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We had a BIG game coming up Saturday against Quartz Hill and a Sunday double-header on the final day of the season against San Fernando.  For the most part, our pitchers were rested.  I had to decide who I was going to throw against Quartz Hill.  Big Breck had just thrown a great game for us on Wednesday night in Palmdale, and I felt he’d be ready to throw one of the games in the double-header coming up on Sunday. 

Both Chili and BullOxen were well rested.  One good thing about the ’91 team is that the starters on our pitching staff were getting the ball like ONCE a week.  That helped.  And I had three guys that I wouldn’t hesitate to throw against anyone.  Big Breck had beat Quartz Hill earlier in the season but he had just thrown. 

The way the mathematics worked was as follows:  Even if Quartz Hill beat us we could still win the Division Title if we swept San Fernando on Sunday.  But I didn’t want it to come down to that.  That’s why this Quartz Hill game was so huge.  The other problem we faced was that all three games were going to be on the road….and I shuddered when I thought about the condition of the field at San Fernando High.  If you would like to get a better description of what that field was like read my earlier Post “Landmines, Potholes and Three Sheets of Paper.”

In addition, we had ruined Quartz Hills’ day now TWICE.  And we weren’t hesitant to remind them that “Their BARN’s were on Fire!!”  There was definitely some bad blood between us.  They had a good ballclub and I also knew how hard it was to beat a good team THREE times in a row, even if one of the wins was a year ago!  So not only were we going to have to beat them for the third straight time….we were going to have to do it at their yard.  But we had our pitchers lined up and rested and I decided to go with Chili. 

We had also turned around our attendance problem that we faced mid-season.  While we weren’t bringing eighteen guys to the field every game, we usually had twelve or thirteen.  Really, we only had an attendance problem ONE GAME that whole summer.  Unfortunately, it was against Chatsworth.  Apart from that one game, we actually did a pretty good job of having our horses there. 

Hank, Weap, General and I were pretty upbeat about rattling off five-in-a-row.  It was clutch. 

I can say this.  We were ready for these last three games.  There was nothing for me to whine about regarding certain players not being there.  Or our pitchers being out of gas…. as was the case in 1990. 

And I can also say this:  Our guys wanted it.  I really believed we were going to sneak through the back door and win the Division Title.  We had been chasing San Fernando all season long in the standings.  We had never been in sole possession of first place the whole year.  It would have been a great story to steal it from them the last weekend of the season.  

We were bringin’ it in!  The runway was in sight.  Plenty of visibility.  No wind.  I liked our chances, even on the road.  All we had to do is land that plane!!!!

There was a different vibe at the ballpark in ’91.  And it all was a result of what we did in 1990.  The good news about 1990 was that everyone in the 20th District now knew who we were.  The bad news was that everyone in the 20th District now knew who we were.  And this is how our opponents treated a game with Verdugo….like it was The Biggest Game of Their Lives!  They were TOTALLY GEARED UP to play Verdugo………….whether we were ready for it or not.

And this was a lesson we had to learn in 1991, myself included.  We kind of struggled offensively in ’91, but looking back on it, it was because the caliber of pitching we were facing had been upgraded.  Teams were coming at us now with their number one or two every game.  And it was tough at first.  I wanted to build a dominant Team.  And by the end of the ’91 season I had learned this lesson:  I can’t let another team catch us off guard because they treated the game like it was the biggest game of their lives and we didn’t. 

If we were going to get to the next level….we were going to have to start preparing for each and every game like it was the game of our lives.  It was the only way.  It was fun being the most hated Team in the 20th District.  I liked the controversy that usually surrounded our Team.  I liked the way the headlines in the Newspapers would just magically gravitate towards US.  Something was being built that was bigger than any of us.  And looking back on it all, I can see how it all came together.  Many of the final pieces of the puzzle were discovered in ’91.  Looking back on it all….’91 was a GREAT year for us.

Adding Hank and Weap to the coaching staff was clutch.  Myself, General, Hank and Weap took the losses that season very HARD.  We wanted to accomplish in ’91 what we almost did in ’90…..reach the playoffs.  And we damn near did it in ’91 as well.

My phone was still ringing when we got beat.  Guys would call up after a loss and vent a little bit.  I always liked that.  This started in ’90 and continued until the Team disbanded after the ’93 season.  This particular Verdugo tradition came to a climax late in ’93….I will write a post about that at some point and I already have a Title for that post…..it will be named “The Call”……

I started to make it a requirement for all pitchers to be at every game even if they weren’t pitching.  Big Breck was one of the pioneers of this tradition.  He made it “cool” to come to games and just kind of hang out and shoot the shit.  Bark out a few “Ahhh’s!”  Get in some rags.  Wear some shades.  We found out that the usually quiet, reserved, and stoic “Big Breck” was actually a pretty funny guy to be around. 

Since we had some home games in ’91 at both Stengel and Glendale High, we started making some of the guys do the field prep before the games.  They always did a great job.  They also dragged the field after the games and fixed the mound and home plate areas.  After spending so much time on the road in ’90, we appreciated just having a field.  And the way we cleaned up a field before and after a game was second to none.  We kept both Stengel and Glendale High immaculate.

I was figuring how to tweek the schedule to our advantage.  Getting on the phone and bullshitting the other coaches that we needed to reschedule a game.  I started to use some pretty good excuses.  There were a couple of coaches in ’91 who I ran into on the phone that were better than I was at it.  I kept learning.  By the time ’92 came around, I was the best bullshitter in the League at “tweeking” a schedule to my own advantage.

I started handling the umps a lot better.  Yeah, I got tossed once in ’91….for turning my hat sideways!  But overall, I was getting better at it.  It’s a big, big part of the whole deal.  I remember feeling like I finally had it down when we swept a twin-bill at Newhall-Saugus.  Chili was on the mound and just painting the corners.  The Blue started pinching us a little.  Instead of going off like I used to….all I said was “C’mon now Blue don’t be taking away those corners from us now.”

You know what he said?

He said “Okay.”

That’s STRONG in my book.

We even tried doing a “Bullpen” thing.  We would start games at Stengel with a couple of pitchers down in the bullpen area with my JV catcher from CV Larry Kimbell.  Lounge chairs, Walkie-Talkie….jackets…the whole deal.  This went well for a couple of games until we had a guy get in trouble on the mound.  I got on the radio…NO ANSWER!  I looked down there and everyone was sitting around yacking with each other.  I walked down to the bullpen area waving my arms around at Kimbell.  Big Breck was in a lounge chair with his sunglasses on!  All he said was “Ahhhh Gee!”

That was the last game we tried that.

Other guys who were not playing we put in charge of the dugout.  Their job was to scan the field…and say “get outta my dugout” when someone looked in our dugout. 

I started working the phones with the players.  I had fewer conversations with the Team.  I talked to each guy on the phone between games.  I went over their stats with them.  I realized that the players WANTED to know their stats.  This was 20 years ago.  I couldn’t email them to anyone.  It was the only way it could be done.  I could get feedback from the players when I spoke with them in between games on the phone.  I could tell them what to expect at the next game.  By the time we got to the field, we’d go over signs and that was about it. 

I started to SELL.  I always had the FIRE.  But when I was on the phone with the players I started to sell.  What was I selling?  The fact that whoever we were up against wanted a piece of us.  Not everyone was buying into it.  But by the end of ’91…pretty much everyone figured it out.  We had the better ballclub and because of that….people wanted to take us out.  Guys were starting to get really pissed when we’d get beat by a bunch of clowns.  We started to believe in ourselves.  Some guys were flat out sick of it.  I loved it!

Between-inning-Hockey was starting to develop.  I don’t think “Flip” came about until ’92.

But all of this added up.  By the end of the season we learned that every game had to be treated like it was the Super Bowl. 

These were the pieces of the Verdugo puzzle that were starting to take shape in ’91.  By ’92…we had a turnkey operation. 

So as we go through the ’91 season here on the blog remember that EVERYBODY was coming after us.  Now that I think about it, the ’91 campaign was a BIG step forward for Verdugo.  Because we did what we did with everbody coming at us.  The ’90 Team caught a few Teams off-guard.  And there were a few teams that caught our ’91 squad off-guard.

But make no mistake about it…..we were onto something.  There was a monster growing in La Crescenta.  And the fury of two seasons of not advancing to the playoffs was about to awaken a very, very, ANGRY Sleeping Giant!

And the name of this “Sleeping Giant?”

Well……..let’s just say his name was “1992.”

When you’re building a Ballclub…you gotta always keep an eye on the future.  I liked the nucleus we had coming back from the 1990 Team.  BullOxen, Sammy, Rogers, Turner, Moose Saltsman, and Big Breck.  Through a rather strange set of circumstances, we even got Chili back on the Roster.  I’ll explain the details of how that came about later.  But this was a great group of players coming back for the ’91 campaign.  “Moose” had seen limited action in the ’90 campaign from an injury he received while being bowled over by a baserunner at the plate in the first game of our history.  Heroically, he held on to that ball.  He was an All-League catcher in ’91 at the High School and led the Pacific League in Homers with Nine.

In Legion ball you gotta have three pitchers you would throw against ANYBODY.  Three guys you had the confidence in that they could (on any given day) beat any team.  We had that…with Bull, Big Breck and Chili. 

We still needed depth for the staff and I liked who we picked up in the off-season.  JR Workman, Brendan Cowsill, Brett Miller were great acquisitions.  We all know about Workman’s career with Verdugo.  Cowsill was playing on the Basketball team at CV and I knew up front that he would see limited time with us that first season.  But still….you gotta love “B.”  Brett Miller was a football star who threw pretty well and had a great attitude.  These were three guys I felt would develop into GREAT pitchers.  They were all only 16….once again…our future was looking bright.

You can never have enough pitching in Legion.  I learned that in 1990.  We added in Josh Willis, another Basketball star.  We didn’t expect to see much of him that summer either but he had a live arm.  I still was leary about what happened to our pitchers in 1990…I didn’t want to have to go through that again.  I also picked up Paul “Go-Go” Gomez from St. Francis.  He had thrown about 60 innings that season for their Varsity Squad.  While he wasn’t a “stopper” by any stretch…he had shown that season he could rack up some innings.  I was planning on using him against some of the weaker teams to give the other guys a rest if need be.

We also had Rogers who could throw an inning here and there and not hurt you and I also brought along a left-handed junior-to-be from my JV squad at CV named Eric Cadena.  There’s an old saying with Pitching…you can never have enough of it, and you can never have too many lefties.  While Cadena never developed into what I thought he might become, he did keep coming to the ball park that summer.  He was a great kid,  had a great attitude, and worked hard.

We had a hell of a lot of guys who could pitch on the ’91 squad.  But still, the Roster was too big.  We had eighteen guys at the start of the season.  I must say I really liked the economy of the ’90 Team.  At the end of that season…we had about 11-12 guys.  Everybody had a role…and they understood what that role was.  Going to the Ballpark was for those guys just like going to work.  It just…..worked.

I also brought along a couple of other players from my JV Team at CV that summer that probably didn’t belong on the Roster. 

We picked up a couple of GREAT position players as well before the ’91 season.  Ivan Moreno, an outfielder/first baseman from Maranatha and Yves Brancheau, a second baseman from St. Francis.  Moreno was also a Football star at Maranatha. 

I rounded out the Roster with Mike Parker….the starting catcher for the CV Baseball team in 1990.  Parker had red-shirted his freshman year at a college in ’91, and I felt he could help us.  Defensively he was a very good catcher.  He had a reputation off all-defense, no-hit…..and he had a little chip on his shoulder about his hitting. I liked that.  He definitely had something to prove about his hitting so it was going to be interesting to see how he panned out.  Moose Saltsman was going to be our catcher this season, but Parker was going to be a solid backup.  Rogers was a damn-good back-up catcher as well.  Behind the plate, we were going to be solid.

It was a pretty strong Roster.  But we still were going to have scheduling conflicts.  The conflicts were going to arise when Cowsill and Willis were at Basketball functions and also when Moreno and Miller were at Football functions.  It was what it was…and I was prepared to deal with it. 

We had a new look with the uniforms.  The Post had given us about $1500.00 that season.  We had our own catchers gear.  We had our own helmets.  And we had THE GATORADE cooler.  By the way, I still have that thing in my garage!  Ahhh Verdugo!!!!

We also had a year of experience under our belts, so we kind of knew what to expect. 

They moved us into a new Division.  The Northern Division.  What did that mean?  More traveling into Antelope Valley.  Yep…Lancaster, Quartz Hill, Newhall-Saugus, Palmdale, Little Rock.  Load up the shit boys cause we were gonna be driving up the 14 Freeway every time we turn around.  The other squad in our division?  San Fernando.

And while we didn’t get our own field like we wanted…there was a coaching change for the Glendale team.  And the new guy wasn’t much cooler than the old guy.  He was going to “let us” use the field for a total of four games that summer.  Wow……..how generous.  And I had to kiss some major ass to get those four games.  But it was better than nothing.  But behind the scenes, ‘Ol Gee was getting to know the Parks and Recreation Director from the City of Glendale.  He took a liking to me.  I just kind of did my best to develop a good relationship with that guy and waited for the Glendale coaches to make a mistake with the field (which they ultimately did). 

Yes-sir-ree………it wasn’t a PERFECT season for us…but it was a damn-good season.  And by the time it was over…..I had STOLEN Stengel Field from the Glendale Team.  There were a couple of other pieces in the puzzle that we had to find before our break-through year in ’92, but hi-jacking their field was HUGE!!!!!!!!!

We had two more additions to the ’91 Team.  Coaches.  Hank and Weap joined the staff.  What great additions.  It made life a lot easier for ‘Ol General and I.  Hank and Weap….there couldn’t be a Verdugo game without those guys being a part of it.  They were all geared up for it too!  They wore the new uniforms proudly.  They had earned it.  And it was an honor to have them want to be a part of the future of Verdugo.  Yes indeed, a great tradition was starting to evolve……and we all had front row seats!