LEGION BASEBALL / JEFF FLETCHER : Dean Is Back in the Swing

Not long ago, Aaron Dean’s baseball career went out the window.

So did Aaron Dean.

Dean, the first baseman for the undefeated Newhall American Legion team, is hitting 450-foot home runs again. A 6-foot-3 left-handed hitter, Dean can again extend his arms and pull the ball because the pain in his back has finally subsided.

His problems began--and his baseball career nearly ended--last fall. He and two of his teammates from Cerro Coso College were packed into the front seat of a pickup truck, driving from Ridgecrest to Santa Clarita.

One sharp left turn later, the truck was rolling off the road, spitting out its passengers into the desert.

“I guess I flew out the window or something,� Dean said.

The other passengers suffered minor bruises, but Dean broke his back and suffered a punctured lung. He spent the next month in a hospital bed and wore a body brace for a month after that.

His back and lung healed without surgery, but he was far from the athlete he was before the accident.

Dean, a 1994 Hart High graduate, opened the eyes of Cerro Coso coaches last fall, when he hit six home runs on the first 12 pitches he saw during batting practice at the Ridgecrest school.

“And he crushed them,� said Cerro Coso coach Dick Adams. “He just had excellent power.�

But when Dean left the hospital, he had withered from 195 to 170 pounds. Even months after the accident, when he no longer needed a brace, his back was still sore, especially when he tried to swing a bat.

He went back to Cerro Coso in the spring, but his season started slowly.

“When I came back and started playing I was doing OK,� he said. “But it was like I wasn’t able to turn on inside pitches. I was hitting everything to the left side.

“I wasn’t able to get that much power in anything.�

Dean, 18, said he never doubted he would recover, though.

“The doctor said that I might lose some of my ability, but it was slowly getting better all the way through. I knew one day I would be fine.�

He played regularly last season at Cerro Coso, eventually lifting his average to .298. He hit two home runs and had 37 runs batted in.

Dean said his back still feels stiff in the mornings, before he stretches. Aside from that, though, the old Aaron Dean is back.

A season of watching junior college pitching has made Legion games seem like batting practice. Dean has 16 hits in 26 at-bats, including five home runs.

He hit three home runs on Saturday, “and they were big-time homers,� said Pat Eggleston, Newhall’s coach. “They were crunched.�

“I figured that’s what it would be like,� Dean said of hitting Legion pitching. “But it’s just good to get some kind of baseball in for the summer.�

*

Panorama City is 5-1, giving the team one victory more than it had last season. Coach Scott Smith said the turnaround is not so much from having better players, but from having more of them.

“I think the difference is the kids are all showing up,� he said. “They had some talent last year, but a lot of those losses were forfeits.�

One of the most successful Panorama City players this year has been Nick Reker, a 6-foot-4 right-hander. Reker was just 1-9 as a sophomore at St. Genevieve High in the spring, but he’s 2-0 with an 0.93 earned-run average in his first 15 innings of Legion play.

“The best thing that he does is he spots all three of his pitches really well,� Smith said. “He’s got a nice split-finger fastball.�

*

Joe Grodell, District 16 commissioner, has ruled that Westlake-Royal-Oak does not violate Legion rules by including players from Westlake and Royal highs. Grodell investigated after a complaint from an unidentified source within District 16.

Legion rules state that the total enrollment of the source schools for Legion teams cannot exceed 3,600. When schools are joined, if a line between the campuses intersects any other schools’ attendance areas, those additional schools have to be included in figuring the combined enrollment.

The question was whether or not a line between Westlake and Royal crossed into the Thousand Oaks High attendance area. Grodell called the Conejo Valley Unified School District and verified that it did not.

*

For the second consecutive year, only one of the 28 teams in District 20 will advance to the Area 6 playoffs, while two of the eight teams in District 16 will advance. Because six teams advance from four districts in the area, the districts with two teams are chosen on a rotating basis. District 20 will have two representatives in 1996 and 1997.

The Area 6 playoffs are scheduled for July 27-30 at UCLA’s Jackie Robinson Stadium. The state playoffs will return to Yountville, near Napa in Northern California, after a one-year absence. Separate tournaments were held in Northern and Southern California last year because the facilities in Yountville were being renovated.

The championship game of the Legion World Series, which will be held in Fargo, N.D., will be televised on ESPN.

*

Short hops: The truly amazing stat of the year so far is this: Newhall has not made an error in its first seven games. . . .

Apparently Matt Riordan’s breakthrough season this spring at Westlake High wasn’t a fluke. He is 15 for 23 with five home runs and 17 RBIs in nine games for Westlake-Royal-Oak. This spring he hit .560 with 11 doubles, five triples, four home runs and 27 RBIs, leading Westlake in each category. . . .

Thousand Oaks catcher Steve Yeager, son of the former Dodger catcher of the same name, has thrown out nine of 10 would-be base stealers this season. . . .

Burbank South (1-6) has lost four games by one run. . . . Van Nuys East pitchers walked 18 batters in a 14-8 loss to Valley North on Sunday. . . . Chris Pietras of North Hollywood East had five RBIs Sunday in a 10-7 victory over Van Nuys West. . . .