City Baseball Bracing for the Monday Blues

While most of the other guys his age were hanging out Saturday night, Greg Nealon was home coddling children. The Poly High left-hander, obedient son that he is, sacrificed a good chunk of his weekend by agreeing to serve as a baby sitter for his mom.

If that sounds like the definitive desultory weekend, it gets worse. He will spend an action-packed Sunday playing catch and jogging.

Nealon’s coach, Jerry Cord, is not the dictatorial sort. But since Poly is playing a big game Monday against Sylmar, Cord wants to make sure Nealon stretches properly before the game.

Cradling babies is OK. Cradling his left arm is not.

For the rest of the 1988 high school baseball season, players from City Section 4-A Division schools will be conducting their own weekend workouts. Because of a yearly rotation in scheduling begun three seasons ago, City teams in the Valley are playing league games on Mondays and Wednesdays instead of Tuesdays and Thursdays, forcing players to practice on weekends. Campus diamonds, once the domain of the aluminum-can wielding weekend warriors, are once again being taken over by aluminum-bat toting varsity players attempting to stay sharp before important league games.

Yet, if any player decides to sleep in, nobody will know, because City coaches are forbidden--by the City Section athletic code--from participating in or supervising practices on Saturdays. Sunday practices are forbidden statewide by California Interscholastic Federation bylaws.

Where 4-A baseball teams once had Mondays to prepare for Tuesday games, coaches all over the Valley must trust players to run, hit, throw or do nothing at all.

“I hate it,” Sylmar Coach John Klitsner said. “I mean practices on Monday were always lousy. Monday, hell, you normally just try to get through the day.

“We pride ourselves on putting out a quality product, and now we have to play after the kids have had two days off.”

Right about now, Klitsner is hoping senior pitcher Olonzo Woodfin is playing catch with a friend or teammate, because the hard-throwing left-hander is scheduled to start Monday’s key East Valley League game against Nealon.

If Woodfin, who has a history of arm and shoulder stiffness, abstains from stretching exercises over the weekend, he might be risking permanent injury.

“If he sits on his butt over the weekend, his career could be over on Tuesday,” San Fernando Coach Steve Marden said.

Marden and Chatsworth Coach Bob Lofrano spearheaded two unsuccessful attempts to change the plan. The first petition was presented in 1986 when they learned the City was scheduled to begin rotating playing days because softball teams--which had always played on Mondays--sought and received a fair shake.

“Softball coaches had been after us for years--I’m talking 10, 11, 12 years--to have playing days moved,” City Commissioner Hal Harkness said. “Just as the 4-A coaches are unhappy now, softball coaches were unhappy for a decade or more.

“Nobody wants to play on Monday.”

Yet, because of the limited availability of baseball officials and playing fields, the system could not handle softball and baseball on the same day. The City’s Interscholastic Athletic Committee (IAC)--the section’s governing body composed of teachers, administrators, coaches and staff personnel--approved a plan in December, 1985, that initiated a four-year rotation among softball and baseball teams in the 3-A and 4-A divisions. In 1986, the first year of the rotation, all 3-A baseball teams played on Mondays and Wednesdays. Last season, 3-A softball followed that format. This year, it is 4-A baseball’s turn, then 4-A softball will complete the sequence in 1989.

“It seems like the most equitable way to handle it,” Harkness said. “It’s once every four years, which is fair. By the time they get used to it, it’ll all be over and somebody else’s turn.”

When Marden and Lofrano first heard of the plan three years ago, they went to work, gathering literature suggesting that players, particularly pitchers, need to work out before making a start. With games on Mondays, coaches could not supervise or ensure that a pitcher went through the proper stretching regimen. Marden said the pair presented signed letters from experts such as Robert Kerlan and Frank Jobe, two highly regarded physicians specializing in sports medicine, as well as documentation from trainers and exercise physiologists.

The literature was examined by a school district physician--and was essentially ruled invalid, Harkness said.

“I think they had it reviewed by a team of veterinarians,” said Granada Hills Coach Darryl Stroh, whose teams have won five 4-A titles. “Anybody who knows anything about pitching knows you have to throw the day before you start.”

Said Harkness: “There’s long been a protracted argument over the differences in the preparation of baseball and softball pitchers. There’s just no medical evidence--not to say it doesn’t exist--that suggests it hurts a player (not to throw).”

When Plan A was shot down, Marden and Lofrano reloaded last fall, formulating a proposal that would have moved City track meets, held on Fridays, to Thursdays. Baseball games would be played on Wednesdays and Fridays. Only track programs at schools with 4-A baseball teams would have been affected. An informal poll by Marden and Lofrano indicated “somewhere around 80-85%” of the track coaches questioned were in favor of the plan, Lofrano said.

“It would have worked out great for everyone,” Lofrano said. “Track kids could have run Thursday and turned right around and competed in invitationals on Saturday,” Lofrano said. “And nobody wants to be at school on a Friday timing a track meet. They want to get the heck out of there.”

Taft track Coach Tom Stevenson, whose teams have won two consecutive City 4-A championships, was in favor of the plan three years ago. He said a Thursday meet would have limited track workouts, however.

“We’d only have two workout days,” he said. “We could run on Monday and Tuesday, but nobody does anything the day before a meet. And if we tried to have workouts on Friday, it would be tough getting anybody to stick around, especially kids that have to be bused in.”

Stevenson agreed that the plan would have allowed some track athletes more of a chance to compete in Saturday invitationals.

“But for the average track team it would be a good plan,” he said.

During IAC discussion, the City coordinator in charge of officials indicated that there might be a shortage of qualified track officials, because Southern Section schools also hold meets on Thursdays.

“Actually, they said there might be a ‘degree of difficulty’ in finding enough track personnel,” Marden said. “Not that it was impossible, just difficult.”

Marden then pointed out that track meets held before spring break always have been held on Thursdays, but he had a feeling the issue had already been decided.

“The whole impression I got, all boiled down, was that they told us, ‘If the others had to suffer, you have to suffer,’ ” Marden said. “What hurt the most was that we felt like we presented a viable alternative and it was ignored.”

Ignored to the tune of a “33-1 vote, or something ridiculous like that,” Marden said.

Harkness did not have actual figures but recalled that the opinion of the committee was overwhelmingly in favor of the status quo.

“It was virtually unanimous,” Harkness said. “I think IAC felt that one out of four years isn’t going to hurt anyone terribly. Two out of four, three out of four or four out of four, I could understand.

“Most coaches can’t even remember what happened four years ago.”

Now 0 for 2, Lofrano and Marden have resigned themselves to doing the best they could with Monday playing dates. But it wasn’t easy giving up.

“High school baseball is a mainstay of the athletic programs of the City,” Marden said. “It’s damn near one of the premier programs in the nation. Can you see the City asking Banning or Carson to play their football games on a Monday afternoon?

“None of us are trying to deny softball teams a chance to play--we all hate Monday games and they shouldn’t have to play them, either. We just thought we devised a pretty good plan and it was shot down senselessly.”

Lofrano said he knew 4-A baseball was doomed to Monday play when he told IAC at the October hearing that the throwing motions of a softball and baseball pitcher differ.

“I just sort of threw that out there on the table, and they looked at me and said, ‘Oh, come on.’ That should tell you a little about what they know about the effects of throwing overhand.”

First-year Venice Coach Kirk Alexander was an assistant when the Gondoliers played on Mondays and Wednesdays in 1986, and he vividly remembers the problems the scheduling caused.

“It almost, well, forced you to try to practice on the weekend,” he said. “It was very difficult for Friday practices, too, knowing there was a two-day layoff coming up. The kids were thinking about the weekend when we had a game two days away--and no practices in-between.”

Venice, however, still managed to win a fifth 3-A title that season, its third in a row.

“For all the problems it was supposed to cause, we never heard much criticism from the 3-A coaches,” Harkness said.

East and Mid-Valley teams are scheduled to play their first Monday games this week. East Valley schools started two weeks ago. Woodfin, perhaps the Valley area’s top senior prospect, pitched a complete game in an 8-0 win over Fairfax on Monday, but he might have been feeling the effects of the weekend.

“He wasn’t sharp, that’s for sure,” Klitsner said. “Two days off, how can you tell how that will affect a kid?”

As he did last week, Klitsner instructed Woodfin to do running and stretching exercises this weekend. Woodfin complied last week, Klitsner said, but what happens, if for some reason, Woodfin can’t?

“Then he’ll be tight, congested and all clogged up in there,” Klitsner said. “That’s what he’ll feel if he doesn’t do it.”

Lofrano said Chatsworth players are also scheduled to work out this weekend, and thereafter, without a coach. He said his players won’t have any trouble finding a place to practice.

“I’ll be out on the golf course,” he said. “But you’d be surprised how many parents and teachers have ended up with keys to the field all of a sudden.”