In Terms of Good Deeds, Flores Really Puts on Clinic

One day when Ron Flores was driving his oldest son, Randy, back to USC, where Randy was a left-handed pitcher, Ron asked Randy:

“Do you think you could get some of your friends from baseball together to do a camp?”

The idea had been knocking around Ron’s head. Ron is the pastor of the Rivera Foursquare Church in Pico Rivera. He also has been an athlete and is competitive. He saw other churches serving their communities by feeding the homeless or using choirs to get their evangelistic message out.

“I was wondering what our church could do that was a little different to serve the community,” Ron says. “I had two sons who played baseball. I used to play baseball. So I had this idea for a clinic.”

This was five years ago. Randy answered the question quickly and enthusiastically. Yes.

Last weekend, nearly 200 kids, ranging from 6 to 15, gathered at El Rancho High in Pico Rivera, where they were instructed in baseball fundamentals by Flores and 15 other volunteers from Pepperdine, USC, UCLA, Cerritos College and East Los Angeles College. The kids were given T-shirts and homemade enchiladas cooked by members of the church. They also heard the slogan that Ron and Randy thought up in the car that day five years ago:

“To help reach your goals in life--stay in school and go to church.”

Randy is 24 now and still playing baseball. After graduating from USC with a business degree and having helped USC to the final of the 1995 College World Series, he was a ninth-round draft pick of the New York Yankees. He has spent nearly three years in Class A and was promoted to double A for the final month of the 1999 season.

He cleared only $1,020 each month of last season, he still lives with his parents, across the street from El Rancho High, and serves as a fill-in teacher for learning-disabled sixth-graders in the off-season.

“I save all that money to help me make it through the baseball season,” Randy says.

During this week when we’ve all heard too much about John Rocker, the foul-mouthed Atlanta pitcher, Randy Flores speaks about how it is easy to live a Christian lifestyle while pursuing his baseball dream.

“You just have a sense of humor,” he says.

He doesn’t preach to teammates, but neither does he join in any behavior that goes against his beliefs.

Ron says that he never has had qualms about Randy’s pursuit of a baseball career. Even as a 5-foot-2, 95-pound quarterback and pitcher as a freshman at El Rancho High, Randy was convinced he could be a pro athlete. He needed convincing, though, that his dream was OK.

Ron says, “Randy came to me when he was a freshman and asked me if he was on the right track and how to pursue a goal that was totally outside of a Christian or religious vocation. I told Randy that it’s noble to reach for your goals, whatever they are. I told him he should never live and regret and that he just needs to use wisdom and common sense. Then just go with your emotions and pursue your dreams.”

Randy went to USC as a walk-on and didn’t receive a scholarship until his junior year. He didn’t mind.

“I was just so thrilled to be playing baseball at USC,” he says.

Randy and Ron’s camp, called the All-American Youth Baseball Clinic, is free to anyone. It is held on the first Sunday in January.

The first year, Randy called up Cal State Fullerton star Mark Kotsay and they called on other baseball friends to come help teach the kids.

“I didn’t know how it would work,” Randy says. “I didn’t know if we’d only have one clinic. I figured if only 13 kids showed up or something, that would be the end of it. But over 100 kids came to the first one. It was amazing.”

Ron says that he watches Randy, and his other son Ron, a sophomore pitcher at USC, and all the other players who volunteer, who give up a holiday weekend Sunday to work the clinic, and is amazed.

“Me, a man of my generation, can say things about school and church and the kids don’t listen,” says Ron, 47. “Then Randy and Ron and their friends say the same thing and the kids can’t take their eyes off of them.”

The members of the church raise the $4,000 needed to put on the clinic. Randy says the Yankees don’t know about it. He has never asked them to donate money or equipment.

“I’d feel funny doing that,” he says. “What if everybody who played for them asked the same things?”

Of course, everybody who plays for them doesn’t do this. Yet Ron says he thinks that his sons and the other players who come to Pico Rivera every January are more the norm than “the college guys you hear about who get arrested or are in trouble somehow. These guys are out here, volunteering their time and doing good. Nobody hears about them. But we should.”

And here’s an invitation to the Yankees: Randy Flores, your hard-working employee, is too modest to ask but, hey, a few T-shirts, a few wristbands, maybe a check for $1,000, those would be a big help.

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