Chatsworth Wins 4-A City Title

A year ago today, 29-year-old Tom Meusborn was sorting through the roster of the Grant High junior varsity team, trying to figure out which ninth graders were strong enough to throw a ball 60 feet six inches.

Today, meet Tom Meusborn, coach of the 1990 City Section 4-A champions.

“I’m still in shock,” Meusborn said. “It was a great, great, great, great first year.”

With one bold stroke, Meusborn and Chatsworth squeezed the life out of favored El Camino Real, 3-2, when shortstop Tommy Lee laid down a flawless bunt with the bases loaded to score Nestor Martinez and record one of the more improbable finishes to an improbable story in recent City championship history.

“It’s the first time all year we’ve run a suicide squeeze,” Meusborn said.

Meusborn, the second straight rookie coach to win a City title (Kennedy’s Manny Alvarado won in 1989), did it for a school that last won a City title in 1983 and spent the last six years enduring semifinal defeat after semifinal defeat.

“I just tried to keep it as close as possible and let the guys clutch up and do what they had to do,” senior Reed McMackin said. “We beat the best, that makes us the best.”

Meusborn brought to the program a surge of energy as well as an innocence, ready for new adventure. One such beneficiary was senior McMackin, the only leftover from Chatsworth’s 1988 team, a team ranked No. 1 in the nation by USA Today before losing a semifinal game.