Ramona's Self-Made Southpaw Makes Things Right : Baseball: Five shoulder separations forced Todd Tuggle to switch from right- to left-handed for his senior season.

By SCOTT MILLER

June 30, 1991 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

RAMONA — His baseball season is finished now, and graduation was earlier this month. But as spring winds give way to summer barbecues, a minute for the tale of Todd Tuggle.

Tuggle, from Ramona High School, was second in the county in batting this season with a mark of .569. But that’s only part of the story. So he could play as a senior, the former right-hander learned to throw left-handed .

We are not making this up.

See, Tuggle’s struggles had reached near-mythical proportions. He:

* Suffered a partial separation of his right shoulder playing baseball as a sophomore.

* Suffered a complete separation of the right shoulder playing football as a junior.

* Had surgery.

He made it through his senior season on the football field until, on the last play in the last practice before Ramona’s first trip to the playoffs, he blew out the thing again.

It healed. He went body-boarding in Hawaii. Another separation. Played pick-up basketball. Did it again. Underwent a second surgery.

Five times, he has separated the shoulder.

He never wanted to give up sports. When he was a junior, after his second shoulder separation, he decided to heck with it. Forget his right shoulder. He would learn to throw left-handed. This was before the baseball season.

First, a disclaimer. His father is ambidextrous. And Tuggle is a natural left-hander. When he was young, Tuggle was taught by his father to throw right-handed. Tuggle’s father figured there are more positions in baseball for right-handers than for lefties.

In essence, Tuggle threw right-handed until his shoulder didn’t work anymore. Then, he switched.

Weird? Confusing, too. All of his life, he threw everything but a baseball with his left hand. When he quarterbacked the Ramona football team, he passed with his left hand.

But throwing a baseball takes a different motion, and it took him nearly a year to learn to throw a baseball left-handed well enough to do it in a game. That’s why he played junior varsity baseball as a junior, hidden at first base, and didn’t make the varsity team until his senior season.

“A lot of hard work and a real pain in the butt,” Tuggle said, describing the transition from throwing a baseball right-handed to left-handed.

Said Ramona Coach Bill Tamburrino: “We had a volunteer coach who had coached at a junior college for 20 years, and he did not know Todd wasn’t a natural left-handed baseball player until I told him.”

During the time Tuggle was teaching himself to throw left-handed, he would throw baseballs, tennis balls, anything that happened to be nearby.

“Anything round, I’d throw,” he said.

At least Tuggle’s teammates were understanding, right?

“They’d get on me about throwing all the time,” he said.

Said Tamburrino: “The only negative thing I can say about Todd is that he ruined two pairs of pants. We got new uniforms this year, and he ripped out the knees.”

Wait. There is one more problem Tamburrino has with Tuggle.

“He’s very cheap,” Tamburrino said, laughing. “He borrowed my outfielder’s glove and the pitcher’s first base glove.”

Said Tuggle: “I didn’t want to buy a $130 glove. I think I borrowed every left-handed glove I could.”

The most difficult thing about his switch, though, was something other than finding a glove to borrow.

“It was kind of hard to find someone to play catch with me,” he said. “I was so wild, nobody wanted to chase the balls.”

One day during his junior year, shortly after his experiment had begun, Tuggle attempted to throw a ball in the direction of his classmate and good friend, Melissa Ularer. They were not playing catch . . . she was walking past the baseball field. He meant to throw the ball so that it would bounce by her and startle her.

He hit her in the back of the head.

“And (Tamburrino) was applauding,” Tuggle said. “He said, ‘What do you feel so bad for? You should be applauding. You hit something.’ ”

Luckily, Ularer wasn’t hurt. Apparently, Tuggle still couldn’t throw hard enough.

When he made the varsity team in his senior year, he played first base, outfield and catcher. And if Ramona fans were busy wiping the disbelief out of their eyes regarding their new left-hander, just think what was on the minds of the Carlsbad people the day their team played Ramona.

That would be the day Tuggle caught with both hands.

Honest. He was catching right-handed--that is, glove on left hand, throwing with right--until Carlsbad got a baserunner and it looked like he may have to throw to second. Tuggle calmly got up, walked to the Ramona bench and got a glove that fit on his right hand so he could throw with his left .

“What are you doing?” the home plate umpire asked. “What are you going to do next, switch-hit?”

As it turned out, there was no play at second.

Nobody would have criticized him if he simply had quit after, say, the second shoulder separation. Or the third. Or the fourth or fifth. He could have retired as a successful high school athlete and probably collected the sympathy of his teachers and classmates. But he didn’t.

“I don’t know . . . “ he said. “Junior year, I wanted to quit. I’m a real competitor, and I didn’t feel right playing baseball and not playing it to the best of my ability.

“But I didn’t want to say 20 years from now, what if? And, defense isn’t everything. I could still swing the bat.”

Tuggle already is attending summer school at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. He plans to major in aeronautical engineering and hopes to make the baseball team as a walk-on.

“I doubt seriously if I can hold myself back from baseball,” he said. “I hear they have a really good team.”

And plenty of left-handed gloves.