Though a Man Among Boys, He Still Is His Father's Son : Baseball: Dmitri Young of Rio Mesa High is one of the top three players in the amateur draft, a reward for hard work, stern guidance and a parent's obsession.

By JEFF RILEY

June 3, 1991 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

OXNARD — Dmitri Young, considered one of the top baseball prospects in the nation, takes a practice swing and steps into the batter’s box at Rio Mesa High.

The pitcher tugs at his cap then delivers a pitch that Young, all 6 feet 2 and 215 pounds of him, sends soaring over the fence like a cropduster flying over a nearby strawberry field.

The 460-foot blast clears the scoreboard and briefly disrupts a junior varsity game when it lands on the pitcher’s mound. Young casually rounds the bases. It is a trip he has made before.

At 17, he is a senior shortstop who has been compared to Kevin Mitchell, the All-Star left fielder with the San Francisco Giants.

“He has the strength of George Foster and the speed of Garry Matthews,” said George Genovese, a 32-year Giants’ scout who signed Foster out of Lawndale Leuzinger High and Matthews out of San Fernando, as well as 48 other major leaguers.

Young, who was approached by a scout at 11 when he was playing semipro baseball in Alabama, has played with minor league and college players on Genovese’s scout team since he was 14.

“I was ready to sign him after I first saw him play,” Genovese said.

Nearly four years later, Genovese probably will be deprived of that opportunity, because the Giants will not select until the 33rd pick in the amateur draft, beginning today.

Baseball America considers Young and Brien Taylor, a left-handed pitcher at East Carteret High in Beaufort, N.C., the two finest high school players in the nation. Young is considered one of the top three, along with Taylor and Arizona State outfielder Mike Kelly.

The New York Yankees are expected to draft either Taylor or Kelly with the first pick. The Atlanta Braves have the No. 2 pick and are rumored to be interested in Taylor, Kelly, and Young. Minnesota drafts No. 3.

Young says he has no indication of where he will be selected in the draft.

“I have no control over anything,” he said. “I just want to play ball.”

There is not much doubt that he can.

The Major League Scouting Bureau rated Young at higher than 60 on a scale of 80. Darryl Strawberry’s rating was 72 as a senior at Crenshaw High. Young’s combination of size, speed and power has brought baseball scouts to Oxnard since he arrived in February of 1988.

Young had played varsity baseball at tiny Alabama Christian Academy in Montgomery and had led the league in hitting as a 12-year-old seventh-grader.

He stepped from a car after three days traveling cross-country and slapped line drives that left his future teammates agog.

“They thought it was a joke, that I’d brought in some professional player to show them how to hit,” Rio Mesa Coach Rich Duran said. “When they found out he was a freshman, that’s all they were talking about that day.”

Young started since he was a freshman and batted .488 in 326 at-bats. He had 156 hits at Rio Mesa, surpassing the state record of 147 by Redondo’s Scott Davison from 1986-88 at the start of the season, but he fell short of Northridge Highland Hall’s Jakob Jensen, who finished his career this season with 168 hits. Young also was among Southern Section career leaders in doubles with 36, runs with 137, home runs with 29 and runs batted in with 127.

He hit .588 as a junior and has been named the California player of the year in his class in each of the past three seasons.

Young is the son of a man who, as a youngster, picked cotton in Mississippi and “couldn’t hit a basketball with a 2 x 4.”

Larry Young and seven of his nine brothers and sisters grew up in Vicksburg, Miss., and he shared a single bed with as many as three of his siblings in a shack that had no running water.

Today, Larry Young, 39, is a Navy fighter pilot stationed at Point Mugu Naval Air Station near Oxnard. He is to retire in September and move his family to Florida. Young admittedly is an intense, driven man, obsessed with his son’s success as both a baseball player and a person. He compares a hitter’s concentration in a batter’s box to that of a pilot in a cockpit.

Once, while pitching batting practice to Dmitri, Larry Young became so infuriated with his son’s inability to drive the ball up the middle that he tossed the protective screen aside.

“C’mon, quit pullin’ the damn ball!” he screamed. “Hit me! You can’t do it!”

Dmitri drilled the next pitch off his father’s chest.

“I thought I was going to die,” Larry said, then smiled. “But he hit the ball up the middle.”

That was not the first time Larry Young had sacrificed himself for Dmitri’s success. He invested money in a batting cage rather than a house.

“I want him to have the best of both worlds,” Larry said. “He has a lot going for him, and I want him to respect the man on the street like he would a man in the White House. I want to instill vulnerability, that he could be here today and gone tomorrow.”

As might be expected in a relationship where demands are high, there have been confrontations. Dmitri does not always want to listen to his father.

“He gets on me a little too much sometimes,” Dmitri said.

Larry says he simply doesn’t want Dmitri to become complacent.

“I look at him all the time and say, ‘You only play one sport, why can’t you be better?’ ” Larry said. “But then I remember he’s just a kid.”

It is easy to understand why some forget that Dmitri Young will not turn 18 until October. Young, who was 5-9 and 175 pounds when he was 11, looks as if he should be hitting running backs instead of baseballs.

“A man among boys,” one scout said of Young, who was kept out of Little League in Alabama when he was 11 because parents feared one of his line drives would hurt their children.

Young has worked at perfecting his craft by taking as many as 200 swings a day, and his father says he has spent nearly $2,000 at local batting cages. Dmitri plays year-round for numerous amateur teams.

Young’s 400-foot home runs and his ability to switch-hit are complemented by fielding prowess.

“He not only is a great hitter, he is awesome defensively,” Reg Welker, the coach at Oxnard Hueneme High, said. “He is so quick and has such a good glove . . . he gets to balls that others can only watch.”

Welker is so impressed with his skills that he once ordered an intentional walk to Young with runners at first and second and Hueneme nursing a one-run lead.

“You know why?” Welker asked. “Because the other day he hit a ball that damn near took off my pitcher’s leg. My second baseman just kind of swiped at it, which is good because that ball would have carried him into right field.”

Young also is known for a polite demeanor on and off the field that has impressed scouts and coaches.

“It isn’t often you find a kid with that much talent who is an absolute gentleman,” Welker said. “He doesn’t have that attitude that some kids have. He’s always very humble, and that’s a credit to his family.”

There is another side to Young, however.

Last June 11, Young was involved in a fight among several youths at Fillmore High. According to records at the Fillmore Police Department, Young was arrested for assault with a deadly weapon but was not charged.

“The police picked him up and took him in for questioning, but they brought him home and told us he wasn’t charged because it was self-defense,” Larry Young said.

Earlier this season, Dmitri needed 14 stitches in his right hand after, he said, he was accidentally stabbed by his father.

“My dad and I were playing around with a knife and things got a little carried away,” he said.

Some scouts and coaches wonder.

“His hands are worth about a half a million dollars, and he’s playing around with knives?” one coach said. “I have my doubts about that, as does just about everybody else who’s heard their story.”

Larry Young says he had put a kitchen knife in his pocket after prying open a locked door. Then he began wrestling with Dmitri, who was stabbed during the fracas.

“It wasn’t smart,” Larry said. “But those things happen.”

Also, the Southern Section office investigated anonymous charges that Dmitri’s birth certificate had been altered, and that he was considerably older than records indicated. But Southern Section officials said the school provided sufficient evidence to refute that claim.

“When he was younger, we had to carry a birth certificate with us to prove how old he was,” Larry Young said. “My first impression is that they’re jealous. But those shots can be expected when somebody is as good as he is perceived to be.”

Despite the distractions, Dmitri says he wants to be known as just another teen-ager who eats three double cheeseburgers in one sitting, listens to rap music and idolizes a professional wrestler named “Nature Boy” Ric Flair.

“A child’s mind in a man’s body, I guess,” he said, grinning sheepishly. “I want to be known because I’m a person, not because I have a lot of ability. I don’t want the stereotype that I’m too good to talk to other people.”

Although Young has signed a letter of intent to play at Miami, he and his father say he will sign a professional contract if he is selected within the first two rounds of the draft.

Larry Young said that more than a dozen agents have contacted him, but he has not negotiated with any--a claim disputed by one scout. Young says he has limited interest in Dmitri’s signing bonus, which is expected to be a package worth more than $300,000.

“We just want to be treated fairly,” he said. “We’re pretty neutral.”

Yet, according to Dmitri, his father negotiated with recruiters during a battle between Texas and Miami for Dmitri’s signature on a college letter of intent.

Dmitri Young said on Feb. 14 that he had selected Miami because, in part, Miami Coach Ron Fraser is coach of the 1992 Olympic baseball team, which would provide Young a better opportunity to make the team. But he said he gave Miami officials an oral commitment after Miami had responded to his father’s request for a meal plan that matched the one offered by Texas.

“Miami upped its meal plan from 14 to 20 meals (a week) after Dad said I might sign with Texas,” Dmitri said.

Larry conceded that he favored Miami because he planned to retire from the service and move his family to Pensacola, Fla., in the fall.

To Dmitri, it’s a reminder of his father’s determined approach toward his career.

“I just do whatever my dad says, more or less, because he’s helped me out a lot,” Dmitri said. “I really couldn’t be happier, and I’m really anxious to move on, whether it’s pro ball or college.”

He then holds his arms skyward and leans back in a chair, grinning.

“I just want to be a baseball player when I grow up,” he said.

Amateur Draft

Order of selection in the first round:

1. New York Yankees

2. Atlanta

3. Minnesota

4. St. Louis

5. Milwaukee

6. Houston

7. Kansas City

8. San Diego