Yount Had Hallmark Career

In a quiet Woodland Hills neighborhood, just a baseball throw away from St. Mel’s Catholic Church and down the street from Woodland Hills Country Club, a young boy took his first steps toward the Hall of Fame.

During long summer days, from sun-up until dusk, Robin Yount would hang out in his backyard with neighborhood buddies imagining themselves as major leaguers. Armed with plastic baseballs and a sawed-off bat, they engaged in heated competition.

“They were some of my best days,” Yount said. “We’d play by the hour, making diving catches into the swimming pool thinking it was the seventh game of the World Series. It was a lot more comfortable to land in water, especially in a bathing suit.”

From those humble beginnings emerged the San Fernando Valley’s second greatest baseball player next to Don Drysdale.

Yount went to Taft High School, graduated in 1973 and was the No. 3 pick overall by the Milwaukee Brewers in the amateur draft. After a couple months in the minors, he became the Brewers’ starting shortstop at 18. The rest is history.

He played 19 years with the Brewers, finishing with 3,142 hits. He had 11,008 at-bats. Only Pete Rose, Hank Aaron, Carl Yastrzemski, Ty Cobb and Eddie Murray have had more at-bats in baseball history. He was a two-time American League most valuable player.

Yount retired after the 1993 season to his new home in Paradise Valley, Ariz. He still helps the Brewers, coaching in spring training. He plays lots of golf, rides motorcycles, is part owner of a couple race cars and is quite busy as the parent of four teenagers. He’s a volunteer assistant baseball coach at Chaparral High, where his son, Dustin, is a freshman catcher.

“[Dustin] tries to show me how to hit,” Robin said.

Come January, Yount will surely return to the national spotlight. That’s the month he figures to receive news of his selection into baseball’s Hall of Fame. Yount, Nolan Ryan and George Brett are eligible for 1999.

“There’s no question it would be certainly a great honor to be even thought of in those terms,” he said of his possible induction into Cooperstown. “It’s not something I dwell on.”

Yount is offering his support for the Taft High golf tournament on June 22 at Tarzana’s El Caballero Country Club in honor of former Taft coaches Ray O’Connor and Hal Lambert. O’Connor was the baseball coach when Yount played at Taft.

“Tell him to keep it between the white lines if they have any,” Yount advised O’Connor on golf strategy at El Caballero.

If Yount hadn’t become a baseball player, golf might have been his next calling. As a teenager, he used to sneak onto Woodland Hills Country Club so often that golfers thought he was a member.

O’Connor even let him skip baseball practice one day to play for the Taft golf team.

“We were going to play Cleveland in baseball on a Tuesday,” O’Connor recalled. “On Monday, Robin came to me, ‘Would you mind if Steve Whitehead and I played for the golf team today? They’ve got a couple guys sick. They’re playing for the championship.’ Robin shot a 70 and Steve Whitehead a 69. He went three for four the next day against Cleveland. That’s how good an athlete he was.”

Yount first started attracting attention in baseball playing for Woodland Hills Sunrise Little League. The real advantage he enjoyed was having an older brother, Larry, who played five years in the minor leagues.

Robin took several trips to follow Larry around and see what professional baseball was all about.

“I’d spend a few weeks and live that life style,” he said. “I was going to the ballpark every day, putting a uniform on, taking ground balls. I got to do everything but play in the game. I had a good idea what I was getting into.”

Yount was not an all-league selection during his junior year at Taft, but the professional scouts were impressed with his arm strength, speed and versatility.

“He made 13 errors as an 11th grader and most were on balls other guys wouldn’t come close to,” O’Connor said. “The kid came into his senior year with no fear of not being successful. He radiated it.”

Yount said high school “is an age for finding your way and deciding in life what you want to do. It’s a year of experimentation on everything. The more things you are able to try, the better you are.”

Yount tried many things, from racing motorcycles to skiing.

“I remember his senior year calling his mother, ‘Would you please hide his skis?’ ” O’Connor said.

Yount, 42, said he misses baseball.

“I miss the feeling you get five minutes before every game, the competition of it all,” he said. “Baseball was unique in that you played every single day. You could have a bad day and the next day you were right out there again. Football players had to wait a week until they redeemed themselves.”

Yount has attended several Arizona Diamondback games at Bank One Ballpark in Phoenix. No one has recognized him yet.

“This isn’t like Milwaukee,” he said. “I can go anywhere I want and go unrecognized.”

Soon, people in Phoenix will realize they have a Hall of Famer in town. And the people in the Valley will get to celebrate their second Hall of Famer, the first being Drysdale, the pride of Van

Nuys High and the Dodgers.

A couple months ago, Yount was in town visiting relatives and went to see his old house in Woodland Hills, the place he lived from the time he was nine months old until he left at 18.

“I drove right by the house and had to make a double take,” he said. “There are high rises where I once played in corn fields.”

The Valley has changed, but Yount’s childhood memories haven’t.

“I still remember them as my best days,” he said.

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Eric Sondheimer’s local column appears Wednesday and Sunday. He can be reached at (818) 772-3422.

Tee It Up for Taft

* What: Taft High golf tournament

* When: June 22

* Where: El Caballero Country Club

* Cost: $175

* Information: (818) 346-6596