WHERE ARE THEY NOW?: LARRY BEINFEST : Life After the Game Still Means Baseball : Former Chatsworth Shortstop Joins Front Office of Mariners, Hopes to Become a General Manager

Three years ago, a few days after receiving his master’s degree in public communications from Syracuse, Larry Beinfest spent a night in Kansas City. He stayed with a guy he knew from his Chatsworth High baseball-playing days, the guy with whom he shared West Valley League MVP honors in 1982.

Guy by the name of Bret Saberhagen.

“It’s a good thing I made it to the majors,” Saberhagen, the two-time Cy Young Award winner, told Beinfest, “because I never really learned how to do other things.”

Beinfest never made it to The Show. Never even got drafted. But he doesn’t spend much time agonizing over the would’ves, could’ves and what-ifs of his once-promising career between the lines.

Today, Beinfest works in the Seattle Mariners front office as the assistant to the director of minor league player development and scouting. Someday, the 28-year-old hopes to be a major league general manager.

He has learned how to do other things.

“I really don’t dwell on the past,” Beinfest says. “There isn’t much point. I had some bad breaks as a player, but I’m happy with the way my life is going.”

Beinfest was born in Encino, reared in Chatsworth, raised on baseball. His boyhood idol was Roberto Clemente. His room was littered with baseball paraphernalia.

At 7, Beinfest was the best player on his Chatsworth T-ball team. At 8, he was the second-best player on his Northridge Little League squad. (That Saberhagen kid, he could play.)

After his junior high graduation, Beinfest’s family wanted to take him out to dinner. Beinfest refused. He had a Little League game that night. Dinner could wait.

“Baseball was always his thing,” says his father, Michael Beinfest. “When Larry was little, he never played with trucks or cars or those little army guys. He just wanted to throw around a ball all day long.”

Beinfest made the Chatsworth High varsity as a sophomore, the only one on rookie Coach Bob Lofrano’s squad. By the end of the season, Beinfest was Lofrano’s starting shortstop.

The next year, as captain, Beinfest led Chatsworth to its first league title since 1972, its first of nine in a row. Beinfest was all-league, All-Valley, All-City. He batted .364. He was exceptional in the field.

“Larry was an excellent player for us,” recalls Lofrano, now the Pierce College coach.

“He was a real intelligent player, like another coach on the field. He didn’t have great speed or power, but he had soft hands, a strong arm and a real quick bat.”

The nightmarish turning point of Beinfest’s athletic career came in the seventh inning of the 1981 City Section quarterfinals at West Los Angeles College, when a Grant High baserunner roll-blocked Beinfest’s leg, breaking it in two places.

Beinfest writhed in pain while three fire departments bickered over jurisdiction, while an engine truck arrived without the proper authority to transport accident victims, while an ambulance arrived but stalled twice, while a replacement ambulance was delayed by traffic and took him to the wrong hospital.

The results: nine days in the hospital, three months of lugging a bulky full-leg cast around the Valley during the summer, a permanently shorter left leg.

There were other consequences too. Before his injury, Beinfest had received an avalanche of recruiting letters from baseball powers such as Stanford, UCLA and Arizona State. Afterward, interest waned, even after Beinfest came back strong in 1982, batting .349, leading Chatsworth to another league title and another trip to the City semifinals, sharing the league MVP award with that Saberhagen guy from Cleveland High.

“After the injury, people had real serious doubts about me,” Beinfest says. “I wasn’t real fast to begin with, and that slowed me down even more. I came back pretty strong, but I think it’s fair to say I was never the same player again.”

Beinfest accepted the only Division I scholarship offered to him, a free ride to Nevada-Reno.

He tore up the Northern California Baseball Assn. his freshman year, batting .375, earning rookie of the year and all-conference honors.

But in 1984, with Beinfest shuttling between shortstop and third base, his average dipped, and he discarded his dreams of professional ball.

After his sophomore season, he transferred to Cal, where he failed to make the baseball team.

“The game had passed me by,” Beinfest says. “Baseball had always been fun for me, but it wasn’t fun anymore. And to be honest, I wasn’t playing very well.”

Beinfest graduated from Cal in 1986 with a degree in international business and finance. He spent a year working for an area radio station selling air time, then set off for Syracuse, envisioning a career in sports broadcasting.

Those plans changed a few months after graduation, when the Mariners offered him a job in the front office. Since he joined the Mariners, his responsibilities have multiplied.

He helps coordinate the Mariners’ farm system. He organizes spring training. He deals with equipment problems, medical arrangements, scouting schedules. And whenever the Mariners are in town, he goes to the ballgame. Company policy.

“I’ve always loved baseball,” Beinfest says. “It didn’t work out for me on the field, but I still don’t think there’s anything better than watching a good baseball game. That’s the best part of my day.

“You know, this is a business--we have to worry about bottom lines and budgets and all that. But it’s still exciting. I’m still a baseball fan.

“I get to go into the clubhouse, I get to go out on the field to watch batting practice--that makes it all worthwhile. I just love being around the game.”

Hanging around professional baseball puts Beinfest in constant contact with former teammates and opponents.

Former Chatsworth teammate Steve Reed pitches for the Giants’ triple-A affiliate. Shawn Barton, Beinfest’s teammate at Nevada-Reno, plays for the Mariners’ triple-A club at Calgary, along with Jeff Wetherby, who battled Beinfest at Kennedy High.

When the A’s come to Seattle, Beinfest gets to watch Lance Blankenship, who beat him out for the Cal third base job. Beinfest’s cousin, Steve Wapnick, plays for the White Sox triple-A team in Vancouver.

There, but for the grace of an overaggressive slide into second, goes Larry Beinfest. Maybe.

“Even if I hadn’t gotten injured, I don’t know if I ever would have made it as a player,” he says.

“I see the guys playing today, even in the minors, and they’re really good. I don’t think I had the physical tools to make it in the big leagues. But we’ll never know.”

Beinfest has gained 40-plus pounds since his playing days. He took a few swings during spring training, and found himself bailing out of the box. He doesn’t have it anymore, whatever “it” is, and he will never get it back.

But he still has the memories. His grand slam against San Fernando. His first game back from his injury, when he homered against Reseda. The 1981 City semifinal, which he watched from the Dodger Stadium dugout in a wheelchair. Chatsworth’s 1-0 victory over Saberhagen, in which Beinfest helped his squad turn four double plays.

Nostalgia, of course, does not pay the bills. But for Beinfest, baseball still does. His childhood dreams of major league stardom have fallen through, but he isn’t complaining.

“Sure, once in a while, I wish I could go out there and suit up,” he says. “Sure, I wish I hadn’t hurt my leg. It wasn’t fun. But that kind of thing happens. You go on with your life.”