Petter benefits from food for thought

Beneath the bill of his sweat-stained baseball cap are scrawled three simple words: Go get it.

As in go get the strikeout. Or go get the win.

Kyle Petter, the ace of the West Torrance staff, slid a finger over those words -- “It’s an expression that stays with me,” he said -- then he peered out to the vacant ball field where he had just struck out 10 batters in four shutout innings.

He grinned.

“Yeah, go get it.”

As a sophomore two years ago, Petter was getting something else: poor grades. He was ruled academically ineligible to play baseball after receiving a report card with a 1.8 grade-point average and was banished -- to the snack stand.

At the request of Coach Juan Cueva, Petter was put to work inside the gray trailer that sits 20 yards from the West Torrance dugout.

On game days, he could hear the crack of the bat and the whooping of fans while he was serving up Skittles and Diet Cokes.

“Kids would come up to me and ask, ‘Why aren’t you with the team?’ ” Petter said. “It felt like my life took a downhill plunge.”

All of it was torture.

“Kyle was playing baseball since age 5,” his mother, Cindy, said. “Then, instantaneously, it was taken away.”

His father, Ken, who taught Kyle how to play ball at a local park, called his son’s ineligibility “devastating.”

Cueva said there were two reasons for the snack-stand sentence: to improve Petter’s life skills and keep him near the team. As the coach put it: “I just wanted him to know that he was still part of our family.”

Not that Cueva didn’t have worries.

“My biggest fear was that Kyle would become dejected to a point of doing even poorer in school,” he said. “But he was able to switch a negative into a positive.”

While ineligible, Petter qualified for the school’s resource program for students with learning disabilities and began working one-on-one with Cueva, who’s also his advocate and study-skills teacher in the program.

Petter’s grades improved, and, after 10 weeks of working the snack bar, he was allowed to rejoin the team for the last few weeks of his sophomore season.

He has averaged a 3.0 GPA as a junior and senior.

“I want people to know I’m a kid who worked his butt off,” he said. “I want people to say, ‘This kid went from being ineligible to being the best pitcher in the South Bay.’ ”

The left-hander is, in fact, one of the Southland’s best, with a 14-2 record over the last two seasons.

This year, Petter, who is built like a catcher with squared shoulders and big legs, is 7-0 with 66 strikeouts in 38 innings and a 2.23 earned-run average.

On Monday, he threw a two-hitter, striking out 10 in a 2-0 victory over Hemet West Valley in the first round of the Jim Graham Memorial tournament at Covina Gladstone.

“Whenever he’s on the mound, the team just feels confident,” teammate Aaron DeGuire said. “We can see how opposing hitters just look rattled against him.”

DeGuire also said the No. 15-ranked Warriors (13-3 going into Tuesday’s tournament game) feel ready to win the Bay League title outright and not share it, as they did the previous two seasons.

With an ace like Petter, they have a chance.

His fastball can kiss 92 mph, and his curve snaps down with slider-type bite. But his blue-eyed glower is his trademark.

“On the mound, I only have one face -- a game face,” he said. “ ‘Just be a bulldog’ is what I tell myself.”

The game face is what his coach admires most.

“When he has the ball, you can see a certain look in his eye,” Cueva said. “It’s like he knows he’s going to get you out.”

Petter said he plans to play college ball and has committed to Cal State Fullerton. Cueva expects him to be selected in baseball’s June amateur draft.

“I have one goal in life and that’s to play professional baseball,” said Petter, as he slid on his cap and strolled away from the vacant field and the snack stand.

“I learned how much I wanted that goal when I was ineligible. I knew I had to get better grades to make it come true.”