Baseball Players

A 17-year-old Dorsey High School baseball player died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head while aboard the team bus as it returned from a game Tuesday, police said. Wilford Wright, the team's starting shortstop, was playing Russian roulette in the back of the bus when his .22-caliber pistol went off, said the team's coach, former Dodger outfielder Derrel Thomas. But Los Angeles Police Department investigators said the shooting could have been a suicide.

"In high school, report cards came out and our entire infield failed, so I had to go play short. That's a true story. " - Vernon Wells, 34, on his last infield appearance before playing third base for the New York Yankees last Wednesday. "You want to talk about a guy who is unproven and had a good couple months on steroids, go ahead. " - San Diego Padres catcher Nick Hundley, to UT San Diego, on fellow Padres catcher Yasmani Grandal, expected to return later this month from a 50-game suspension for violating baseball's drug policy.

Charles Chatman was an exceptional running back and safety at Costa Mesa High, but his days as a football player ended while he was on scholarship at Kent State. Now, with some guidance from his uncle, Cleveland Indian batting coach Clarence Jones, Chatman is playing baseball at Concordia and hoping he didn't wait too long to change his focus. "This is what I should have been doing all along, playing baseball," said Chatman, who rushed for 2,500 yards and 29 touchdowns at Costa Mesa in 1994.

"Home Run" is the heartfelt and deeply religious story of a baseball star's struggle with alcoholism and the Christian faith-based recovery group that gets him through. The first moments seem promising as images of a peaceful stretch of farm country fill up the screen. A weathered red barn sits in the distance next to a sprawling white farmhouse with a wraparound porch. But as the camera goes in close, something is wrong - the red is too red, the worn spots too worn. The metaphor is seriously overplayed and we are only in the first inning.

Kyle Abbott couldn't wait for tonight's All-Star game. Not that the Philadelphia Phillie rookie left-hander will play in it. Heck, he probably won't even watch it on television or listen to it on the radio. Nope. What Abbott wants out of this three-day break in the major league schedule is to catch a break himself, a brief respite from the miserable season he has endured thus far. Abbott, once a top prospect in the Angels' organization, is living a pitcher's nightmare.

From the time they were old enough to chew bubble gum, Matt Fisher, Matt Cassel and Conor Jackson have been called baseball wonders. Every step of the way, from T-ball through senior league, they've stood out as all-stars. In youth drafts, they were certain No. 1 picks. If only they had agent Dennis Gilbert to negotiate their pizza deals. Time has flown by. They're now sophomores in high school, Fisher and Cassel at Chatsworth, Jackson at El Camino Real.

The Dodgers will celebrate their 100th anniversary season without the most celebrated pitcher in franchise history, as Sandy Koufax confirmed Tuesday that he has severed his ties with the organization. Koufax, a Hall of Fame member who served as a minor league pitching instructor since 1979, said he has resigned because he is weary of the job. Although Dodger officials called it a one-year sabbatical, Koufax said he has placed no time frame on the resignation.

Seattle Mariners' scout Myron Pines has a different perspective when it comes to evaluating potential major league players. While most scouts are content to sit in the stands and watch, Pines gets a closer look--from the dugout. Pines is in his seventh season as baseball coach at Santiago High School, where he helped turn around a struggling program. Last year, he led the Cavaliers to their first outright league championship since 1969.

As a ninth-grader, Jorge Piedra spent time at the house of Kevin Stromsborg, a teammate at Sherman Oaks Notre Dame High. Many times he would find himself hanging out with some of Kevin's older brother Ryan's friends, who were baseball players at USC. Geoff Jenkins, Gabe Alvarez and Jacques Jones were among the many Trojans Piedra met, and as a result, Piedra knew what he wanted to do after he finished high school.

Thirty years ago Monday night, in the cavernous confines of near-empty Anaheim Stadium, Denny Doyle doubled home Mickey Rivers in the bottom of the 15th inning to lift the California Angels to a 4-3 victory over the Boston Red Sox. Barry Raziano pitched two innings of relief to earn what was his only major league victory. Raziano, who runs a construction company in Louisiana, said recently he has no recollection of the game, which puts him in the overwhelming majority.

Mike Trout got a $20,000 pay raise from the Angels, and I know I'm supposed to feel something. If someone could explain to me what a pay raise is, it might help. I really don't understand why anyone cares what Trout makes unless they have a daughter who might marry him. You start comparing what people get paid, and it never goes well. I'd like to see the president stand up to Jim Mora , and tell me I don't deserve to be paid more than he does. Dennis Rodman can do his job, as we learned recently, and he was paid nothing.

They're not old enough to shave, not old enough to drive a car, and certainly not old enough to see an R-rated movie without an accompanying adult. But watch how this year's freshman baseball players take on any and all challenges starting this weekend. Already, one member of the class of 2016, shortstop Chase Strumpf from San Juan Capistrano JSerra, has committed to UCLA — before taking his first swing in high school. The player who could be hitting home runs immediately is outfielder Blake Rutherford of West Hills Chaminade.

— The files are crammed into boxes, stacks upon stacks of boxes, shoved to the side of the room. This is prime real estate, a rectangular conference room on the 25th floor of a Manhattan office building. No one uses the room these days. This is the retirement office of Donald Fehr. Fehr led the baseball players' union for 26 years and three work stoppages. He retired in 2009, and the union provided him with a room to write his memoirs, keep his files, conduct his business, or just come in and say hello every now and then.

It was a familiar tune, one played on an instrument Joe Blanton knows well: the second fiddle. Blanton, who signed a two-year, $15-million deal with the Angels last week, had an earned-run average of 4.59 or above in six of seven years and gave up 27 homers or more in three of four years. But his biggest crime in the eyes of Angels fans is not that he, in his own words, "catches too much of the barrel" of bats. It's that he is not Zack Greinke. Greinke, a right-hander who pitched well for the Angels in September, signed a six-year, $147-million deal with the Dodgers and was introduced at a glitzy Los Angeles news conference Tuesday.

He didn't look like much of a revolutionary. He looked like an economist, which he was, only with some serious attitude. Kind of bookish, but with an unnerving gleam in his eye. The last guy you ever wanted to get into a fight with was Marvin Miller. He was a bulldog, feisty and intractable and fearless. He was 5 feet 8 and 150 pounds. He had silver hair, a thin mustache and looked like somebody who went through three packs a day. And just might have been the most influential man in sports history.

I need to get a message to the Dodgers and Angels, and I need to do it quick. A baseball player suddenly became available this week who is just their type. He has star power. He plays a cornerstone infield position. He is insanely overpaid. He has won more World Series rings than Adrian Gonzalez. He has more home runs than Albert Pujols. Only a handful of teams can afford him, but our locals have fistfuls of money. Only a few teams could endure his distractions, but Hollywood sells tickets to distractions.

Players to watch in 2012: Pitchers Tyler Brashears, El Toro, Sr. UC Irvine signee was 11-2 with 0.77 ERA Chase DeJong, Long Beach Wilson, Sr. Let's see if anyone can beat him Max Fried, Harvard-Westlake, Sr. Left-hander with elite skills Justin Garza, Bonita, Sr. Was 13-0 in 2011 Lucas Giolito, Harvard-Westlake, Sr. Threw a 99 mph fastball in winter ball Cole Irvin, Servite, Sr. Oregon signee throws strikes...

What makes baseball players like Jose Reyes of the New York Mets and Adrian Gonzalez of the Boston Red Sox such good hitters? It might have something to do with the time of day (or night) when the umpire yells, “Play ball!” You see, professional ballplayers are just like the rest of us – some of them are morning people and some of them are night owls. And as anyone who has ever had to drag himself to a 7 a.m. breakfast meeting after staying up to catch the end of “The Colbert Report” knows, it’s hard to perform your best when your work hours are in conflict with your natural sleep cycle.

Former Angels player Eddie Yost, nicknamed “The Walking Man” because of the many base on balls he drew, died in Weston, Mass., on Tuesday. He was 86. Primarily a third baseman, Yost drew 1,614 walks - a total that still ranks 11th all-time. He spent his first 14 seasons with the original Senators, garnering All-Star honors in 1952, and retired in 1962 after two seasons with the Angels. Yost led the league in walks six times, and in on-base percentage twice. His career on-base percentage of .394 is 85th best in major league history and is better than such notables as Rod Carew and Joe Morgan.

Sammi Kane Kraft, whose real-life baseball skills landed her the role of the pitching ace in the only film she ever made, 2005's "Bad News Bears," died early Tuesday in a car accident in Los Angeles. She was 20. She was a passenger in an Audi that was speeding on the westbound 10 Freeway near Crenshaw Boulevard about 1:30 a.m. when it rear-ended a big rig and was then struck by another car, according to the California Highway Patrol. Kraft was pronounced dead at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, said her brother, Frankie Kraft.