More Than Just a Game, Believe It

They sat in the dugout Monday, two Tustin baseball players trying their best to act blase. Sure, the Woodbridge game was only 48 hours away. Yes, their former coach, Vince Brown, is now at Woodbridge. And yes, he’s the same Vince Brown who told the Tustin players last season he was burned out and going to take a year off, only to show up two months later at a (gasp) rival school.

Certainly, this provides extra incentive, does it not?

“Nah,” third baseman Derek Baker said. “We’re just focusing on the game.”

“Yeah,” added pitcher Ronnie Hall. “Just the game.”

Believe that, and you no doubt believe armadillos fly, butter isn’t fattening and a seven-foot rabbit hopped around your living room early last Sunday morning hiding brightly colored eggs.

Baker and Hall didn’t believe it either, of course. That’s why their straight faces turned to smirks as they said it. Truth is, they, like most of the Tillers, have been waiting to play Woodbridge since the first moment they heard Brown had became the Warriors’ coach. Tonight at 7, they get their chance when Woodbridge plays host to Tustin.

There is another side to this story, of course, one that involves Sea View League standings (Woodbridge and Tustin are tied for second), playoff possibilities (both sides figure a victory tonight is key) and county rankings (Woodbridge is ranked seventh, Tustin 10th). But why waste time on boring details.

The inherent drama, or at least a good chunk of it, centers around Brown, a man who sometimes seems a mix of Bobby Knight and John-Boy Walton. But let’s not leave out Tustin’s first-year coach, Tim O’Donoghue. O’Donoghue was Brown’s assistant for five years. Now he’s coaching against him. All right. So maybe that pales in comparison to the Roy Williams-Dean Smith story. But how about this twist:

In 1989, O’Donoghue was a head coach . . . at Woodbridge. That means when the current crop of Warrior seniors were in eighth grade, they counted on having O’Donoghue as their varsity coach. But what did O’Donoghue do? He took an assistant coaching position at . . . Tustin.

Getting dizzy? Put your head between your knees. Pop a Dramamine. OK, let’s move on.

Some of the Tustin players say they were surprised when Brown announced he was leaving the program last spring. Apparently, not all were sad to see him go. A few players said they were never able to accept his perfectionist ways or his volatile nature. They were tired of always looking over their shoulders each time they made a mistake. Tired of bracing themselves for the verbal lashing that inevitably followed.

O’Donoghue, they say, is a more mellow sort. He doesn’t often scream or yell. He compliments you when you do something right. Sure, sometimes he treats kids as if they were kids. Like last week, during a tournament in Las Vegas, O’Donoghue, 29, ordered the players in bed by 10 p.m., taping the outside of their hotel-room doors shut so they couldn’t leave without him knowing. (In contrast, Brown, whose Woodbridge team traveled to Las Vegas last week for a different tournament, allowed the Warriors to stay out until 2 a.m.)

Tim Wilson, a Tustin pitcher/outfielder, says he considers O’Donoghue, a longtime youth sports coach in Tustin, a second father. At the same time, he misses Brown. He misses his fiery nature, the constant push for perfection. “A lot of people were like, ‘Thank God he’s gone,’ ” Wilson says. “But I miss him. Still, I want to beat Coach Brown so bad. Just to say, ‘Look what you gave up.’ ”

Which seems to be the Tiller motto for tonight’s game, at least from the players’ perspective. O’Donoghue is pleading for common sense, of course. Focus on the game, he says. Think about your position. Don’t let all that stuff about revenge and pay-back cloud your concentration.

Brown agrees.

“The best thing for me,” Brown says, “will be if the Tustin players go out on that field and decide to focus all their energy on beating Vince Brown.”

The Tillers know this, of course. They’ve been told time and time again. Still, they say, it’s difficult.

Tustin catcher Jon Lauderdale, who said he didn’t like Brown at first but cried when Brown resigned as coach, says he hopes he and his teammates can separate themselves from the emotional aspect of the game.

“I hope we don’t get too anxious and choke up,” Lauderdale says. “Because one thing’s for sure, Coach Brown will be pulling a lot of tricks out of his hat for this one.”

If not out of his hat, at least out of the past.