A BREEDEN APART

People who saw him cry last Sunday didn’t quite get it.

This guy really wanted to win, some might have thought, getting the truth only partially correct.

He’s overly emotional, others might have thought, again barely scratching the surface of Jody Breeden, the longtime coach of Van Nuys Show Ball who won the biggest game of his career less than two weeks after enduring the hardest day of his life.

It was a victory on the field for his American Legion team and an achievement on an entirely different level for Breeden, who had never advanced to the state tournament in his 15-year coaching career and needed a victory more than anything else.

His mother, Jeanette, died at 86 of heart failure on July 11, 12 days before Van Nuys defeated Valley Chatsworth, 9-7, to win the Area 6 championship.

She had been struggling with Alzheimer’s disease, but her death was relatively unexpected. It was with her in mind, coupled with the victory over Chatsworth, that Breeden loosened his emotions.

“It’s been a tough couple of weeks,” he said. “It’ll take a while, but if anything ever happened that maybe sealed the wound, it was Sunday.”

Breeden’s ties to baseball, specifically Van Nuys Show Ball, to which he has devoted unpaid time and countless energy since 1986, have been a major part of his life.

It was not entirely surprising that his wife, Eileen, forced him to go to practice the night his mother died. Eileen knew it was important for her husband to embrace another important love in life.

“My wife said to me, ‘You need to go to practice. . . . Don’t sit around here,” Breeden said. “She’s been my No. 1 fan all these years. She would know.”

Van Nuys (29-2), comprised of players from Notre Dame, Crespi and Grant high schools, has rewarded Breeden with a dominating summer, outscoring opponents, 322-72, en route to the District 20 and Area 6 championships.

Van Nuys’ losses were squeakers to Granada Hills Kennedy and Ventura by identical 4-3 scores.

It remains to be seen whether the offensive onslaught continues at the state tournament in Yountville--Van Nuys plays defending state champion Danville in a first-round game today--but the players have experienced success never attained in Breeden’s career. And they’ve had fun along the way.

From a superstition standpoint, Van Nuys might be the strangest collection of players in local Legion history. Breeden and his players go way beyond avoiding cracks in the pavement and the number 13.

On game days, right fielder Chris Dickerson soaks his pants in the kitchen sink and puts them in a plastic shopping bag before heading to the field. Once there, he dons the dripping wet pants, continuing a tradition he started this summer on a hot afternoon. He will continue it until Van Nuys’ season ends.

Another story involves catcher Alec Moss’ actions during a game in which Van Nuys’ bats were surprisingly silent. Breeden remembers looking down the dugout and seeing Moss bent over the drinking fountain, performing a ritualized cleansing of sorts by washing the team’s aluminum bats.

Not surprisingly, Van Nuys won the game.

“I’ve seen a lot of strange things, but that was the strangest,” Breeden said.

The superstitions start with Breeden, who refuses to wear the same cleats and the same wristwatch after a loss, opting for a different shoe-timepiece combination for Van Nuys’ next game.

Breeden imparts his superstitious nature upon his players, asking them to wear the same jerseys the next game after a victory.

You can imagine how the jerseys looked toward the end of Van Nuys’ 19-game winning streak.

“Some of them wash their jerseys,” Breeden said. “Some don’t.”

As omens go, Breeden’s first year with the team wasn’t exactly a barrel of good fortune.

The team was 9-0 but forfeited every victory because Jeff Cirillo, now with the Colorado Rockies, and step-brother Adam Grant lived in Sun Valley, well outside the district in which Van Nuys was allowed to draw players.

The head coach resigned in part because of the ruling against the team, leaving Breeden, an assistant, to take over. He’s been there ever since.

Breeden remains close to several former players. He works at an electronics firm with Matt McElreath, a former Van Nuys player who went on to play at Pepperdine. His third-base coach this summer is Jeff Antoon, a member of the team with Cirillo and an assistant coach at St. John Bosco in Bellflower.

Antoon makes the commute to the Valley from Playa del Rey several times a week, sometimes driving more than an hour on traffic-snarled freeways to get to practices or games.

Like Breeden, Antoon volunteers, teaming with the coach he calls “a surrogate father.”

“He just gives without any thought of a return,” Antoon said. “He loves you no matter what you do, no matter how many mistakes you’ve made or how many successes you’ve had.”

Breeden, who picked up the nickname ‘Big Show’ during his 15-year stint playing competitive softball, is more than willing to work without pay during his summer coaching stints.

His reward is not financial.

“My whole thing in getting into this is seeing the guys grow up and go to college,” he said. “That’s really why I do this. I don’t get squat out of it [financially]. The only reason I do this is for the kids.”

And for victories like the one against Chatsworth a week ago.

“It was a pretty special deal,” he said. “The guy upstairs was pretty good to me that day.”

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AMERICAN LEGION STATE TOURNAMENT

Today at Yountville

Chino (27-2) vs.

Lakewood (16-2), 9 a.m.

Van Nuys Show Ball (29-2) vs.

Danville (44-9), 12:30 p.m.

Sacramento Southside (26-10-1) vs.

Stockton Carl Ross (24-4), 3 p.m.