A MIND FOR THE GAME : Disastrous Injury Stopped Redfern From Playing, But He Is Managing Quite Nicely in a Wheelchair

The walls of Pete Redfern’s home in Sylmar are festooned with baseball-related memorabilia. Around every corner, it seems, are framed bits and pieces of the former major leaguer’s life and times. Represented are the highs and lows, peaks and valleys, life’s fastballs and changeups.

In the hallway is a note of appreciation signed by many of his former college teammates at USC. In the family room is a collection of his baseball cards, from his days as a shaggy-haired rookie right-hander with the Minnesota Twins in 1976 to his final season in ’82.

On his bedroom wall is a letter from former Reagan press secretary James Brady, who was critically injured in a presidential assassination attempt in 1981. The letter is neatly typed on White House stationery and signed by Brady, who cheerfully suggests that major physical setbacks need not be viewed as insurmountable.

Yet Redfern isn’t shy about creating artwork of his own. Although Redfern, 35, has been a quadriplegic for almost seven years, the mound is again his canvas. As coach of the Chatsworth American Legion team, Redfern has his limitations, but they are few.

A portrait of persistence, his brush strokes are about brushbacks, his sports illustrated through sports articulated.

“He is very, very descriptive,” Chatsworth catcher Mike Mancuso said. “He paints a picture in your mind.”

Reed McMackin, the City Section 4-A Division co-Player of the Year at Chatsworth High, attentively sat at Redfern’s feet during a recent Legion game, hardly a rarity. Honors or not, McMackin knows there is plenty to learn about the game and that Redfern is a seemingly unlimited source of information.

“I like sitting by him,” said McMackin, a pitcher and designated-hitter. “He tells stories, he’s always talking strategy. For any one situation, he seems to have 10 or 12 ideas about possible plays or whatever that could go on.”

Even if Redfern did nothing more than show up at the park on his off-days during his college and pro tenures, he could have soaked up volumes of information purely by osmosis. His college coach at USC, where Redfern was an All-American, was Rod Dedeaux--the winningest coach in NCAA Division I history. His manager with the Twins was strategic whiz Gene Mauch.

But to an 18-year-old kid, that’s ancient history, something out of a dusty old baseball encyclopedia. McMackin admits there was a time when he believed that Redfern’s input would be minimal. After all, there is The Chair, a barrier not just for Redfern.

“At first I thought, ‘He’s going to help me with mechanics? Yeah, how?’ ” McMackin said. “Then he started teaching me, he put me on a weight program.

“He’s very explicit. And you don’t really notice the chair.”

Redfern sits in the dugout at most games, leaving the coaching at the corners to Pat Eggleston and Chuck Hatfield, a pair of American Legion District 20 veterans. Hatfield, in fact, coached Redfern from 1971-73 on the Studio City team. Before Woodland Hills West won the World Series last season, Redfern’s and Hatfield’s 1973 team was the last from District 20 to advance to Series competition.

Eggleston, who coaches third base, is within earshot of Redfern most of the time. After receiving input from Redfern, Eggleston flashes the signs to the batters. Redfern counsels players at length between innings--and between games.

“He’s definitely not holding anything back,” Mancuso said, laughing. “He’s going at it full bore. He must call each player, and I’m not lying, three or four times a day.”

His enthusiasm was once more guarded. Redfern said that when a parent of a Chatsworth player first

approached him in the spring and asked that he coach the Legion team--which had folded last season--he blanched and promised that he would instead help enlist the services of a different coach.

Since the 1983 accident that left him paralyzed from the neck down, Redfern had never served in an official coaching capacity. He offered advice to teammates of his 9-year-old son, Chad, but always as a volunteer.

“The more I thought about it, I thought, ‘I’d like to try,’ ” he said.

Most people figured the game was sometimes too painful for him to watch, that anyone who played ball at the highest level wasn’t interested in being a spectator.

They were wrong.

“I went through that in the hospital,” he said. “The psychologists were always waiting for me to crash, to break down, but I never did. Heck, I almost drown, first of all. I almost died three times. I figured I was meant to be alive.

“I remember one time there was a spring training game on TV. Spring training has always been just plain old boring to me. One of the patients came by my room and said, ‘Why aren’t you watching the Dodger game?’

“I said, ‘I don’t feel like watching it.’

“The psychologist was in my room in five minutes. He said, ‘OK, let’s talk about why you don’t want to watch baseball.’

“I said, ‘Don’t worry, as soon as the gun sounds, I’ll be watching.’ I’ll never forget that year, 1984, when Jack Morris threw a no-hitter on the first Saturday game of the week. I watched the entire game and loved every minute of it.”

Once he agreed to take over the Legion team, which has compiled a district record of 3-5, Redfern did his homework. He pored over high school linescores for names and information. By his bedside was a poster board with the day’s Valley prep baseball results pinned to it.

“He had a pretty good idea who most of the kids were before he’d ever seen them play,” first-year Chatsworth High Coach Tom Meusborn said.

Redfern said that when he first called Meusborn, the Chatsworth High coach had never heard of him. Another barrier was soon beaten down: Meusborn has asked Redfern to serve as his pitching coach next season.

Redfern winces each time he sees Brian Downing walk to the plate. He recalls the day, Easter Sunday in 1982, and almost each pitch he made to a California Angels team that was loaded with the fence-busting likes of Reggie Jackson, Fred Lynn, Doug DeCinces, Bob Boone and perennial batting champion Rod Carew.

When pressed for details about his major league career, Redfern fires up the videotape and relives perhaps his finest moment, a 3-2 defeat of the Angels at the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome that was televised live to Los Angeles.

Late in the game, Downing looped a well-placed curveball into the gap in right-center to shatter Redfern’s shutout. It hurts a bit, for despite 42 career wins--there were also 48 losses--on a mediocre team, Redfern never recorded a shutout.

“I turned to (Downing) after that and said, ‘How’d you do that?’ He smiles and says, ‘Luck.’ ”

Redfern didn’t feel fortunate in October, 1983, seconds after he dove into the Pacific off Newport Beach. In fact, after the flash of impact, he didn’t feel anything. The water was a mere two feet deep and Redfern’s neck was broken when his head hit a rock.

His recuperation continues. Through strenous daily therapy and doggedness, he has regained partial use of his arms and legs. One of the proudest moments of his life, he says, was when he was able to place his arm around his son’s shoulder.

He has been forced to relearn the fundamentals he once took for granted, but the basics of the game remain rooted in his mind, where Redfern is the staff ace whenever the mood strikes.

“I still remember the fundamentals,” he said with a grin. “I watch guys brush guys back, and I remember, ‘Oh, yeah, I know how to do that.’ ”

The open spaces of the baseball field clearly agree with him. He bristles when reminded of his lengthy hospital stay, which made him long for the game even more. Yet during a period when Redfern’s emotions should have reached an all-time low, he remained characteristically chipper.

As he has done with his baseball mementos, Redfern secured a place for a permanent reminder of his hospitalization. This is a man who is very proud of what he has accomplished.

And he wants everyone to know.

“I ran into a lot of nurses who would walk in, stick a thermometer in your mouth, take your blood pressure and leave,” he said. “So when they’d walk in, I got into the habit of saying, ‘Fine, and you?’

“They wouldn’t say, ‘How you doing’ or ‘How’s it going’ or anything. It was my way of telling them that just because I had been hurt didn’t mean I was hurt .”

The memento hangs in a mobile gallery and the odds are that if you ever catch a glimpse, it will be moving ever forward.

You see, the license plate on Redfern’s van reads: FYNE ANU.

Suitable for framing.