A Ball Market

The cars in the parking lot at Bonita Creek Park on Tuesday nights tend to favor Mercedes- Benzes and BMWs. What else would you expect from stockbrokers?

For 23 summers, softball teams representing Orange County investment companies have been meeting in an environment where their workaday dollars and sense are replaced by balls and strikes. . . . or more appropriately, perhaps, Bulls and Strikes, the last-place team in the nine-team league.

“We’re judged on our numbers on a daily basis, and a lot of people like playing softball because of the competitive nature of the game,” said Tustin’s Jack Hartfelder, 34, a second vice president investments and third baseman for Salomon Irvine. “It’s a good outlet for us.”

The playoffs for the Newport Beach Stockbrokers League begin Monday and continue through Thursday, with Merrill Lynch Newport Beach trying to win its third championship in four years by holding off World Wide Webbers, made up of stockbrokers from Paine Webber in Orange, and Salomon Smith Barney in Irvine.

The league began in 1978 with three teams, E.F. Hutton Newport Beach, Bateman Eichler in Newport Beach and Merrill Lynch Santa Ana. It was the brainchild of Ralph Rollins, Mike Price and John Murphy. Rollins, who is at Sutro & Co., says he and Price, at Paine Webber Mission Viejo (a.k.a., the Bulldogs), are the league’s only players to participate in all four decades.

“My wife wanted to do beach volleyball in the summer, and we tried it once, and that was a disaster,” said Rollins, 50, a pitcher from Costa Mesa and an assistant vice president. “But softball clicked right off the bat. After word got out, all the other firms were calling me to get in.”

Tom Doughty, 40, of Costa Mesa, has seen the league’s size shrink since he first got in the business in 1986, when it was comprised of two divisions with about 10 teams in each. At its zenith in 1988, the league had 22 teams.

Brokerage houses consolidated and merged, and the league got smaller.

“Drexel folded, E.F. Hutton was bought by Shearson Lehman, which was bought by Smith Barney,” Doughty said. “Kidder-Peabody got bought by Everan . . . “

Because the stock markets close at 1 p.m. (PST), brokers can play their games in the late afternoon, finishing before the City of Newport Beach Recreation Dept. holds its City League night games. In the early 1980s, Rollins was told his collection of teams was too great, was messing up the chalk lines for the city’s paying teams and was forced to join the Rec Dept. Now, the league is run by Scott Williamson, Newport Beach’s Parks and Recreation director.

“It’s unique to have a league [start games] at 4:45 and be done at 6 p.m.,” said Williamson said. “Ford Aerospace had a huge plant in Newport Beach, and we had an afternoon league for it from the mid-70s to early 90s before that plant closed. That league had 50 teams at its height in the mid-80s.”

Team sports is a good outlet for brokers, who are competitive by nature, says Doughty, the cleanup-hitting first baseman for Merrill Lynch.

“There are a lot of egos,” Doughty said. “Typically, the younger guys in the league, they have this cocky attitude. You can tell the first-year guys in the league, the comments they make. One time, I was playing first base, two or three feet behind the line. A guy looks at me and says, ‘You better get outta my way or I’m gonna run over you.’ ”

Doughty, who stands 6 feet 7, and weighs 250 pounds, was not intimidated. “He’s trying to use machismo,” he said. “You get a lot of that.”

One member of the coed Stockbrokers League--every team must have two women on the field at all times--is Marilyn Horsley, the branch manager’s assistant at Sutro (a.k.a. the Sutro Surfers). The first baseman played high school softball at Esperanza, graduating in 1982, and also played a year at USC. She has been in the league for 13 years.

“It’s a fun league,” Horsley said. “I’m so competitive, I like going out there and the guys’ thinking, ‘Here’s this frail girl,’ and then I get a hit and it’s like, ‘Wow!’ ”

“I’d rather play with the guys anyway--it’s more competitive.”

These on-field rivals carry their memories with them for a long time.

Doughty looks back fondly on his game-winning home run in the playoffs during his team’s undefeated 1997 season, and Horsley recalls an incident a decade ago that involved a broker who sits in front of Horsley at the Sutro office.

“He was playing for E.F. Hutton Newport Beach. . . . and he was real arrogant, and I remember sliding into second base trying to take him out,” Horsley said. “He still remembers it. He hasn’t changed much.”

Doughty, a vice president, says there’s a lot to learn on the field about what’s going on in the boardroom.

“You can tell a lot about someone the way they play softball, if they have class, if they handle themselves, if they have leadership skills,” he said. “You can find out of they are a gracious loser, how they treat people, and if they take everyone into consideration when they make a decision--that usually filters up into the business world.”