Here’s a Lesson We Can All Learn

After the police cars left, the helicopter stopped circling overhead and the action subsided on one of the most tumultuous days in the history of Santa Monica High, Coach Kevin Brockway gathered his baseball players together.

A series of fights between Latinos and African Americans on April 15, followed by the students’ refusal to return to class, resulted in a campus-wide lockdown. Brockway called whatever players he could reach on their cellphones, and quickly discovered that none had been involved in the fighting and none was hurt. The Vikings had to cancel practice that day, but Brockway wanted them to meet anyway.

“Just to let them know that this is a family separate from the campus and we need to stay together to do what we have to do, athletically, and not get caught up in what the campus kids are doing,” Brockway said.

His assistant coach, Damon Farmar, had a suggestion.

“I just told them, all the Latin guys and the brothers need to hug each other,” Farmar said. “We don’t have any of that [dissension] out here. We’re just a team. A bunch of guys playing together.”

The players thought it was kind of corny, but they embraced anyway. The next day they went to play a baseball game, without a hint of racial rancor.

Bats, balls, gloves and a hug. It can’t be that simple.

Can it?

*

They knew something bad was about to happen that Friday. Just a feeling, a sense of the inevitable, the kind you get when you hear ominous music in a movie.

A brawl involving 100 Latino and African American students had erupted at Jefferson High the day before. Now, apparently, it was Santa Monica’s turn.

“Everything built up,” senior outfielder Ryan Rodriguez said. “I guess everyone felt that was the day to start a fight. Second period, one broke out. A black guy and a Latino started to fight. The Latino group started having tension with the African American people. Later on, toward lunch, it started getting hectic.”

“It was building up,” said Kevin Gonzalez, a junior second baseman. “There were little fights here, little fights there. Once the bell rung, you could sense the tension. It was coming. Dudes were walking by, and it just popped off.”

Tim Dearn, the coach of the freshman baseball team, heard the buzz and hung around the lunch quad to see whether he could defuse any trouble. It turned out to be too many people, spreading too quickly.

“All of a sudden you see one group moving one way, another group moving another way,” Dearn said.

“Security or administration would show up, then they’d run off over there.”

Police officers from Santa Monica, Culver City and Beverly Hills were called in to restore order. Estimates of the number of students involved ranged from 20 to 50. Twelve students were suspended for the following week -- six for fighting and six for defiant attitudes after the melee was over.

The baseball players were there. Everyone was there. Nothing, not even an instant message, moves faster than the buzz about a fight on a school campus.

But the ballplayers didn’t get caught up in the mob madness, didn’t start swinging.

“My main thing was the whole fear of being suspended or getting hurt and not being able to play ball,” junior outfielder Milan Depillars said.

“We had games to play,” Rodriguez said.

“We have something important going on.”

Games? Important? It sounds so contradictory. Games are, by definition, a diversion. Or, as they say in high school, an extracurricular activity.

But look what happens when you give kids an objective, a purpose that requires their cooperation.

You get levelheaded thinking in the middle of chaos. You get dedication. You get cooperation. You even find that elusive racial unity.

“We don’t have the problems that everything else has,” assistant coach Farmar said. “It’s a team atmosphere.

“That’s the thing about sports: It brings you together,” said Farmar, the father of UCLA basketball player Jordan Farmar. “Regardless of your background, you have a common goal. It’s funny how the school [fight], that was very much removed from our situation. We came together, the next day we were sacrificing, bunting, playing as a team.

“I think it’s real simple: The group is focused on a common goal. That’s it. The kids out in school, they’ve got extra time, they’re focused on other things and kind of all over the place. We’re just trying to play baseball and win games. With that in mind, it’s real simple. Not to say you have to like everyone you’re playing with, but you’re dependent on your teammate, regardless of who it is. That kind of takes priority.”

When Depillars, who is African American, transferred to Santa Monica last year, he wound up becoming friends with fellow baseball player Gonzalez, a Latino. Despite the tensions that exist between the two ethnic groups on campus, Depillars and Gonzalez said they haven’t heard criticism.

“Even if I did, I wouldn’t care,” Gonzalez said. “It’s no big deal to me what color you are. If you’re cool with me, I’m cool with you.”

“Same with me,” Depillars said. “With a team, it’s different. You’ve got to play together in order to get somewhere. You’re with your teammates, and it’s everybody else.

“People can make you feel different ways. With him, it’s because he’s a cool person. That’s why we hang out.”

Since the brawl, the Santa Monica school board has held contentious meetings, political and police leaders have bickered, in vain attempts to find solutions when all they have to do is head down to the field and watch the baseball team.

At first they might be shocked to hear the ethnic slurs that fly around the diamond on a daily basis. The thing is, you can make those jokes with no repercussions when there’s an underlying respect. That’s the environment that exists on Brockway’s team.

It is sad that the parents of today’s high school students grew up after May 14, 1947, the day Jackie Robinson’s Dodger teammate Pee Wee Reese quieted a jeering crowd in Cincinnati by draping his white arm around Robinson’s black shoulders, a small step forward in the civil rights movement. Here we are 58 years later and it feels as if we’re moving backward, without a haven from the threat of racial violence. Is this why people marched for integrated schools, so African American students and Latino students could beat each other up?

If the poison of racial division hasn’t changed, neither has the antidote. A hug between baseball players can go a long way.

J.A. Adande can be reached at j.a.adande@latimes.com. To read previous columns by Adande, go to latimes.com/adande.