In battle for 2nd place, Gold goes by the book

Photo: Pat erb and Brent Burley at Dodger stadium

.    By Bill Tarrant

Brent Burley likes to go by the book.

When the Principal Software Engineer for Wal Disney Animation Studio first took up bowling with his wife Pat Erb, he read a how-to book about bowling – and then rolled a 150.

Brent, 58, didn’t play competitive sports growing up. “My mother didn’t like organized sports. She didn’t like how competitive the parents were, didn’t like the environment.”

Pat’s mother was just the opposite: “My mom put us all in park and rec leagues; she had us in everything because she liked local sports,” said the divorce and mediation lawyer who grew up in West LA and has been playing ball since she was 5.

So when Pat, 62, convinced her husband of 33 years to try softball for the first time around the age of 40, Brent looked for a book. He found “Dr. Whacko’s Guide to Slow-Pitch Softball,” which according to the book blurb “Uses imaginary stories about the Mouth Breathers, a softball team, to explain the fundamentals of hitting, pitching, playing the field and baseball strategy.”

“I started at zero. I was missing everything,” Brent recalled. “I was playing right field and running in for everything and then having it go over my head.”

At first, he flew out to left a lot. Then he went to the batting cages and honed his right-field approach. Eight games into the Culver City Senior Softball League’s season, he’s the second-leading hitter on the 2^nd-place Gold team (behind the incomparable Jim Devico), sporting a .757 average with 10 extra base hits, including 3 homers.

Pat, who plays first base, can boast a .667 average from the six hole in the Gold lineup after a 4 for 5 day at the plate in Gold’s 21-18 victory over Black on April 13. Like Brent, the Gold team went by the book in the victory – taking an early lead with strong hitting and solid defense and closing it out with good pitching. Both teams began play at 4-3.

“You have a great team,” Black manager Gary Butcher told me. “Your top five in the order produced a lot of 5-run innings. Then you have Pat. She’s always on base, and the only way we got her out was (shortstop) Joe Owens making that spectacular catch in the outfield.”

Pat is among a dozen or so women in the league and one of the best.She has spent her legal career advocating for women and children, first in LA’s District Attorney Office in child support services. “It was in law school (at Pepperdine University) that I decided I wanted to help women.” The couple have two sons, aged 29 and 26.

Pat, who plays first and take throws across the infield from third-baseman Brent, says they never argue about the games. “On our way home, we’ll talk about the game and that’s fun, too. And sometimes, we help each other; he’ll ask for a better target and I might tell him he’s stabbing at the ball (instead of catching it).”