The Inside Track : Brazney Wants to Put Her Stamp on Softball

Suzy Brazney carefully takes the collection of stamps from her bag. There is one U.S. postage stamp representing each of the sports that were contested at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, and when she pulls them from their plastic protective cover, her eyes turn just a little sad.

It is the softball stamp Brazney points to. The girl on the stamp, a catcher, has long, curly hair that falls below the batting helmet. She is without shin guards. Brazney’s long, curly hair and her unwillingness to wear shin guards were her trademarks.

“ ‘That’s you,’ ” Brazney says a friend told her when the stamp came out before the ’96 Games, the first Olympics in which women’s softball was a medal sport. “And it was. It was a picture taken of me at the 1983 Pan Am Games. They changed my blue cleats to white and maybe made the hair a little longer. I guess they had to. No one is supposed to be on a stamp unless the person is dead. But I had a friend at the post office. It was me.”

Being on that postage stamp, a collector’s item, was as close as Brazney got to the 1996 Olympics. After having been on every U.S. national team for 10 years, after having competed at world championships and Pan Am Games, when women’s softball got Olympic credentials and a big push into the nation’s consciousness, Brazney didn’t make the cut.

Despite earning All-American honors at national tournaments, Brazney was left off the rosters for Olympic tryouts. Only her threats to pursue legal action got her back on the tryout rosters but, she says, “I knew I wouldn’t make the team.”

Brazney, of Huntington Beach, is sitting in an office at Golden West College, where she is the women’s softball coach. She also works in the city of Fullerton’s recreation office and, all summer, is a softball player. She was named All-American again this summer while playing for Team Texas in the women’s major division, the highest level of women’s amateur softball.

This most recent All-American distinction earned Brazney, 37, an opportunity. The morning after she had flown home from Connecticut, where the tournament had taken place, Brazney was awakened by a phone call. She was one of 39 players being invited to Midland, Mich., Sept. 2-4 for the final tryout camp for the 2000 Olympic softball team.

Fifteen players will be named to the team on Sept. 6. Of the 39 players at this final camp, 19 have ties to Southern California--current UCLA players Christie Ambrosi and Amanda Freed of Cypress, Stacey Nuveman of La Verne and Natasha Watley of Irvine; current college players Lindsey Collins of Fountain Valley (Arizona); Jenny Topping of Whittier (Washington) and Becky Witt of Reseda (Fresno State); as well as Jennifer Brundage of Irvine and UCLA; Crystal Bustos of Canyon Country; Sheila Douty of Diamond Bar and UCLA; Nancy Evans of Glendale, Lisa Fernandez of Long Beach and UCLA; Michele Granger of Placentia; Barbara Jordan of Agoura and Cal State Northridge; Nina Lindenberg of Anaheim Hills; Stephanie Little of Cal State Fullerton; Dot Richardson of UCLA; Julie Smith of Glendora and Brazney, who is a Cal Poly Pomona graduate.

If you think Brazney received her invitation with unrestrained joy, you would not be totally correct. For she still has residual emotions from 1996--regret, sadness, anger, hurt.

“It’s still difficult for me to think about,” Brazney says. “Any sport has politics. I never knew what happened with me. I thought I was in my prime, but I heard maybe the [selection] committee was looking for younger players. I don’t know. I know I was good enough to be at the trials. I think I was good enough to be on the team.”

Her emotions, Brazney says, were mixed as she watched the 1996 U.S. team win an Olympic gold medal and the nation’s hearts. They were on cereal boxes and television shows and for so many years many of those players-- Richardson, Douty, Fernandez--had been Brazney’s teammates and Brazney had been their equal.

“Of course I saw the irony of the stamp,” Brazney says. “The stamp made it. I didn’t.”

As she prepares to head to Midland this week, as she takes batting practice from her dad at Golden West every day, Brazney is fighting emotions again.

“I was one of the last nine invited,” Brazney says. “My head says that of course I’m not going to make the final cut. But my heart? It can’t help it. It can’t help thinking I’m good enough, that given a fair chance, I can make it. I’m fighting not to get my hopes up because I don’t want the letdown.”

Brazney pauses a moment and then continues. “I can’t help it though. This is my last chance. I know that. I just can’t help hoping.”

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Diane Pucin can be reached at her e-mail address: diane.pucin@latimes.com