8/7/2004
Grant Gordon Sports Editor
The Signal

In the precocious summer of 1989, Casey Burrill and George Lopata’s baseball paths crossed.
    It’s likely both had similar sentiments as they left Dodger Stadium that June day as their high school baseball careers had been ended.
    Lopata’s Centurions lost a heartbreaker in the finals of the CIF Southern Section 3A Playoffs, falling to Kennedy, 1-0. Burrill’s Indians took the field shortly after, and soon, they too had fallen in a CIF championship, losing to Cerritos, 4-1, in the CIF Southern Section 4A Playoffs, 4-1.
    Calling the two high school rivals would be a stretch, as Saugus ran roughshod over the Golden League in those days and Hart was having its way with the Foothill League. Still, though, both traveled similar paths — often times rooted in Santa Clarita baseball.
    Both went on to play college ball. Burrill, who was drafted professionally as well, was a Trojan at USC, while Lopata was a Seawolf at Sonoma State.
    Some 15 years later, the CIF playoffs were once again the backdrop.
    While Hart continued on its Cinderella run in the postseason, Saugus’ had ended in the second round with a 5-0 defeat to Villa Park. Nevertheless, Burrill was far from concerned with the Indians’ aspirations.
    On May 25, 2004, Casey Burrill was a Saugus Centurion. It was his last day as a Centurion, though.
    On that day, Burrill finished his four-year tenure as the Saugus skipper and embarked upon a new journey as the first baseball coach in West Ranch High School history.
    On that same day, Lopata took over the team he had once starred on, beginning a new era in Saugus baseball with links to the past too abundant to overlook.
    Ultimately, that day saw two 33-year-old baseball coaches trade places.
    “It has come full circle, no doubt,” Burrill laughs. “I am eagerly waiting three years from now and competing against them.”
    
    Now, though, it’s midway through the summer of 2004.
    As a blistering afternoon awaits, West Ranch’s first and only baseball coach, Casey Burrill, shows one of his incoming freshman the finer points of bunting.
    To the 2008 class of Wildcats gathered around Burrill and assistant Josh Fogel, they feel right at home.
    But for Burrill, he’s a million miles away from varsity baseball, and ironically, he’s right where it all started.
    He’s at the William S. Hart Complex, a launching pad for a majority of yesterday, today and tomorrow’s high school baseball stars. Like Canyon, Hart, Saugus and Valencia, the complex is undergoing a facelift of sorts with construction workers often times outnumbering little leaguers. Nevertheless, the Pony field isn’t a high school field, but for the 2005 season it will have to be.
    West Ranch High School won’t play host to the Wildcats this upcoming season. No, that too must wait.
    It’s just one of the many changes for Burrill, who was the varsity coach just months earlier for a Saugus varsity baseball team, believed by many to be upon the cusp of greatness.
    Now, however, he dwarfs over 15-year-olds pounds removed from filling out their frames and years away from fulfilling their potential.
    “Right away, they’re just smaller people,” Burrill notices. “These kids are fresh out of junior high school.”
    And, of course, the Hart High graduate is fresh out of varsity baseball.
    He coached Saugus to its best season in years as the team finished with a 20-6-2 mark. The success came with the team well aware that Burrill and his staff of Fogel, Jason Priske and Darwin Smock were moving on.
    “At the beginning, we were like, ‘Oh God!,’” Saugus senior-to-be Travis Babin remembers of hearing Burrill’s announcement. “A week went by and we were like, we just have to play the season.”
    The Centurions would climb to second in the Foothill League, claiming victories against all of their crosstown rivals, including Valencia, the league’s titleist and Saugus’ fiercest adversary.
    “During games, I wouldn’t think about it really,” says Tommy Milone, another senior-to-be at Saugus. “It didn’t change the way I played.”
    While the impact wasn’t felt on the field, rumors swirled around it. There were problems with field upkeep throughout Burrill’s four years and there was, of course, the ever-present gossip of problems with parents and boosters. Nevertheless, Burrill always stayed true in his statement of the reasons behind his departure. For starters, it allowed him and his staff to stay together as a lack of teaching jobs for the assistant coaches at Saugus could have split it up. It was also a challenging new venture too enticing to pass up.
    “The switch to come here wasn’t cause I was unsatisfied,” Burrill states. “All of us really enjoyed our stay ... I’m forever grateful.”
    With the July heat quickly burning hotter as the morning dissipates, Burrill still speaks of the differences between freshman and varsity and being a Wildcat coach and Centurion fan.
    “It’s not as serious as we remember varsity baseball being,” he says.
    There’s the automatic differences in age and size, but then there’s the play and the competition. The Centurions would end their summer with a semifinal finish in the Valley Invitational Baseball League, while the Wildcats most aggressive outings were simulated scrimmages with the Saugus freshman team.
    Burrill openly admits he misses the competition. And of course the level of play is a light-years difference. That will change quick enough, though, as Burrill insists, “we don’t know how to coach them other than giving them a varsity coaching experience.”
    West Ranch has high hopes for the catching career of Michael Browne and the identical infield tandem of Chris and Andrew Reed. Their time will come down the road, though.
    The void in which West Ranch baseball will never fill for Burrill is the one he admits made his departure the toughest — the senior years of Babin and Milone.
    Both are returning starters to Saugus who captured All-League and All-SCV first-team honors and both are stellar pitchers and, perhaps, even better hitters. Both will now have a No. 1 fan who used to be a coach.
    “I’ll be there rooting these kids on,” Burrill says. “There’s no way I’m gonna miss those games.”
    Perhaps that will ease the transition from Saugus varsity skipper to West Ranch freshman coach. As the summer heat refused to relent, so too it seems did Casey Burrill’s Blue Pride.
    “I don’t know if I’ve made that transition even yet,” he says.
 
    George Lopata made the transition from junior varsity coach to varsity coach on May 25.
    “Technically,” he says, “I became the coach as soon as Villa Park won.”
    For the 2004 Centurion baseball team, it was, plain and simple, a dreary ending. Seniors passed on, just as they always do, which opened the floodgates further, but it, too, was the end of an era. Casey Burrill had ended a four-year stint with Saugus baseball and with him left a coaching staff and with it everything changed.
    “After the game, we talked in right field, like we always do,” Babin recalls. “All the coaches were in tears, a lot of the players were crying, it was an emotional moment.”
    Verifies Burrill: “It was a tear-jerker.”
    For Lopata, it was a beginning shrouded by a melancholy umbrella. Burrill had left behind his first-ever head coaching job and Lopata had just started his.
    He would spend the ensuing summer coaching a team consisting of assorted faces of familiarity and all of them adorned in uniforms he knew all too well. Lopata has experienced and written more than his fair share of Saugus High School lore. He played for the school’s football and baseball teams, and since, he has coached both, whether it was as a head coach or an assistant from freshman to varsity. He’s seen Saugus through the best of times and worst of seasons.
    “George is the perfect Saugus coach,” Burrill states. “He is a Centurion.
    “He loves that community and that campus and those kids more than anybody I’ve ever known ... It makes it easier, not easy, to look a Babin and Milone in the face.” Burrill continues. “We didn’t leave it to just anybody off the street.”
    It’s an understatement that Lopata knows Centurion Way all too well.
    For seven years he patrolled the Centurion sidelines as a football coach in assorted roles and now he embarks on his 10th year in the dugout. With it comes a new challenge as he inherits a team full of expectation and the nuances of a varsity head coaching experience.
    First on the agenda was getting to know his varsity squad. It proved a quick fix, though, as many of them were part of a 23-2 Centurion junior varsity team that won a co-league title in 2004.
    “They know me,” Lopata says, “they know what to expect.”
    For the others who weren’t quite as familiar with their new coach, it didn’t take long, though.
    “It really wasn’t much of a change,” Babin says. “It was a pretty easy transition.”
    The transition was made easier because of who Lopata is — an honest, up-front guy who won’t hesitate to shoot you straight.
    “I just keep things simple,” Lopata says, “all I really want from them is to act like they wanna be here. If you can get that out of 17 or 18 players you’re gonna be OK.”
    So it goes that Lopata doesn’t feel saddled with any of the aforementioned expectations.
    He knows Babin and Milone will be the heart of his order and he knows he’s got other talent in Ryan Erickson, Ricky Killey and a plethora of others. He knows he’ll have the arms and the bats. He also knows the Foothill League isn’t getting any easier. He also knows what it takes to get to Angel Stadium or Dodger Stadium or wherever a CIF title is to be won.
    As the summer dragged on, the Centurions’ VIBL season did as well. But with their success, Lopata remained hesitant to mail any good fortunes in.
    “I expect to be very competitive in this league,” he says, “but we’re still making mistakes a league champion wouldn’t make.”
    It matters no mind, though, because Lopata insists outsiders’ expectations need not be met.
    “We’ll set our own goals,” he says.
    Now, with the summer all but over and its baseball season concluded, Lopata has adjusted.
    “Just the level of play (is different). The mistakes that are made at the lower levels just aren’t made up here,” he says, “the intensity too.”
    Field troubles are now his to deal with. The quickest way to drag the field is now his to figure out. The complexities of the Hart rotation and the devastation of the Valencia batting order are now his to ponder.
    Lopata always wanted to be a baseball coach, even though, as he admits he was surprised about his latest venture.
    “Especially when I was younger,” he says of his coaching desire. “The timing of it shocked me a little bit. I wasn’t expecting Casey to leave.”
    But he did, and Lopata has returned to lead Saugus, just as he did in 1989. He had a little help from Roger Salkeld, of course, and he’ll have some more as he’s brought back Centurion baseball’s most storied son to help coach as well.
    But make no mistake, the face of Saugus baseball is now a familiar one and it’s George Lopata’s.
    
    So as 2008 approaches — faster than most will likely realize — an impending Foothill League battle between Casey Burrill’s West Ranch Wildcats and George Lopata’s Saugus Centurions does as well.
    That’s assuming, of course, they’re both still there.
    Both have made room for their baseball families, but 15 years removed from their high school glory and both have immediate families of their own. With the wonders and challenges of fatherhood and being a husband come top priorities that baseball must make room to accommodate.
    “It puts things into perspective,” Lopata says, “I’d rather have people see me as a good father than a good coach.”
    Adds Burrill: “I married my wife and my wife married a baseball team.”
    It doesn’t get any clearer or smoother. There is no happy ending. Instead there is simply optimism. It comes in the form of sanguinity for healthy Burrill and Lopata clans, followed by the genesis of two new baseball chapters.
    One with history and the return of a Centurion son.
    “I’m very excited,” Lopata says, “and optimistic.”
    And another with only blank pages to be written.
    “We’ve enjoyed kind of starting some new traditions,” Burrill says. “We feel like we’re doing it right the first time.
    “It’s been very enjoyable, everyone feels like something special is happening.”