This League Has Built an Empire : Prep baseball: Scouts say the league, which has sent many players to professional ranks, is among the strongest in the nation.

Don’t talk to Mike Gibson about the Empire League. He knows it all too well.

Seven years after the fact, Gibson finds it difficult to accept, perhaps now more than ever. It just didn’t seem possible.

Gibson, then the baseball coach at Los Alamitos High, had a team to die for. It seemed all he had to do was fill out that ol’ lineup card, then sit back and enjoy.

Talent? Just look around.

J.T Snow (Angels) and Rob Nen (Texas Rangers) are in the major leagues. Robbie Katzaroff (San Francisco Giants), Mike Kelly (Atlanta Braves) and Greg Pirkl (Seattle Mariners) are playing at the triple-A level.

They were all Griffins in 1986.

Back then, a Southern Section championship seemed possible. A league title was probable. A playoff spot was a can of corn.

Well, the Griffins lived up to most of their potential. They just didn’t make the playoffs.

“We finished fourth,” Gibson said. “Fourth. We won 17 games, more than any other third-place team. We had more wins than half the second-place teams. I still can’t figure out what happened.”

There is an easy answer. The Empire League.

“Yeah, any other league, and we would have been champions,” Gibson said.

During the last decade, the Empire League--Cypress, El Dorado, Esperanza, Katella, Loara and Los Alamitos--has built a reputation of dominance. In Southern California, one of the most fertile baseball grounds in the nation, no league has been stronger.

“I’d have to say it ranks up there with any league in the nation,” said Ken Compton, West Coast scouting supervisor for the Seattle Mariners. “I don’t know of a league that’s better in the West. The Moore League (schools from Long Beach, Compton and Lakewood) may be as good, but there is none better.”

Supporting that argument is easy.

In the last seven years, an Empire League team has reached the semifinals of the Southern Section’s major division playoffs six times. League teams have reached the championship game four times during that span. Twice they have won titles: Esperanza in 1986 and El Dorado in 1989.

The division is considered one of the toughest in the nation. And only the Moore League can match that playoff success. Tuesday night, Esperanza almost knocked off the No. 1-ranked team in the nation. Westminster Christian of Miami scored an unearned run in the seventh to beat the Aztecs, 4-3.

The Empire League’s players have excelled as well. Former players appear on major league rosters, and the minor leagues are dotted with alumni. The last two college players of the year were Empire League-bred--Kelly and Phil Nevin (El Dorado).

“I would say the Empire League is as good as any in Southern California, probably better,” Yankee scout Don Lindeberg said. “And I think baseball in Southern California is better than any other place in the world.”

There are various reasons for this dominance, but it can be best charted by Esperanza’s rise as a power.

When Mike Curran was hired as coach in 1981, the school’s program had never been successful. It was just there.

The Aztecs had never reached the playoffs and didn’t seem capable of qualifying.

“The program was in shambles,” Curran said. “To put it mildly, there was no way you could teach in that environment. I look back now and think, ‘Holy cow, how did I survive those first years?’ ”

Curran survived all right, and he thrived.

The Aztecs played in three consecutive section championship games from 1986 to 1988. They beat Fontana, 9-3, in the 1986 title game.

“We didn’t turn it into a boot camp, kids started looking at us when we talked to them,” Curran said. “We got them to take some pride in the program. When I got here, kids would just throw equipment around and let the coach pick it up. That stopped.”

That leadership, and the success, have been constant throughout the league.

Steve Gullotti has been at El Dorado for 12 years. Tim McMenamin has been at Katella for eight.

Scott Pickler, now the coach at Cypress College, and Ray Moore were successful coaches at Loara. Gibson and Rob McGill have kept Los Alamitos competitive.

Last year, Don Rayl guided Cypress to its first playoff berth in 13 seasons, and the Centurions upset No. 2-seeded Huntington Beach in the first round.

“It’s no accident that the league is this good,” Pickler said. “You have guys who view baseball as their life. They work all year to produce the best programs.”

And the first step has been on the field, quite literally.

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At El Dorado, the hitting background in center field came from Anaheim Stadium. Gullotti obtained it after the stadium was expanded in the early 1980s. It shows to what lengths league coaches will go to provide a top-notch facility.

Katella doesn’t have a quality field on campus, but across the street is Boysen Park. It is well-maintained by the city and provides the Knights with as good a home field as there is in Orange County.

Esperanza has a baseball complex, complete with batting cages and pitching areas, that would put many colleges to shame.

Los Alamitos has sunk nearly $50,000 into its field during the last two years.

“We try to provide an atmosphere that’s conducive to development,” Gullotti said. “If you have a nice facility, kids are going to enjoy practice. They will want to work.”

But facilities and coaching can take a program only so far. If you tell a kid to “take two and hit to right,” he has to be able to do just that.

“Coaching has something to do with it, but the talent has just been incredible,” McGill said.

All the schools draw from youth leagues that have churned out exceptional players; Cypress sent a team to the Little League World Series in 1990.

That talent has made its way into the high school programs and beyond. Last year, Nevin (Cal State Fullerton) and Pete Janicki (UCLA) became the first former high school teammates to be selected in the first round in the same draft.

Nevin and Janicki led El Dorado to the 5-A title in 1989. Nevin, the first player selected last June by the Houston Astros, wasn’t considered the Golden Hawks’ top player. At the time, scouts were more impressed with Janicki, the Angels’ first pick last June, and catcher Matt Luke, now in the Yankee organization.

Bret Boone, now with Seattle’s triple-A team, also played at El Dorado. Greg Harris, a pitcher with the Boston Red Sox, played at Los Alamitos. Bob Caffrey and John Fishel, the backbone of Cal State Fullerton’s 1984 national championship team, played at Loara.

The list goes on. It’s so long, in fact, that Tom Redington, the 1986 4-A player of the year, is just a footnote in the league’s history. He played for the Chicago White Sox’s double-A team last season.

“A lot of guys seem to go on from the Empire League,” said Snow, who played college baseball at Arizona. “Look at the guys who are still playing. It’s just a good, solid league.”

So solid that players have migrated to it.

Roger Weems was a high school freshman in Korea in 1986. His family was about to move to the United States and was looking for a place where Weems, now a pitcher at Alabama, could play baseball.

It happened to be the same year Esperanza was ranked No. 1 in the nation by USA Today. Weems’ family moved into the area.

“Roger’s mom met with our principal, and he’s telling her about the academic programs at the school,” Curran said. “He’s talking SAT scores and she said, ‘That’s great. That’s nice.’ She then pulled out a copy of USA Today and said, ‘I want to know about your baseball program.’ ”

Said Weems: “I didn’t know what to expect. I just knew it was a great program. Once I got there, I couldn’t believe the talent. I wasn’t even sure I could make the team. But it certainly got me ready for college baseball.”

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The talent has brought out people and intensity. It’s not unusual for 1,000 fans to attend key matchups. One coach estimated that the 1989 Los Alamitos-El Dorado game drew about 5,000.

“Almost every game felt like a championship game,” said Cal State Fullerton’s Kyle Evans, who played at Katella. “Every game was a ‘must-win’ game.”

It has fueled rivalries, which are mostly friendly. Mostly.

“It seemed like El Dorado and us always had something going,” Gibson said. “There was one time we tried to get a game with them changed because it was our prom night. I knew our kids wouldn’t have their minds on the game. El Dorado wouldn’t agree to the change.

“We get to the game, and there’s a limo parked near our dugout. They didn’t want our players to forget about the dance. I think we lost, 22-2. To this day, Steve Gullotti says he has no idea where the limo came from.”

Not that Gibson is complaining. In a tough league, one is always looking for an edge.

As long as it doesn’t backfire.

“We were playing El Dorado in 1989, and they were in a slump,” McMenamin said. “They brought in Janicki in the third, and he struggled. Our guys start trying to rattle him, yelling stuff from the dugout. He looked over at them with a look more intense than I’ve ever seen. I remember thinking we were in trouble. We were. He just shut us down.”

“They didn’t lose another game the rest of the season and won the 5-A championship. That’s the Empire League.”