Inner-City Diamonds Have Become Flawed

The third baseman is wearing a Milwaukee Brewer cap. The first baseman is wearing a Chicago White Sox cap.

The left fielder, a Chicago Cub cap. A pitcher, a Cleveland Indian cap.

The headgear is clean, brightly colored, and perfectly acceptable but for one thing.

The four guys play for the same team.

Meet the Locke High Saints, baseball birthplace of future Hall of Famers Eddie Murray and Ozzie Smith.

Current residence of a starting lineup that can’t even afford identical uniforms.

“Well,” says scout Phil Pote, leaning against a rusting fence and cold wind last week. “I guess this is what they mean by diversity.”

Another word might be travesty.

As the Dodgers and Angels prepare to begin potential championship seasons, the Southland’s baseball soul continues to erode.

Wasn’t it only yesterday when our inner-city fields were filled with the likes of Reggie Smith, Bobby Tolan, Bob Watson, Eric Davis, Darryl Strawberry . . . heck, even Sparky Anderson and Gene Mauch?

Unfortunately, it was only yesterday--Wednesday, actually--when Locke engaged Fremont in a game that slid spikes-high into those traditions.

Fremont has produced more major league players than any other high school in the United States--23 at last count--yet there are one-fourth that many people in the stands for the opening pitch.

Six fans. Sitting on a three-row set of bleachers. Watching a field where the infield grass needs mowing, the hole in home plate needs repairing, and the bases move more than the baserunners.

They are not watching a scoreboard, because there is none.

The best thing that could be said about the next three hours is that nobody is injured, always a possibility here because the third-base line is adjacent to the outside lane on the track.

When a meet is taking place at the same time, like today, it is useful not only for the batters to wear helmets, but also the hurdlers.

The baseball is every bit as good as the park.

Locke plays hard, but two of its starters didn’t even pick up a ball until they were in high school. Coach Roger Oxley has to be careful about whom he benches, what with only two players sitting on that bench.

As for Fremont, effort exceeds reasonable expectation.

This is supposed to be our city sport, you know. Los Angeles’ first love. The first way out. Little George Anderson and those big Murray boys.

A birthright. Looking like a birthmark. Destroyed from the inside out.

It begins with the great inner-city athletes. They have determined, through extensive research with a remote control, that baseball is no longer hip.

“Lot of my friends say it is a boring sport,” says Adam Kennybrew, a pitching and quarterback prospect from Locke. “Everybody wants to play basketball or football.”

It continues with school administrators, looking to cut costs wherever they can.

Locke players wear different caps because team caps cost them $7 each. This year, the money goes into a general fund, not a baseball fund as in the past.

The players simply wear something from home.

And home is where many fine inner-city athletes will stay. Kids once blessed with the options ranging from USC to the Carolina League. Kids who now have none after trying, and failing, in the more difficult task of becoming the next Shaq or Emmitt.

Over the hill in the San Fernando Valley, schools are still producing first-round draft choices. But where it started, it has ended.

“I can’t remember the last time I’ve been to inner-city Los Angeles to look at a player,” says Chuck McMichael, a national cross-checking scout for the Kansas City Royals. “In those schools, it seems like it’s become a non-feature sport.”

It can be different. If you can believe an old scout and a flashy agent.

The scout is Pote, currently a Seattle Mariner consultant who has been working the inner-city for 40 years. The agent is Dennis Gilbert, a former star at Gardena High.

With $300,000 from Gilbert, they have offered to build a youth baseball stadium at Southwest College on Imperial Highway.

Something to bring the good ones back. Get a few dreams simmering again.

“Nothing fancy, just the same thing the kids in the suburbs have,” Pote says.

Gilbert, whose clientele includes the likes of Barry Bonds and Mike Piazza, still remembers when lives were changed on such diamonds.

“It used to be really something special to play down there,” he says. “I wonder if it can’t be that way again.”

The Board of Trustees is reportedly considering the idea. We hope they squeeze it in their glove. And soon.

Meanwhile, with the tying run on base in the top of the final inning, a Fremont batter fouls a ball off his foot, but the ball is picked up by the Locke pitcher and turned into a double play.

The home plate umpire shrugs. Locke wins, 7-6. Saint infielders run into the arms of their catcher.

The kid wearing the finely decorated chapeau of the Carolina Panthers.