Strikeout Queen of Sherman Oaks

Marti Sementelli is getting roughed up by the Reds. She took the mound in the fourth inning with a 3-2 lead, but it is now the top of the fifth, and her Mariners are trailing 5-3. With one out and a runner on first, No. 11 steps up to the plate.

Marti remains poised, confident. She digs around on the mound with her right foot, then sweeps the dust off the pitching rubber. This is her obsession. Before games, she goes out with a rake, carefully and methodically working the sand as if it were a Zen garden.

She faces the batter, glances to her right, where her father/coach Gary Sementelli is crouched down in front of the bench flashing signs. She goes into her stretch, purses her lips and fires. Fastball, low and away. No. 11 shows bunt but misses. Strike one.

At age 9, Marti is the only girl in the minors division of the Sherman Oaks Little League, and at 4-foot-1, 53 pounds, she’s also the smallest, but in her 2 1/2 seasons in the program, she has amassed impressive statistics. In 137 innings, she is one strikeout short of 300. That’s not unheard of in Little League; still, it’s more than twice the number of strikeouts per inning as Major League strikeout king Nolan Ryan.

Her statistics are unofficial, compiled by her dad, whose passion for the game is spelled out in one letter, the “B” on his beloved Boston Red Sox cap. People who wear the “B” are bonded by three things: heartbreak, denial and a genetic repugnance for the New York Yankees. They are, above all, people of faith, and although the Sox have not won a World Series championship since the year Woodrow Wilson was elected president, they believe each spring that happy days will return with autumn.

The BoSox gene was passed down to Marti, who hopes to pitch in the majors. As she sleeps beneath pictures of Carl Yastrzemski, Luis Tiant and her favorite, Pedro Martinez, she dreams of the day she stands atop a perfectly sculpted mound at Fenway.

But, first, she must contend with No. 11, a cool customer who is holding the bat with only his left hand as he takes practice swings in anticipation of the 0-1 pitch. Marti takes her sign from Dad, reaches back and uncorks another fastball, this one directed toward the inside corner. The batter swings and fouls the pitch off. No balls, two strikes. Marti smells blood.

She knows better than to get too excited, to try to push beyond her limits. She paraphrases legendary hurler Tom Seaver. “When you try to throw harder,” she says, “the ball just goes slower.” So she focuses on staying within herself, forgetting about the batter and concentrating, instead, on throwing to the catcher’s target.

Pitching is her favorite part of baseball, and her favorite part of pitching is “striking out boys.” She is specific about this. She does not say “batters,” and if she were playing against girls, she says, it would not be nearly as fun. She likes striking out boys. Of course, they like to strike her out too. Still, her batting average is a healthy .375.

She slams the ball into her glove before stepping onto the rubber. It’s an old glove, a Rawlings Brooks Robinson model given to her a few years ago by a stranger named Al who said he used to play in the St. Louis Browns organization. Al happened by the ballpark one day while Marti and her dad were working out. It’s their daily ritual: He picks her up from Colfax Avenue Elementary School, and they head to the park for a short, casual workout. They start out with a little catch and a little pepper. They talk about school or other stuff. Or not at all.

So, one day, this old-timer who introduced himself as Al showed up at the park and watched Marti bat. They talked baseball, then he said, “I’ll be right back.” He walked to his car, where lovers of the game keep their gloves, and brought back the Rawlings. He held it like a Bible and handed it to Marti. “I’d like you to have this,” he said. It is heavier than modern gloves, weighted by decades of sweat, dust and oil, its pocket worn buttery smooth and soft, but suits Marti fine. “I like how it smells,” she says.

The afternoon workouts started a few years ago. There is hardly a day, Marti says, when she would rather do something else, but there are limits to everything, and her mother, Rosa Sementelli, eventually had to put her foot down. One day as Marti and her dad were getting ready to head out the door, she stopped them.

“You guys,” she said, “it’s Christmas.”

Marti’s dad grew up near Boston, where he fell easily in love with the game. He would play with neighborhood kids, often using balls held together by tape, then wait for his father, an electrician, to come home so they could play catch out front on Charles Street. Besides now, that was the most special time of his life. He played through high school and seven years in a semipro league. Then he grew up. Now 42, he acts and writes but mainly works as a recreation instructor at the Van Nuys/Sherman Oaks Recreation Center.

He and Marti’s mom, 32, a fitness instructor and competitor, had Marti, then another daughter, Allie, short for Alejandra, age 4.

One strike away from 300 strikeouts, Marti takes the signal from her dad. The key to calling pitches is to always set up the next pitch, he says. Her change-up has been an effective strikeout pitch in recent games, but today she’s been hanging them high in the strike zone, and the Reds have feasted.

He opts, instead, for a cutting fastball on the inside corner. Marti grips the ball with her index and middle fingers along the outside seam, goes into her stretch. Her left knee comes up high and tight to her chest. Her motion is fluid. Her dad calls her a “ballerina on the mound.”

The batter backs away from the pitch, but the ball catches the inside corner for strike three. Marti leaps into the air, balls her right hand into a fist and pumps it back as though she were shifting into fourth gear, reminiscent of Kirk Gibson in 1988 as he rounded the bases for the Dodgers in Game 1 against Oakland.

“Yes!” she says.

There comes no thunder from the stands. Few people are aware of her milestone. The opposing team doesn’t understand why she’s so excited. The batter is unaware that he has struck out.

At the end of the inning, Marti’s dad greets her as she walks toward the bench. He puts his arm around her, and they walk together. Her mother and sister cheer from the stands. The next inning, the Reds score again and lead 6-3 going into the bottom of the sixth and final inning.

“Let’s get three runs and send this thing into extra innings,” her dad tells his players, as they scramble around for helmets and bats and something to drink. “Three runs, whadya say?”

He does not ask for four, enough runs to win the game. When you love baseball, when you savor each moment at the ballpark and the day is filled with joy and glory, you do not wish for victory. You wish for extra innings, for the game to never end.