Phil Pote

Joe Ciccarella spent last summer touring the world with the U.S. national team. He drove in a team-high 34 runs in 34 games in Canada, Japan and Cuba and returned for his junior season at Loyola Marymount intent on achieving something special. "I became a lot more confident because of that international experience," said Ciccarella, a first baseman who graduated from Santa Ana Mater Dei and was selected in the fourth round of the 1988 draft by the Philadelphia Phillies.

We are baseball. We are Jackie Robinson sprinting through an overgrown sandlot in Pasadena. We are Walter Johnson stalking through a dreary oil field in Olinda. We are Eddie Murray and Ozzie Smith fighting through the clutter to discover greatness in south Los Angeles. At the same high school. On the same team. We are Don Drysdale and Robin Yount playing in San Fernando Valley towns separated by 11 miles, Bob Lemon and Tony Gwynn playing for Long Beach high schools separated by five minutes.

Duke Russell is in a familiar place. He's sitting at the back of a meeting room in his dark blue glen plaid suit. His gray hair is slicked back. His talking points are typed out. He's ready to make his case. When his turn comes, he voices the appeal he's made for years to local college leaders, politicians and others. "We have to save the field," he says. On this night, he's at a meeting of the East Hollywood Neighborhood Council on the campus of Los Angeles City College. The field — or rather, the land he hopes to preserve for a sports field — is just outside.

Two months after the ax fell, the bodies are coming back to life, if not the spirits. Five physical education teachers in the Los Angeles Community College District returned to work this week, two months after being laid off as part of what was called "an overdue change in education direction" by Dr. Monroe Richman, then board president. When the district discovered it lacked enough teachers to complete the change, the instructors were brought back Sept. 5 as temporary, long-term substitutes.

It is uncertain whether Ozzie Smith will somersault across the Cooperstown stage today and directly into the Hall of Fame. The Wizard of Oz, at 47, may not be able to generate the acrobatics that characterized his highlight-reel performances as one of the greatest fielding shortstops of all time and enabled him, said Jack Clark, the Dodger hitting coach and a Smith teammate with the St. Louis Cardinals, to "demoralize" the opposition with his glove alone. "It was magical," Clark said.

On the field, they are fierce rivals. But on this rainy Wednesday afternoon, they are on the same team, meeting at a house in Encino to share some chili and some strategy as they take on the biggest struggle of their professional lives. Jim O'Brien, athletic director and baseball coach at L. A. Harbor College, has been coaching for 23 years. Art Harris, coach at West Los Angeles College, has put in 21 years in a collegiate dugout.

For 28 years, Earl Brown Jr. has tracked the comings and goings of Southern Pacific Railroad cars, working the graveyard shift. A former professional ballplayer in the Dodger farm system, Brown kept his afternoons free so he could coach--and later scout--inner-city youths. During the late 1960s and into the mid '70s, he drove around Los Angeles picking up players until he had enough to field a team.

For 28 years, Earl Brown Jr. has tracked the comings and goings of Southern Pacific Railroad cars, working the graveyard shift. A former professional ballplayer in the Los Angeles Dodgers farm system, Brown kept his afternoons free so he could coach--and later scout--inner-city youths. During the late '60s and into the mid '70s, he drove around Los Angeles picking up players until he had enough to field a team.

For 28 years, Earl Brown Jr. has tracked the comings and goings of Southern Pacific Railroad cars, working the graveyard shift. A former professional ballplayer in the Dodger farm system, Brown kept his afternoons free so he could coach--and later scout--inner-city youths. During the late '60s and into the mid '70s, he drove around Los Angeles, picking up players until he had enough to field a team.