Phat Chants

The Compton High softball players huddle at the front of graffiti-scarred bleachers, jeering fans over their shoulders, two hours of dusty humiliation in their face.

They can’t win; in 10 games they have been outscored, 175-2.

They can’t bat; their one official hit this season was a three-foot bunt.

They can’t catch; during home games, players chase fly balls amid cars that occasionally barrel through the outfield weeds.

They began the season wearing white T-shirts with numbers scrawled on the back in Sharpie pen. They will end it having begged for balls, with barrowed bats, and with some of their gloves stolen.

Their administration has forgotten them, some of their classmates curse them, their sympathetic opponents purposely make outs for them.

But, girl, can they chant.

Through every flailing batter, with every dropped fly ball, through every name on the roster, they chant.

“Ten is her number!

“Abby is her name!

“She is the reason!

“We’re gonna win this game!”

*

On a recent warm afternoon, in the second inning, the umpires warned that they were on the verge of canceling Compton’s game against visiting Long Beach Poly.

Because of cold.

Once again, the Compton girls had been frozen out by their administration. No school officials were there to watch the game, a violation of high school rules.

“We have to get somebody over here or they’re going to make us stop playing,” Coach Sean Corrigan shouted into a cellphone.

A policeman strolled past. He would suffice. He asked if the Compton girls had any cold water.

He was pointed toward a crusty water fountain with a warm trickle.

“I ain’t drinking out of that,” the cop said, walking away. It figured.

From the moment they gathered last fall, faceless girls playing boring softball in a community enamored of its boys and their basketballs, this has been a team shunned.

“You know what I really respect most about our girls?” Corrigan asked. “Knowing what they must go through every day, just to play. I greatly respect them for even showing up.”

Corrigan, 23, a history teacher with no previous softball coaching experience, was given the job because nobody else would do it.

The 18-player team, following a legacy of isolation and embarrassment, hardly knew the rules.

What countless other softball players in Title IX-bolstered fields across the country take for granted, these Compton girls quickly understood as precious.

Like home plate.

The school did not supply their scrubby home field with home plate until opening day. Until then, they used an old glove.

Or, like bases.

For several months, Compton ran around bases they had purchased at Target, except for second base, which was, well, another glove.

“It stinks, pretty much,” said Abby Molina, a senior catcher. “We knew right away the school didn’t care about the softball team.”

Bats? They used two rusted slabs of aluminum, one so old it quickly broke, and when was the last time you heard of that happening?

Balls? At first, it was strictly BYOB -- bring your own balls -- until the school supplied some on opening day. But they were the wrong kind, and umpires wouldn’t allow them in games.

Then there were the uniforms.

For the first four games, the girls did not have official uniforms, the old ones having been stolen and the school claiming that the new order had been botched by the vendor.

Remember earlier this spring when the city of Compton held a huge celebration for its three championship basketball teams? Complete with music, lunch and helicopter rides for the players?

Around that time, the Compton softball team was playing in those white T-shirts with Sharpie numbers.

“We had to bend our backs and draw on the numbers right before the first game, with all the girls from the other team looking at us while wearing their brand-new uniforms,” junior outfielder Margarita Landeros said. “That’s when I wanted to quit.”

Nobody quit.

Everyone chants.

“Anna is a friend of mine!

“She can rip it anytime!

“Rip, nah-nah-nah-nah!

“Rip, nah-nah-nah-nah!”

*

During a home game against Long Beach Jordan, as the margin widened, the leaders behaved oddly.

Every inning, it seemed, at least one Jordan girl would be called out for leaving the base too early. As the score crept toward the eventual 24-1 victory by Jordan, the mental mistakes increased.

Did they not know the rules? Were they not listening?

“Oh no, they were listening,” said Carter Kendrick, Jordan’s coach. “I told my girls to leave the base early. I told them to make outs.”

Ever since Poly took full measure of Compton with a 42-0 victory early in the season, every opponent -- including Poly -- has backed off.

“To come in here and see this,” Kendrick said, shaking his head. “I really feel for those girls.”

Visitors to Compton see more than just the humiliation of a sports team, they see the failure of a system.

Every promise made more than three decades ago by the passage of Title IX has seemingly been broken here, left to die like the gophers that once littered the outfield.

Yep, during preseason practices, the girls would jog around the poisoned animal carcasses until they were finally cleared away on opening day.

“Now that was no fun,” Landeros said.

Next to a well-manicured, fence-enclosed, regulation boys’ field, visitors here see a weed-stubbed piece of dirt that doubles as the girls’ field.

There are no outfield fences, so cars headed for the boys’ field cut across the dying grass during games.

This may be the only baseball or softball diamond in the United States where an outfielder was recently nearly injured by a flying hubcap.

It’s no safer in the dugouts because, well, there are no dugouts. The Compton girls sit in the stands, which means they share bleachers with a few students who sometimes show up to curse and jeer.

In some schools, coaches require that their students attend games. Here, Corrigan banned two students when their heckling became too distracting.

The “fans” mock the coach’s instructions, laugh at the players, even hide their gloves between innings.

“That’s why we all huddle down on the first bleacher, to try to block everybody out,” Landeros said. “But they’re so close, you have to listen to them, and it’s hard.”

Of course, when they take the field, it’s even harder.

Against Poly last week, someone commented that one of the Poly stars was a strangely awkward left-handed hitter.

“Um, she’s not a left-handed hitter,” Corrigan said. “She’s batting from the wrong side on purpose. A lot of them are. They don’t want to make the score worse.”

*

Maxine Kemp, a 39-year employee of Compton High and current girls’ athletic director, doesn’t understand the fuss about her softball team.

“I’m telling you, it’s not that bad,” she said.

Kemp said that times were tough throughout the school, and that softball was simply a victim of its lack of popularity.

“We don’t bring in a lot of money out there,” she said. “It’s not a big revenue sport. It’s not a paying sport like football and basketball.”

Corrigan said that he’d told Kemp that this attitude, this failure to spread funding equally, was in violation of Title IX.

“That’s when she told me, ‘If this is illegal, then we’ve been illegal for years,’ ” Corrigan said.

Kemp denied making that statement.

“I never said anything about something being illegal,” she said. “The truth is, we do our best, but we just don’t have the money for everything.”

Asked about a failure to supply something as simple as home plate, she said she didn’t see the problem.

“The way I see it, you can practice drill steps without a band,” she said. “I don’t care if they don’t have a base out there, that doesn’t mean they can’t play.”

Asked about the uniforms, she blamed the supplier.

“The company that was supposed to get us the uniforms never did, and I’m very upset about that,” she said.

Asked about the difference between the boys’ and girls’ facilities, she attributed it to fund-raising.

“We give the girls attention,” she said. “The only problem is, the boys do more hustling. The boys have car washes, fundraisers, do things that put themselves into tournaments.”

The softball team, however, bought candy at Costco and sold it in school to help pay for gloves and uniform bags.

Corrigan said that he has yet to receive funding from the school for his team.

Responded Kemp, “Last year, we outfitted three entire softball teams, spent more than $3,000 on it, and not a stitch of it could be found this year. I’m thrilled we were even able to buy those uniforms again.”

Kemp has been to one game, the opener, during which she supervised the repair of a protective fence in front of the bleachers, even as the game was being played.

“I feel for the girls, but I’m not a sorry person,” she said, shifting the focus to Corrigan. “He told us he was a softball coach. If you are a softball coach, you have to show them things, do whatever you can do.”

*

Corrigan, who arrived here from Colorado as part of the Teach For America program, has done things he never dreamed he would be doing.

He never dreamed he would have to teach his girls the difference between a ball and a strike.

He never dreamed that, upon getting one of the first hits in the first practice, the batter would run directly to third base.

He had no idea his team would give up an average of 17.5 runs a game while still not understanding the difference between a tag play and a force play.

“It’s been a challenge,” he said. “It’s been like, ‘OK, this is home plate.’ ”

Or, at least, a glove pretending to be home plate.

But Corrigan also never dreamed that during some of the most heartache-filled months of his life, he would fall in love.

With the spirit of girls who kept showing up. With the integrity of a team that never lost hope.

With words like these, from Margarita Landeros, the outfielder who has the top grade-point average in the junior class.

“I know I am getting embarrassed out there,” she said. “But if it takes me being embarrassed to learn something about myself, then I will be embarrassed.”

And so they learn, about failure, frustration, fortitude, somehow pushing a bright sunflower up through three months’ accumulation of gravel.

“They are amazing,” Corrigan said.

Watch this team for a couple of games and your ears deceive your eyes.

Strikeouts? The girls cheer the swing. Errors? The girls cheer the effort.

When one of their inexperienced pitchers turns fast pitch into slo-pitch? They holler for her as though she were Nolan Ryan.

The girls laughed about their T-shirt uniforms by calling them “throwbacks.”

They have countered the fools in the stands by filling their area with balloons, with songs, with those constant chants, with unfettered joy.

This spring, they will finish last in every sort of standings.

But next year, if Landeros continues to lead the class, they will be at the top of her valedictorian address.

“No one at the school cares about girls’ sports,” she said softly. “No administrator has ever given us one word of encouragement. But in my speech, I will talk about this season. I will talk about this team. This special team.”

*

Bill Plaschke can be reached at [email protected]. To read previous columns by Plaschke, go to latimes.com/plaschke.