Rainouts affect development of City baseball, softball teams

Maywood Academy pitcher Samuel Loza stands in front of a baseball field.

April 16, 2023 9:52 AM PT

Aaron Beltran can play baseball. He’s a “unique talent” at Panorama High, coach Cullen Haywood said.

But last Monday, quite literally, Beltran could not play. He had no pants.

With that simple confession to Haywood — he’d forgotten his baseball pants — the circus set off. Here was the coach, trying to sew together a team four hours before a game against Granada Hills Kennedy, and his best pitcher had no pants.

Now, he could get the kid pants. But even if so, Haywood’s catcher hadn’t completed his physical. So Haywood didn’t have anyone who could handle Beltran’s fastballs behind home plate, and his only other pitcher was ineligible, and so there was nobody around who could feasibly either throw or catch because there’d been no chance to practice … and over the phone Haywood let out a sigh that weighed about 5,000 pounds.

Panorama lost to Kennedy 35-2 that afternoon, in just its third game of the season.

“They really need to get some playing under their belt, and it’s not happening,” Haywood said of Panorama (0-4). “So it’s going to be pretty much a wash for us this year.”

A pun both genius and grim. Record rainfall in Los Angeles this spring has rewired the schedules of most high school baseball and softball teams. Most top-tier programs in the Southern Section and the City have been able to bounce back without issue, with the resources and field maintenance to capably handle the elements.

For a range of lower-division programs across the city, the weather has been unusually catastrophic. Schools such as Panorama and Van Nuys have fields that don’t drain properly, leaving conditions a mess for up to a week; others such as Dorsey and Maywood Academy practice and play at neighborhood parks, which require reservations for field use well in advance.

It’s another example of the widening divide between the haves and have-nots in Los Angeles high school sports, often leaving programs in lower-income communities of color with a never-ending uphill climb. Haywood, for example, is fighting to shift the culture at Panorama. But how is there a path forward when he hasn’t been able to even get on a field?

“This is almost a lost year — in my view, this year’s going to go down like a COVID year,” said Dorsey softball coach Wayne Kimble. “Because these kids just didn’t get the reps.”

Last Tuesday, Maywood Academy finally played its first game of the season, almost two months after its season opener was scheduled.

Sounds impossible? The players don’t have their own field; instead, they’re at the mercy of Maywood Park, which hosts Maywood High games and the Dodgers’ youth RBI program. The park has canceled a number of games because of poor field conditions from the rain, Maywood coach Patrick McGlynn said, and rescheduling is difficult given the shared use.

“The kids haven’t had a chance to play a ton of baseball the last few years,” McGlynn said, referencing COVID-19. “I can tell that it’s really frustrating for some of the older kids.”

Skill development is limited when you’re forced to practice primarily on a soccer field. And as the runs ticked up and an April afternoon ticked away in the span of their first inning Tuesday against Torres High, players in the dugout grew antsy. An hour into an eventual 15-0 loss that ended via mercy rule, the St. Genevieve High baseball team — a Southern Section program — walked behind the Maywood Academy bench to prepare for a subsequent doubleheader against Torres.

Multiple Maywood Academy players pulled themselves to the chain-link fence, calling out:

“Anyone want to put on a uniform?”

The lack of reps at lower levels is widespread. Dorsey softball has played one game this spring after an 8-2 finish last year. Huntington Park baseball has played five after 13 games last year. Entire months of scheduling have been canceled as rain ravaged home fields and local parks.

Complicating matters, reassembling schedules has been difficult thanks to a nationwide officiating shortage.

“It was horrendous, the number of games that were switched in and out … to find new [umpires] was very difficult,” said Kirk West, a San Fernando Valley and Santa Clarita Valley umpire assigner for the City and Southern Section.

Kimble has paid about $200 out of his own pocket at Dorsey, he said, to hire someone to clean up the field at the Rancho Cienega Sports Complex where Dorsey practices. He still hasn’t received clearance to play, he said.

City Section information director Dick Dornan said the responsibility to schedule games at off-campus fields and parks falls on individual schools, and that the section hadn’t heard complaints from programs about the issue. Kimble seeks a broader partnership between the Los Angeles Unified School District and the Department of Recreation and Parks.

“Be in the yearbook, wear the uniform, represent their school on their jersey — that’s part of the authentic high school experience,” Kimble said. “And I think some of these kids are robbed of that.”

In part because of the effects of COVID-19 and this year’s rainouts, Maywood Academy pitcher Samuel Loza had never toed a high school mound. Tuesday’s loss to Torres, at the very least, was a chance to wear that jersey — the day etching both hope and disappointment in a wistful smile on Loza’s face.

“It definitely has been a little hard,” Loza said. “But I guess we just try to take any opportunity we can get.”