Junior and Garrett have continued to accompany their team, watching from the stands as Woodland Hills defeated Santa Paula, 17-1, in a sectional game in Lompoc on Monday evening.

The experience has been traumatic, Juan Garcia said.

The upset father spoke about the controversy, his voice often swelling with anger, in the Canoga Park apartment that Encino league administrators claim is not his true home.

A stocky man whose son is unusually large and strong for a 12-year-old, Garcia explained that he separated from his wife six or seven months ago and moved to the apartment in a large complex on De Soto Avenue. Using that address--which is inside the Woodland Hills Sunrise Little League boundaries--his son joined the Woodland Hills team.

It was a match made in baseball heaven, pairing one of the Valley’s best young players with a powerhouse squad that had a realistic chance of reaching the Little League World Series later this summer.

But Encino officials subsequently claimed that both Juan and Junior Garcia were, in fact, continuing to live at the family home in Van Nuys while leasing the apartment as a front.

Rob Glushon, a lawyer who is an Encino coach--and newly elected city charter commissioner--said administrators from his league spoke with a resident of the apartment complex who insisted that she had never seen anyone enter or leave the Garcia apartment. The telephone had been disconnected for months.

“I work sometimes 10, 11 hours a day. I come here only to sleep,” Garcia argued. As for the telephone, he said: “I disconnected it because of high bills.”

When asked to supply proof of residency, Garcia and Woodland Hills league administrators submitted a confusing mix of rent checks and receipts for mismatched amounts. Answering the door at the apartment on Monday afternoon, Garcia could not explain the discrepancies.

“Where do you think I live?” he blurted out. “I live here.”

At the office of the complex manager, employees confirmed that Garcia is listed on the apartment’s lease. They said they had seen both him and his son at the complex numerous times.

“He comes in to pay the rent,” said Jack Freed, a leasing consultant. “We get work orders from him” to do maintenance work on the apartment, Freed said.

Garrett, meanwhile, joined the Woodland Hills league using the address of a guest house where his family said they lived from September 1993 through April 1995. The Feigs now live in Tarzana but, under Little League rules, Garrett was allowed to remain with the team after moving.

In its protest, the Encino league submitted an interview with the guest house’s owner who allegedly said that the Feig family had never lived there.

Woodland Hills league administrators insist that they have refuted Encino’s claims with ample evidence to the contrary.

“[Little League] told us we needed proof that their mailing address had been changed by the post office, that they needed school records. We have provided all that,” said Geri Szabo, the Woodland Hills league president. “They are holding these kids up to a standard that no kid in the history of Little League has had to meet.”

But Little League officials remain unconvinced and have asked to see driver’s licenses, voter identification or income tax records to verify that both families lived within the Woodland Hills team boundary.

Speaking from the Canoga Park apartment, where a straw crucifix has been tacked above the doorway, Juan Garcia could only shake his head.

“Forget it,” he said. “We don’t want no more problems.”