Over the fence

By Ed Piper

Writing the story of La Jolla High water polo coach Amy Jennings agonizing over cutting her roster down (see separate article) reminded me of being kept off the freshman baseball travel roster.

I went in to the coach crying, because, having arrived late to the spring sport from basketball, I was relegated to shagging foul balls in practice--but not even on the practice field! I was sent over a fence along the freshman baseball field (which no longer exists at Camarillo High, because the athletic fields were redesigned decades ago). I stood in a dirt field.

Here, my brother and I had played baseball since he was seven and I was eight years old, yet I was in danger of not even making the team in ninth grade, much less getting into a game.

When the travel roster came out for the first away game, I was not on the list. I don't know if I talked to Coach Frank Katch first, or my mother. I may have seen the roster and, bursting into tears, gone straight to the coach after practice. I'm not sure.

In any case, Coach Katch, not knowing me from a hill of beans with many ninth-grade prospects to evaluate, relented and allowed me to travel with the team for that opening game--though not in uniform.

I can picture being in the dugout at the game, and taking part in the activity that was going on. You see, my brother (a grade ahead of me, on the JV team) and I lived baseball, and it was in our blood. We knew the game, knew the rules well, as did many of our teammates, who also had played baseball in youth league since they were eight or so years old.

Long story short, I worked my way onto the active roster, and I ended up being starting shortstop the second half of the season. As the spring season wore on, teammates quit, and when Larry Ramos quit, I quickly grabbed the number-30 jersey he had had all season (he got to the team before me, because he didn't play a winter sport, as I remember) that he left on the locker room bench as he walked out. That was number of Maury Wills, the Dodgers' stellar shortstop, and I hungrily wore it at my shortstop position (though I ended up being quite a bit taller than my idol, while I didn't have the base-stealing speed he had--though I could steal bases).

Those practices spent "on the other side of the fence" were times of loneliness, desperation--I was that close to being cut from the team. I easily could have just walked away.

Both of us Piper boys were pretty dedicated to baseball. I had hurt my arm as a 12-year-old--not from throwing a curveball or from throwing too much, but from not warming up before eighth-grade softball during lunch period at Los Altos Intermediate School. After the season, with my right arm in considerable pain, my parents held council with me on their queen-sized bed in their bedroom, me in tears yet another time. They commiserated with me over my injured arm, which severely affected my pitching, and asked me, "Eddie, what do you want to do?"

I definitely wanted to keep playing the sport I loved. (Basketball didn't enter the picture until later.) So my brother and I, on different teams, continued playing ball in Pony League (ages 13-14), then Colt League (ages 15-16), then American Legion (ages 16 and up), besides high school teams. Even with the injured arm, I came within one popup of a no-hitter as a 14-year-old, when the weak fly dropped behind our second baseman. But I kept my shutout by throwing out the only threat at the plate in the seventh inning.