‘The Little Fat Kid’ Was Early Bloomer

When they were kids living in a development called Stony Creek, a place of solid brick houses and the smell of garlic and onions and sausages in the air, Mike Scioscia and his buddies built a small ballpark.

“It was in somebody’s backyard,” says Fred Scioscia, Mike’s older brother, “and it had bleachers and a scoreboard and everything. It was something else, what these guys built. They called it Decimal Park. They named it after somebody’s dog, of all things. It was a piece of work, but that’s just how it was for us growing up. Everybody knew everybody else, we were mostly Italian Catholics and we loved our ball. Sports of all kinds.”

It was here, west of Philadelphia, in Delaware County -- Delco to the natives -- where Mike Scioscia became a baseball player and where the foundation was laid for his move into managing. It was where he made the decision that being calm was better than being emotional, that being quiet worked better than being loud. He learned to be sure of himself but not cocky, proud of his accomplishments but not boastful. And this wasn’t always easy.

“From the time he was about 14 years old,” Mike’s uncle, Lou Scioscia, says, “what you always heard around here was that the scouts were coming to see the little fat kid from Delco. That’s what they always said. ‘Gotta go see the fat kid in Delco.’ ”

That would be Mike Scioscia, the fat kid with the big bat and the big body to block the plate. Mike, the football guard and basketball forward.

Mike, who hit .532 as a high school sophomore, and was made a starter by his coach, Ace Bell, after the starting catcher was slightly hurt in the first game of the 1972 season.

“I knew Mike should be starting,” Bell says. “But I didn’t have the heart to pull the other kid. Then, lo and behold, the kid gets hurt, blocking the plate, right off the bat. Mike comes in and, boom, hits three straight line drives, lasers, right over the second baseman. The other kid says, ‘I’m not getting back at catch, right?’ At least he understood. He learned to play third base for us.”

In a display case at Springfield High in Delco (there also is a Springfield High in Montgomery County, or Montco, and one must always differentiate) there is a framed picture of Scioscia in his Dodger uniform next to a picture of Bell, who taught and coached at Springfield.

It was no accident that Mike became a baseball player.

Fred and Florence Scioscia had three children. Fred, 58, was the oldest, an athlete of modest talent who took more to football than baseball; Gail, 47, who put up with all the high jinks of her brothers and their friends, and Mike, 43, the baby.

Mike was born on Thanksgiving Day in 1958.

Aunt Jane remembers Mike as a big baby. Uncle Lou, brother of Mike’s dad, remembers Fred saying, “That’s my $100,000 bonus baby.”

Fred Scioscia had been a baseball player himself, a pitcher on a semipro team across the state in Johnstown. Lou Scioscia was a football player at Duke. There were athletic genes in the Scioscia family and Mike got those genes. He also got the eating genes.

Florence was always cooking big pots of pasta and sausages, always too much, and Mike was always there to eat, Aunt Jane remembers. Scioscia was always roly-poly, Uncle Lou says.

Mike’s brother says Mike showed talent early.

When Scioscia was 2, he picked up a bat and a Wiffle ball in the backyard and started blasting hits, spraying them all over the yard. His brother says that their father put some pressure on Mike.

“Pop wanted him to be a good athlete, no question,” Fred says. “So Pop pushed Mike some. Not in a bad way I don’t think, but he pushed Mike.”

Scioscia’s dad was a salesman for a beer distributorship and his mom was a grade school teacher. When the family moved from South Philadelphia, where young Fred was born, to Morton, a growing suburb in a more upscale neighborhood, they were not alone

“Let’s see,” says Fred, “there were six houses of relatives in a two-block area. One street over from us was my grandfather and grandmother on my mom’s side and their second daughter and her husband. Next door to them was my grandmother’s brother and his wife and kids and then in the next house, my mom’s brother and his wife and daughter and his wife’s parents were down the street and so was mom’s younger sister and husband and five kids and around the corner another block away was my mom’s cousin and his wife and daughter.

“We were all involved, civically and with the church. Our dad was president of the civic association. We’d do food drives for charity. We’d all go caroling at Christmas. And Fourth of July, oh boy. Apple pie-eating contests. Watermelon-eating contests, parades, the whole thing.

“And sports, all the time sports. Organized sports, disorganized sports, pickup baseball, pickup basketball. My sister says Mike was always breaking in a new glove. He was always rubbing a glove with neat’s-foot oil.”

As a boy, Scioscia was always the best in his age group, Fred says. In basketball and football too.

Everybody remembers Mike’s father as being forceful and, as Bell says, boisterous. Mike’s brother also remembers that their father “got real high and real low and I think Mike made a conscious decision at a young age that he was going to be different than my dad in that behavior. The way Mike is now, so calm all the time, I don’t think that’s an accident,” Fred says.

From the first day Ace Bell saw Scioscia on the Springfield High baseball field, he knew he had something special.

“At that first workout,” Bell says, “I put my arm around Fred’s shoulders and said, ‘Fred, you have a No. 1 draft pick here.’ And Fred said, ‘Honestly?’ I said, ‘Honestly.’ The kid had the greatest arm I had seen and he could hit. Boy, could he hit. Mike was never going to be the fastest thing going, but it wasn’t going to matter.”

By the time Mike was a senior at Springfield High, Bell remembers as many as 18 scouts at every game. They started coming when Mike was a sophomore and the Springfield Cougars were playing Radnor.

“A Baltimore Orioles scout I knew was at the game,” Bell says. “I asked him who he was looking at and he said the Radnor pitcher. I told him to keep an eye on Mike.

“Well, this pitcher threw 90 miles per hour and Mike just hit the heck out of him, line drive after line drive. After that game, the scout came up and told me he wasn’t going to miss another game Mike played. And he didn’t.”

Scioscia and Bell were perfect for each other. Bell had played some minor league ball, including a year in Trenton, N.J., for a Giants’ farm team with Willie Mays.

It was that association with Mays that made most of the kids pay attention to Bell. But Scioscia didn’t need that hook. Scioscia just listened and learned because that’s how he was taught -- to listen and learn. Just what he expects players to do now -- listen and learn.

Bell taught Scioscia about the nuances, about the art of calling pitches, of how to handle pitchers, about when to throw what and where. Bell took Mike to tryout camps with the Yankees and Phillies, to instructional camps where Tom Lasorda, who had grown up in nearby Norristown, would speak. Scioscia showed Bell a deep love of baseball and a humbleness about his talent.

“I coached enough big-shot athletes,” Bell says. “I know how they behave. I know how they could get big heads. That was never Mike. Mike was always just Mike.”

Clemson offered Scioscia a four-year baseball scholarship. Florence Scioscia, the teacher, secretly hoped Mike would go to college, but when he was chosen in the first round, the 19th pick, by the Dodgers, there was never any doubt. Scioscia was going to be a major league catcher.

Fred and Florence are gone now. Florence died of breast cancer in 1982 and Fred of a stroke 10 years later. Mike’s brother moved to Illinois more than a decade ago. Gail moved to Illinois to attend graduate school and stay with Fred and she too lives in Normal.

But there are plenty of uncles and aunts and cousins around Philadelphia.

Craig Scioscia, son of Lou and Jane, same age as Mike and his partner in so many family sporting contests, is flying to Orange County tonight. Craig, a baseball coach at Bucks County Community College, once lived with Scioscia when he was a young Dodger.

He was around when Scioscia met his wife, Anne. As Aunt Jane tells it, Anne waited for Mike after a Dodger game with an offering of chocolate chip cookies. Mike followed Anne, and the cookies, to Anne’s car.

Bell tells of the scholarship Mike funds at Springfield High in his mother’s name. It is an academic scholarship to honor the woman who was a lifelong educator.

Aunt Jane laughs as she says that when Craig and Mike speak on the phone, they compare weights. “Craig is up to about 260 I think,” Jane says. “Mike’s right there with him.”

At Springfield High, Bell smiles proudly and blushes a little when employees walk past and yell, “Telling stories about how you made Mike a star?” At home in Gloria Dei Manor, Aunt Jane and Uncle Lou say they cried when the Angels clinched the American League pennant Sunday, just as his dad cried when Scioscia helped the Dodgers win the World Series in 1988.

About a year before Scioscia’s Dodger playing days were over, Bell asked him what he planned to do with the rest of his life. Something not involved in baseball, Scioscia told his old coach. But Bell suspected that wouldn’t stick.

When you have held a bat and hit a ball since you were 2, when you built a baseball field in the yard, when the scouts searched you out, the fat boy in Delco, because you played the game well and the right way, you don’t walk away. Ever.

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Diane Pucin can be reached at diane.pucin@latimes.com