June 14, 2007

Shafer still going strong

Paul Oberjuerge

It didn't seem to hurt Hall-of-Famer Mordecai "Three Finger" Brown ...

Chris Shafer was days away from his junior year at Cajon High School when a jet ski accident cost him his right index finger. "Yanked it off," as he bluntly put it.

That's plenty traumatic, but it could have been even more depressing for Shafer, a star pitcher for the Cowboys.

A right-handed pitcher.

His coach, Jon Austin, wasn't sure how to approach Shafer when he came back to school and they prepared for fall baseball. "It was Chris who broke the ice," Austin said. "His first words to me were, `Coach, I'll be all right."'

And how. Shafer was all-CIF as a junior, and that was while he was learning to pitch without an index finger.

As a senior, he was nearly unhittable, going 7-0 with an earned-run average of 1.80.

"My fastball started running and moving," Shafer said.

"It turned wicked," Austin added. "And then he got his velocity back."

The Florida Marlins made Shafer, 18, their 13th-round draft pick last week. He will join the club's Gulf Coast League rookie-ball team in time to start the June 19 opener vs. the Mets.

Shafer knows about "Three Finger" Brown, a right-handed pitcher who lost most of his right index finger in a farming accident when he was 7. Brown's thumb and pinky were hurt in the same accident. He later broke the other two fingers on his right hand, and they didn't heal properly.

Nonetheless, Brown compiled a 239-130 record in a career than lasted from 1903 to 1916. He was the winning pitcher in two games when the Chicago Cubs clinched their last World Series championship, in 1908.

Brown once said, "That old paw served me pretty well in its time. ... It gave me a greater dip."

Padres farmhand Cooper Brannan, scheduled to pitch in the Arizona Rookie League this month, is missing his left pinky, but Brannan pitches with his right hand. Brannan lost his finger while serving with the Marines in Iraq.

La Verne Winkleman, of San Bernardino High School, preceded Shafer as a local kid who overcame a debilitating injury to be a prep baseball standout.

Winkleman, star catcher of the 1925 CIF champion San Bernardino team, played with a wooden leg. His RBI double gave the Cardinals the lead in an eventual 3-1 victory over Fullerton - the first CIF team title in San Bernardino County history. Winkleman's leg came off during the game.

Speaking of memorable CIF titles, June 1 marked the 30-year anniversary of San Gorgonio's shocking CIF baseball title, also known as "The Miner Miracle." San G. defeated Lakewood 1-0 in the 1977 large-schools

San G.'s star was left-hander Tim Miner, the winning pitcher in all five playoffs victories, pitching 34<MD+,%30,%55,%70>2/<MD-,%0,%55,%70>3 of San G.'s 37 innings.

Gregg Popovich won his fourth NBA championship Thursday in 11 seasons coaching the San Antonio Spurs. Which no one would have predicted back when he was getting knocked around in, yes, the Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference.

Popovich compiled a 76-124 record in eight seasons at Pomona-Pitzer. One of his defeats, in 1980, was 57-51 to Caltech - one of only two SCIAC victories by Caltech over the past 30 years.

Gary Smith, recently retired Redlands coach, was 11-5 vs. Popovich in their head-to-head SCIAC meetings. Said Smith: "Pomona was down when he got there and he turned them around."

Popovich, known as "Poppo" at Pomona, did win one SCIAC title, in 1986, the first for the Sagehens since 1958. He was elected to the school's hall of fame in 2001.

Larry Brown was Popovich's ticket to the NBA. Popovich spent a season watching Brown coach at Kansas, 1986-87, and Brown was so impressed by his visitor that he made Popovich his top assistant when Brown got the Spurs job in 1988-89.

Charles Katsiaficas replaced Popovich at Pomona-Pitzer and has a 192-78 record in 20 seasons, with nine SCIAC titles.

Katsiaficas clearly is ready for the NBA .

LeBron James was poorly served by the "We Are All Witnesses"

Cal Poly Pomona continues to up the ante on Cal State San Bernardino for the 2007-08 basketball season. The Broncos just signed their second Division I "bounce back," 6-foot-5 guard Austin Smith out of Montana.

The Dodgers fired Eddie Murray as batting coach, which reminded us that the best players often make the worst coaches. They can't grasp why you can't do what they did. Murray is one of only three players with 500 homers and 3,000 hits.

Josh Fellhauer, a freshman out of Rancho Cucamonga, is the starting left fielder for College World Series-bound Cal State Fullerton. Fellhauer hits second and is batting .320, his mother Julie reports.

It's almost football season. The Inland Empire Football Classic, pitting top graduated standouts from San Bernardino and Riverside counties, is scheduled at 6 p.m. June 30 at Corona Roosevelt High School.

Interesting subplot to the IE Classic: Colony's Anthony Rice will coach S.B. County, Elsinore's Tom Peralta will lead Riverside ... in a coaching rematch of the CIF Central Division final, won 16-13 by Colony.

Kudos: To the Spurs, for dominating the NBA playoffs.

Condolences: To fans, saddled with the dreary efficiency of the Spurs.

Lookalikes: Cavs center Zydrunas Ilgauskas, Clippers center Chris Kaman. (It's the hair; and the generic 7-foot incompetence.)

Where are they now? Dennis Rogers, fiery young coach of the 1977 San Gorgonio CIF baseball title team, just finished his 19th season running the Riverside Community College program.

They said it: "I had to figure out new ways to throw each pitch. But I haven't figured out how to throw a curve yet." - Chris Shafer, on pitching without an index finger.

And finally: Best wishes to Shafer. Perhaps he can become the "Three Finger" of the new millennium.