After Slow Start, Bruin Makes Valent Effort

They were gone: Troy Glaus and his 34 home runs, Jon Heinrichs and his 28, Peter Zamora and his 16. In their places at UCLA were callow freshman.

The season was seven games old, and Eric Valent, returning All-Pacific 10 center fielder, was batting .143 and did not have a homer.

He’d hit 27 a year ago, 12 the season before that.

“I was pressing a little bit,” he said. “I wanted to get off to a good start.”

He was playing before a legion of scouts, whose major league bosses finally could get their hands on Valent, a junior. And a freshman third baseman, Garrett Atkins, was batting behind him.

Why pitch to Valent when there’s a freshman to pick on?

Well, Atkins had a 33-game hitting streak that was broken last Tuesday, and Valent settled into a groove, batting .360 since the season’s first 10 games. And his 26 homers lead the nation. He is batting .316 for the season and has 65 homers in his career in Westwood, a Pac-10 record.

He has 65 runs batted in this season, eight homers in his last 10 games, and he also has the scouts’ eyes wide open again.

“I hear somewhere in the first two rounds,” said Valent of his status for the June draft. “Really, I don’t want to think about it too much. I don’t want to jump to conclusions.”

He has seen what happens when you think about anything too much on a baseball field.

“Something got into my head,” he said of his start. “I was just trying to do too much.”

He was playing for a UCLA team that had gone to the 1997 College World Series, but most of whose leading players from that team were playing professionally when this season began. The Bruins have struggled--they are 21-30 after defeating Portland State, 7-6, Friday night --and are extremely young, particularly on the mound.

It’s a team that has looked to Valent, a center fielder with a right fielder’s arm and legs, for leadership. He had tried to provide it by example. At first, the burden was heavy.

It’s less so now.

“When we were playing to try to get into the regionals, there was some pressure, but now it’s just, come to the park and play and try to win for ourselves,” he said.

He spent some time talking with Coach Gary Adams during the slump and said, “One day, I just settled down. I don’t know what happened. I just started hitting again.”

And hasn’t stopped.

It has taken him from being a 26th-round pick by the Detroit Tigers when he was at Anaheim Canyon High to the threshold of a pro career.

TIMELY TESTS

USC went into a nine-day hiatus for final exams after Wednesday’s nonconference victory over UC Santa Barbara, and the break gives the Trojans (37-13, 19-8 in the Pacific 10 Southern Division) an opportunity to do some healing before they play an important three-game series at Stanford, beginning May 9.

Sophomore catcher Eric Munson, who has 12 home runs and is an All-American candidate, has been out since April 6 because of a stress fracture in his right foot. He is to be evaluated Wednesday and could be ready for the Stanford series.

The USC pitching staff also could use a break after a series in which it gave up 36 runs to UCLA. The Trojans scored 48--a school record for a three-game series--in winning two of the three games.

Stanford leads the division, with an 18-6 league record, half a game ahead of USC and a full game ahead of Arizona State’s 18-8.

THE LEGACY

Loyola Marymount (28-19, 16-6 in the West Coast Conference) is mounting a campaign for postseason honors for two freshmen in a class that earned Coach Frank Cruz recruiter-of-the-year mention in one publication.

Catcher Scott Walter and pitcher Michael Schultz (7-1, 76 strikeouts in 78 1/3 innings) are helping their causes.

Walter, in particular, has become a mainstay for the Lions, batting .391, with 10 homers and a league-leading 59 RBIs.

The name is a familiar one at the school, which was attended by his grandfather, father, and his brother, Chris, a soccer player there.

Those links made it a bit easier for Cruz to land Walter, even after the Dodgers drafted him from Loyola High. Walter has a chance to become the first freshman triple-crown winner in the WCC, standing fourth in batting and only two homers out of the top spot.

And his contribution has helped the Lions guarantee their first winning record since 1991. With three freshman starting pitchers, a freshman catcher, freshman right fielder and two sophomore starters, Loyola is still only a game behind Pepperdine (29-18, 18-6) in the league race.

TOUGH TIMES

Long Beach State (26-20-1, 17-7 in the Big West) seemed to have found itself after a rocky start, at one time winning 12 consecutive games and moving into the national rankings. But the 49ers are back on the rocks after having lost seven of their last eight games before Friday’s matchup with UC Santa Barbara.

They have fallen three games behind Cal State Fullerton in the Big West’s South Division, and the Titans can clinch the title and top seeding in the conference tournament by sweeping Cal Poly San Luis Obispo.

Fullerton holds the tiebreaker edge over Long Beach by virtue of its 4-2 record against the 49ers.

The chief culprit lately for Long Beach has been an unreliable bullpen. The 49ers held a 3-2 lead over Fullerton through six innings last Saturday, only to fall, 8-3. On Sunday, the score was tied, 3-3, through seven innings, but Fullerton won, 7-3.

Long Beach continues to be led by junior third baseman Paul Day, who is batting .451, .495 in the Big West, with 10 homers and 57 RBIs. He has 82 hits and a chance at the school record of 102 hits, set in 1990 by Don Barbara, now the 49er batting coach. That cause would be helped with a Big West tournament victory, because it appears that’s the only way the 49ers can extend their seven-year streak of appearances in the NCAA tournament.

BUNTS

USC right-hander Seth Etherton (10-2, 2.69 ERA) broke the Pac-10 strikeout record April 24 when he fanned three Bruins, giving him 364 for his career. The old record was held by former Trojan Brent Strom, who had 363 from 1968-70. . . . Cal State Northridge’s Nakia Hill is batting .411 with 13 home runs and 36 RBIs, and he has an 11-game hitting streak, with more than one hit in 10 of the 11 games. . . . UCLA freshman third baseman Atkins’ 33-game hitting streak was the longest in Bruin history, and he has 51 hits in Pac-10 play, which ties the school record set by Shane Mack in 1983. The league-record streak is 37 games, held by three players. . . . The USA national team roster lists four catchers, three of them with Southern California ties. They are Brad Cresse, of Seal Beach and a sophomore at Louisiana State; USC’s Munson and Dane Sardinha, a freshman at Pepperdine. Also on the roster is Ryan Owens, a sophomore infielder at Cal State Fullerton.