Baseball Teams

Sabrina Sexton and Janelle Frese are on opposite ends of the spectrum, but fighting the same fight for women's professional sports. Sexton, 19, is a year out of Capistrano Valley High School and second-guessing her lack of attention to her studies. Frese, 31, teaches special education in Anaheim and not only won a Southern Section title at Kennedy High in 1984 as a player, but also coached Cypress to a section title eight years ago.

Gordon Blakeley's life-long dream of playing major league baseball ended in the Detroit Tigers' minor league system nine years ago. Blakeley, playing for the Tigers' Double-A team in Montgomery, watched gifted teammates Alan Trammell, Dan Petry, Steve Kemp and Jason Thompson and realized that "I wasn't good enough to play major league baseball, that it was time to get on with my life."

West Los Angeles College baseball Coach Art Harris thinks his team will be a contender for the Mountain Valley Conference crown, but Santa Monica College Coach Marty Berson considers his team a long shot at best to win the Metropolitan Conference. Harris: "We definitely see ourselves as competitive." Berson: "We'll probably be picked to finish fourth, but I'm not crying over it--this is the best team we've had in three years."

Mike Witt was upset with himself. The senior right-hander had led Servite to its first Southern Section 4-A baseball championship game, against Arcadia. He had a 1-0 lead after two innings, only to a let the Apaches tie the score in the third. "I was pumped up pretty good," Witt said. "But their first two guys each drive the ball into the gap and they score. I'm thinking to myself 'Oh no.' " Witt settled down and pitched a three-hitter. Servite went on to a 6-1 victory.

Profit margins are eroding, operating expenses are spiraling upward, start-up costs are astronomical and still rising, and Congress is talking about doing away with some of the industry's cherished legal protections. Throw in a shortage of qualified labor, strained relations with key customers, a lousy economic climate, and it is a wonder why anybody would want to get into this business. But when the business is big league baseball, investors are ready to play--even if the ante is $95 million.

Parents, coaches and others will pore over records, rosters and statistics this week, trying to make some sense out of the 52nd Little League World Series. But when the Cypress Federal Little League all-stars step into Lamade Stadium at 5 p.m. today for their opener against Toms River American of New Jersey, the biggest factor may be how well 11-and 12-year-olds handle being under a microscope, not how well they play.

For more than 60 years, Tucson was synonymous with spring training. Then 13 months ago the Colorado Rockies and Arizona Diamondbacks decamped for Maricopa County, taking with them tens of millions of tourist dollars and leaving gaping holes in the city's coffers and its sports landscape. Chris Keeney thinks he can fill both voids by bringing spring training back. Only his idea has nothing to do with baseball. Keeney believes Tucson's climate, location and population is perfectly suited to professional soccer — and he has managed to persuade six of Major League Soccer's premier teams to come down this month and take a look.

They're a ragtag baseball team that plays all home games, 20 men with criminal records and donated uniforms. They gallop around a gut-ugly dirt diamond where foul balls bounce off guard towers and umpires take the heckles of unruly fans dead seriously. Theirs is a home-field advantage so imposing that opponents sometimes fail to show up. Their own coach can't fill out his lineup card until game time because he never knows which starters have been sent to the hole or confined to lock-down.