Baseball Borscht Belt

High school sports serve as a rite of passage for the athletes who play them, the student, friends and families that gather to watch them and the sportswriters who cut their professional teeth covering them.

High school football games in Los Angeles date to 1896, but it wasn’t until 1934 that the Los Angeles City Section was born.

The Southern Section was established in 1912 and held its first athletic competition in 1913.

This story is not an attempt to document the achievements of every outstanding athlete, coach and team that made a mark, for there are far too many to chronicle here.

Rather, it is a history lesson of sorts told by current and former Times staff writers who have written about Southland prep athletes. Most of the writers graduated from Los Angeles-area high schools. And while many have gone on to cover college and professional sports as beat writers or columnists, all maintain indelible images of the prep athletes they watched, covered and, in some instances, competed with and against on the playing field.

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When I was a kid growing up in West L.A., my hero was Dodger pitcher Sandy Koufax.

But when I got to Fairfax High, I found my classmates enthralled by another baseball hero--Mike Epstein.

A power-hitting, left-handed batter, Epstein had slugged so many drives over the tall screen in right field, across the street and to the surrounding apartment buildings, those edifices had become landmarks for his legend.

“See that building over there,” I was told. “Epstein hit one on the roof there. And on the porch there. And through that window over there.”

Epstein, who graduated in 1961, is only one of several big leaguers from Fairfax, including two Dodger World Series heroes: relief pitcher Larry Sherry and pinch-hitter extraordinaire Chuck Essegian. Former major leaguer Norm Sherry, Larry’s brother, is also a Fairfax alumnus.

There are, of course, dozens of former Los Angeles City Section prep baseball players who went on to play--and manage--in the major leagues.

Fremont High alone has produced 25 major league players, including Hall of Famer Bobby Doerr (Class of 1934), Gene Mauch (1943), Bobby Tolan (1963), Willie Crawford (1964), Bob Watson (1964), Chet Lemon (1973) and Eric Davis (1980).

Van Nuys produced Hall of Famer Don Drysdale (1954). Dorsey’s Sparky Anderson (1952) is also headed to Cooperstown and Locke High had two future Hall of Famers on the same team--Ozzie Smith (1973) and Eddie Murray (1974).

As for Epstein, he wound up with 130 homers and 380 runs batted in during his nine-year big league career and played on the 1972 World Series champion Oakland A’s. But he was never again the object of affection that he had been at Fairfax.

And across the street.