Kids collect on baseball bet

COSTA MESA — Mike Scheafer doesn’t grow his hair out long. The president of the Boys & Girls Club of the Harbor Area’s board of directors sported a buzz cut as a child and has kept his head trim ever since.

Even still, when Scheafer made a bet with two Bostonian colleagues during the Angels-Red Sox playoff series, he didn’t think he had much to fret about. The home team had rolled to another postseason appearance and he expected the Red Sox to go under quickly — and fellow Boys and Girls Club leaders Dan Monahan and Steve Lampron to be the ones bowing their heads to the electric shaver.

Then Boston trounced the Angels in three games, and Wednesday afternoon, Scheafer found himself sitting in the barber’s chair. Ernesto Alvarez and Cassandra Menendez, a pair of students from the Boys & Girls Club, wielded the shaver as dozens of students crowded the classroom and snapped photos on their cell phones.

“You know the best thing about this?” Scheafer said when his head was mostly bare. “I won’t get lice.”

As a reward for Scheafer being a good sport, Executive Director Monahan presented him with a trophy reading “Best Haircut” — although he stuck a note on the back of the base proclaiming the Red Sox as 2007 World Champions. Scheafer’s wife promptly assisted by giving her husband an Angels cap to cover his head.

Cassandra, 16, had the honor of finishing the haircut — the first one she had ever given.

“I’ve never shaved anyone’s head before,” she said. “I was hoping I wouldn’t mess up.”

Lampron, the branch director for the club on Hamilton Street, made the baseball bet with Scheafer at a charity golf tournament in October. He had expected the Angels to come out on top, he said, and was surprised to escape the chair Wednesday.

“He probably thought he was a lot more confident than he was that the Angels were going to beat the Red Sox,” Lampron said about Scheafer. “I think he was shocked when the Red Sox won so easy. To be honest, I was shocked when they won three games in a row. The Angels are always so good at home.”

The Red Sox, who began the postseason by sweeping the Angels, went on to beat the Cleveland Indians in the playoffs before pulling off another sweep of the Colorado Rockies in the World Series.

No officials at the Boys & Girls Club admitted to being from Cleveland or Colorado.

MICHAEL MILLER may be reached at (714) 966-4617 or at michael.miller@latimes.com.