Strawberry Fields Forever

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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He hit a home run that day. But on that team, who didn’t?

The 1979 Crenshaw Cougar baseball team was so talented, five players were eventually selected in baseball’s amateur draft, including future major league third baseman Chris Brown.

But the player who caught my eye did it not with his bat, but with the most hellacious curveball I ever saw in a high school baseball game. The kid didn’t pitch much for Crenshaw, but he came out of the bullpen that day in 1979 to get four outs, three on strikeouts, with that nasty breaking ball.

Did the coach and the scouts overlook one of the best arms in Los Angeles? No, they just thought he was better as a hitter. The New York Mets made him the first pick in the nation in the 1980 draft, and it’s hard to say they made a mistake by putting a bat in the hands of Darryl Strawberry.

Strawberry is one of five former Southland prep stars to be chosen No. 1 since the baseball draft was adopted in 1965, joining outfielder Rick Monday of Santa Monica (1965, Kansas City Athletics), shortstop Tim Foli of Sherman Oaks Notre Dame (1968, Mets), outfielder Jeff Burroughs of Long Beach Wilson (1969, Washington Senators) and infielder Phil Nevin (1992, Houston Astros), who played at Placentia El Dorado and was selected No. 1 out of Cal State Fullerton.