Gahr Pitcher Gets Back in Groove--in Class and on the Mound : Baseball: David Martinez liked to party. He was academically ineligible and at risk of dropping out. Now he’s making the grades and has a 6-2 record.

CERRITOS —  David Martinez marched into the baseball office at Gahr High in February determined to set himself straight.

The 6-foot-3, 215-pound left-handed pitcher had been academically ineligible most of his sophomore year and did not play as a junior. He had a reputation as a party-goer, and classmates believed he had joined a gang and was about to drop out of school.

Standing in the office doorway wearing baggy pants, an earring and a ponytail, Martinez was hardly the stereotype ballplayer that veteran Gahr Coach Tom Bergeron was used to. But for some reason, Bergeron recalls, the senior was worth listening to.

“The kid had tears in his eyes,” Bergeron said. “He said to me, ‘Coach, I know you don’t like me, but I want to come back.’ ”

Martinez has roared back this season and Gahr is benefiting. The Gladiators (13-7), seventh-ranked in the CIF Southern Section 4A Division, are tied for first in the San Gabriel Valley League. Martinez is 6-2 with a 1.94 earned-run average and is batting .384 with a 12-game hitting streak.

Officials at Gahr are quick to point out that Martinez appears much happier, has raised his grade-point average a full point to 2.8, is now in an English honors class and is expected to attend college next fall.

The turnaround has surprised many. “There has been a sudden difference in his focus,” Gahr Principal Nadine Barreto said. “Previously, his focus was on girls, his peers, the streets. Living on the edge was his excitement. That is what attracted him and that is where he gave most of his time.”

Martinez, who denies ever belonging to a gang, said it was his love for playing baseball that convinced him that he was headed in the wrong direction.

Described by childhood friends as sensitive and congenial, Martinez was a standout player at Frontier Little League and in city park basketball and baseball leagues.

“When we were in Little League he had a curveball that dropped right off the table,” said longtime friend Gil Beltran, Gahr’s catcher.

Bergeron was so impressed, he started Martinez once for the varsity in 1989 during his freshman season.

Then, over that summer, something in Martinez changed.

“(By the time) I was a sophomore I discovered girls. I got my first kiss and I wasn’t focused on anything else,” Martinez said. “I was going out all the time. I was disobeying my parents. I didn’t care about nothing.”

The changes in their son did not go unnoticed by Herman and Irma Martinez.

“Up until (his sophomore year) he was a good student and a clean-cut kid,” Herman Martinez said. “He got out of whack.”

Martinez’s grade-point average fell to 1.8 in 1990, below ABC Unified School District minimum standards for participation in extracurricular activities. It took him half a season to regain eligibility, but he hit .350 in limited action as a designated hitter for the varsity.

He remained recalcitrant, however. On the weekends he attended “rave” parties--events that attract hundreds of teen-agers where alcohol is sometimes available. That summer he was a regular on the streets. Classmates believed he had joined a gang.

Said Bergeron: “I don’t think David was a gang guy. But I think he was a wanna-be.”

Martinez said his classmates did not know enough about him to judge his actions.

“Some people (at this school) blame my behavior on other people, but I blame it on myself,” he said. “It was David Martinez who made me ineligible.”

Explained Herman Martinez: “David was not hanging around with gang members, but with people who may have conveyed that image. . . . The thing about him is that he has this loyalty to friends. People misconstrued his going out and hanging out with (certain) people and they began to question his background.”

In the fall of 1990, according to Barreto, Martinez was identified as a potential dropout. He was ditching classes regularly and not turning in assignments. Martinez later admitted that he thought seriously about leaving Gahr. Confronted by his parents, he told them he could not handle going to school, playing baseball and maintaining the social life he wanted. He told them he wanted to play ball, but in reality he later said, he was not willing to do the classwork to restore his eligibility.

“They said that if that is the way I feel, they wouldn’t push me to play baseball,” he said. “I was sad, but what could I do?”

Being out of baseball appeared to be a turning point. Martinez did not go out for the baseball team in the spring of 1991. Instead, he surprised many by raising his grade-point average to 2.2 by the end of the school year.

Martinez joined the Gahr basketball team after the semester and was impressive in summer leagues as a backup forward. But when fall basketball practice began, Martinez did not show up for varsity tryouts. Martinez, the rumor around school went, had returned to his old ways.

Not so, he insists. “I chose not to play,” he said. “I liked basketball, but I loved baseball.”

All along, Martinez said, playing baseball had been in the back of his mind. When he was not playing basketball during the summer he was taking pitching lessons. He constantly pestered his friend, Beltran, to play catch with him. The pair lifted weights together.

In the fall semester, Martinez raised his grade-point average to 2.8. Later he sought out Bergeron. He remembers how nervous he was when he arrived at the baseball office last February.

“I was almost begging him (to give me a chance),” Martinez said.

Bergeron said he was taking a chance in allowing Martinez to return. On one hand, he was well aware of Martinez’s past. Yet, Bergeron saw a caring, talented young man who wanted to get back on his feet.

“I told him, ‘I do like you, David, I just don’t like what I’ve heard about you,’ ” Bergeron recalled. “Then a big old tear came into his eye and he told me everyone had given up on him and he was just looking for one last chance. . . I really think that baseball is what is keeping him in school now.”

On the field, Martinez is so eager to succeed that he sometimes overdoes things. In a game against Paramount High, he dived for a foul pop-up and crashed into the backstop. On the mound he sometimes overthrows. But his potential is great, according Bergeron.

“He’s a senior in age, but really, he’s a sophomore in baseball,” he said. “The best thing for him would be to go with Gil (Beltran) to a (community college) next year. He needs to have a friend with him for stability. . . . If he goes to school and sticks with it, he’ll be OK.”

Others, like Barreto, think Martinez already has turned a corner, possibly forever.

“I can tell you as an educator that he is very gifted, very intelligent,” she said. “He has struggled academically by his own choosing. . . . Now, I couldn’t feel more proud of him.”