Curveball

It’s the ideal place, the San Fernando Valley, to grow a youth baseball program brimming with promise.

There are tons of kids, acres of parks and a long tradition of Little League success. And then there are the parents--supportive, sophisticated . . . and with way too much time on their hands.

That’s the only way I can interpret the current dispute between Valley Little League rivals--a legal and paperwork battle that has cast a dark shadow over whatever their kids do on the field.

After being knocked out of the World Series tournament by an all-star team from Woodland Hills last week, the Encino All-Stars accused their rivals of using an ineligible player. Pitching ace Junior Garcia had been recruited from Van Nuys, using a fake address, claimed manager Rob Glushon, an attorney and politician whose son plays on the Encino team.

Officials at the Little League’s national headquarters looked at evidence--gleaned by Encino parents from late-night surveillance and forays through the Garcia family’s trash--and agreed, ordering the team to bench its 12-year-old star. That torpedoed the team that analysts of these things thought had the best chance to bring a national championship back to California.

Woodland Hills fought back with a lawyer whose grandson plays for the team, who threatened to take the League to court if Junior was not allowed back in the lineup. The Little League hired its own attorney--from Beverly Hills--and the whole lot of them showed up in court on Thursday . . . where they were scolded by a judge for dragging a playground dispute into the legal system and thrown out on their ears.

Except for the judge, it’s hard to find anyone who can righteously lay claim to the high moral ground here. But one thing is clear: When the grown-ups started slinging mud, it was the children who got dirty.

So while the season may have ended for both teams, the images are likely to remain:

* The Encino team: Sore losers who wreaked bureaucratic revenge on a team they weren’t good enough to beat.

* The Woodland Hills team: Cheaters who wanted to win so badly they connived to bring in a ringer from outside the neighborhood.

The truth? Well, the truth is that they’re just kids, and both teams played hard and well, and they deserve better than the notoriety this teacup scandal has brought them.

*

The Woodland Hills team--which was knocked out of the championship running by Thousand Oaks in a Lompoc game Friday evening--is a scrappy bunch; a team of survivors who fought back when they were counted out, and vanquished fear and disappointment.

They’re a mix of kids, representing the best 11- and 12-year-olds in the 500-player Woodland Hills Sunrise League. Contreras, Abusaleh, Szabo, Jones, . . . the names are stenciled on the backs of their jerseys, just like their big-league idols.

They’re a study in contrasts, like any random group of boys at that awkward age just before adolescence.

Some are tall and gangly, all arms and legs and big feet. Others are so tiny their bodies seemed dwarfed by the bulky batting helmets. Some seem on the verge of manhood--husky boys with broad shoulders and the shadow of an emerging mustache. Others are pudgy and baby-faced, and their voices squeak when they cheer from the dugout.

The stands have been crowded at this week’s games with parents and grandparents, many who’ve driven three hours or more to cheer the boys on. The family rooting sections whoop and clap and stomp their feet, loudly, with the kind of enthusiasm I haven’t seen since my days as a Buckeye fan at Ohio State.

A mom in a red sweatshirt gets up and leads the crowd in rousing cheers. Others shout advice at whatever batter is in the box. “See the ball. Be patient. Hit it, baby!”

Some encourage the batter by disparaging the pitcher. “He’s scared of you. He can’t pitch you,” one mother yells again and again. Cries of “You the man!” ripple through the crowd.

From across the field, the Thousand Oaks parents are glaring at them.

Somehow it seems odd to me--and vaguely unsettling--these grown-ups in baseball caps and team T-shirts, cheering with such ferocity. On the field, the kids display remarkable poise, but I can only imagine how scary it must seem to stand there in the batter’s box staring down the pitcher, with 100 rabid adults screaming insults.

*

I’m a sports mom myself and know all too well that the line separating the fan from the fanatic can be perilously thin.

As coach of my daughter’s basketball team, I’ve delivered--and believed--that B-movie speech about how this is all for fun: “Just do your best, win or lose.”

And yet I’ve benched girls who desperately wanted to play because I worried that they might make us lose. I’ve watched coaches maneuver to get the best girls, and run up scores to the point of humiliation. I once shamed myself by yelling at my daughter so hard that she was crying when she left the game.

I know how it feels when your stomach knots up, when it’s your kid on the spot with the game on the line, when you want so desperately to win that “Everybody else does it” seems like a logical defense.

And in baseball--the most individual of team sports--the pressure seems particularly acute, because one player can rescue a game with a big play or blow it with a mental lapse.

“It brings out a lot of emotion in the parents . . . because it’s your kid out there pitching, hitting, catching that ground ball, one at a time,” said Pat Visciglia, a Woodland Hills parent who serves on the league’s board. “That makes you feel a very close connection with your child.”

And for Woodland Hills, it upped the ante in a situation already fraught with tension and paranoia. So who could blame them for being paranoid and tense, after such a promising season ended in such despair?

So I understood why, early in Thursday’s game, a Woodland Hills dad--perhaps a lawyer?--crept over to the dugout and whispered to their coach: “Keep an eye on that kid pitching for Thousand Oaks. He may be putting something on the ball. See how he reaches up to touch the bill of his cap before each throw.”

I watch the kid. He is indeed rubbing his cap between throws. He’s also tugging on his shirt and shuffling his feet. Unlike the Woodland Hills pitcher, who tends only to bite his nails between throws.

*

I know there must be a moral here, but it’s hard to find, lost somehow between the baseball field and the courthouse, indecipherable above the din of shouting spectators and ranting lawyers.

Every team has players that are probably ineligible, Little League veterans say. But most people look the other way, figuring it all comes out in the wash.

And if the unexpected scrutiny cost Woodland Hills its chance for a national title, it may have cost Junior Garcia something more--his love for the game.

He traveled with his teammates to each tournament game, then stood forlornly on the sidelines, passing his time by taunting opposing coaches.

A big, strong-looking kid, a top player, it was his messy residency arrangement that got him sidelined as a ringer. (So his parents separate, see, and then his father gets another apartment, but does Junior ever live there? Or his father? Is his father rarely there because he works long hours or is this all a charade? And how far can we get from the boys playing baseball before these quarrels become a pointless distraction?)

He shrugs when you ask him how he feels about the controversy, but he cried when he first learned he couldn’t play. Last night, his Woodland Hills teammates cried with him.

Is that really what anybody wanted back in the spring, when umpires on Little League diamonds called out: “Play ball!”