THE COLLEGES / MIKE HISERMAN : Playoff Snub Leaves Cal Lutheran Stunned

A baseball game was played Sunday in the Cal Lutheran locker room where the mood was light and expectations high.

The Kingsmen baseball team, with 32 wins to its credit against only eight losses, confidently goofed off with a miniature bat and ball while waiting for Coach Rich Hill and staff to return from a meeting with the identity of their next victim. Little did they know it would be the last game they would play together.

Blake Babki, Cal Lutheran’s center fielder, was among a group who had even gone so far as to predict that the Kingsmen would begin defense of their NAIA District 3 tournament championship against Cal Baptist.

A couple of holdouts chose to remain cautious. They reminded everyone that being included in the tournament was not yet a certainty. But such pessimism was quickly hooted down.

And why not? Hadn’t the team set a regular-season school record for wins and winning percentage? The Kingsmen even had a victory over USC, the top-ranked major-college team in the nation.

Finally, Hill, trailed by his trio of assistants, arrived.

“Where do we go? What time do we leave tomorrow?” Mike Clark, the senior ace of the pitching staff, asked excitedly.

Hill had a succinct reply along the lines of: We got fleeced .

He then explained how in a vote of the nine district coaches the team with the best record was snubbed for the five-team playoffs.

The bottom line to the players was that the district didn’t have a CLU.

“The words went in one ear and out the other,” Babki said. “We were waiting for them to say, ‘OK, guys, this is all a joke.’ But you could tell by the look in their eyes that it wasn’t.”

Hill had experienced a similar sinking feeling when he walked into a room at Azusa Pacific earlier in the day. The majority of district coaches already had arrived and Hill immediately sensed tension in the air as he took his seat.

During the long drive from Thousand Oaks to Azusa, Hill and his assistants had laughed and joked. None had given a second thought to the possibility of the Kingsmen getting not so royally flushed.

“The ride home,” Hill said, “was nothing like the ride there.”

Cal Lutheran, one of three independents in the district, received no favors when it came to choosing the teams in the tournament.

Azusa Pacific (28-11), champion of the Golden State Athletic Conference, was in, as was The Master’s College (22-18), an independent that had defeated Cal Lutheran in three of four regular-season games.

What Hill didn’t count on was the coaches taking all three teams that tied for second in the GSAC--Christ College (28-15), Southern California College (28-23) and Cal Baptist (26-17)--over the Kingsmen.

Cal Lutheran’s only losses to district teams this season came against Master’s. The Kingsmen defeated Azusa Pacific, 6-2; Christ College, 12-4; Westmont, 9-4; swept four games from Biola and had the one victory over Master’s.

Still, it should have been no great surprise to Cal Lutheran that the six members of the GSAC closed ranks when it came time to vote on playoff participants. They had every excuse in the world.

The trio of teams that tied for second in their conference all had good overall records. Besides, Cal Lutheran was old news. The Kingsmen were in their final season of NAIA competition; they will compete in the NCAA Division III Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference next year.

Cal Lutheran could have made a much stronger case had it managed so much as a split against Master’s, another independent.

“We made our own bed,” Hill admitted. “All we had to do is split and we’re in. We knew that in November.”

Indeed, Cal Lutheran was in command of its destiny until dropping an 8-2 decision to Master’s on May 2. Hill stressed that point to his players in a meeting Monday, after the initial shock of being left out had fractionally subsided.

“We talked about how we left things out of our control and when you do that anything can happen,” Hill said. “This time we had to rely on somebody’s vote. The same thing could happen at work when you go for a raise. The only thing you can focus on is what you can control.”

Babki, among others, listened somberly.

Only hours before, he had signed a free-agent contract with the Montreal Expos.

“That should have been one of the greatest days in his life and instead he comes to me with swollen eyes,” Hill said. “All I could do was give him a hug.”

In truth, he did more than that. Hill provided a measure of perspective that Babki and Co. would do well to remember. Chances are, they will know greater injustices than these in their lifetime.

The professional contract helped ease Babki’s pain temporarily, yet later in the day when he saw his teammates--his fellow seniors, in particular--he again was overwhelmed.

“What was hard was seeing the other guys who maybe won’t get a chance to go on,” Babki said. “That was the hardest part.

“But me, I have to look ahead. I guess that probably sounds selfish.”

No, just realistic.