By CHRIS BRANAM
Valley Press Staff Writer
LANCASTER - As the crowd filed into The Hangar on this cold and windy April evening, Robert Luce stood behind the pitcher's mound with his cap covering his heart.
As he listened to the national anthem being sung, perhaps it didn't matter that he had never been in this position before.
He was starting a game for the first time. Ever.
Not in Little League, not in high school, not in college.
"The first start was tough, I'm not going to say it wasn't," Luce remembers. "I had my butterflies going and everything."
It wasn't an outing filled with eye-popping statistics. Luce went five innings and gave up six hits, walked two and struck out three. He beat High Desert, 10-7.
Luce had won in place of the injured Damaso Marte. It was a nice story; quaint.
So who would have thought that 2 1/2 months later, Luce would be in Durham, N.C., to play in tonight's second California League-Carolina League All-Star Game?
Certainly not his father, Rick.
"I always wanted him to be a switch-hitting shortstop," Rick said recently from the Luce home in the Northern California town of Rescue, which is tucked into the foothills 30 miles east of Sacramento.
Hitting and fielding are what the Luces - Rick and Robert - would work on year-round as the son adopted the father's passion for the game.
"We went to the ballpark almost everyday," Robert said, "and that's not a real exaggeration. Just about every day since I was, shoot, nine (years old). . . all the way up through high school."
Although Rick disagrees on exactly how often he would get together with Robert ("I don't know every day, but a lot"), he never hesitated to take a role in his son's development as a baseball player.
"That was something that we could share together," he said. "All he's ever done is play baseball. I just tried to support him. I was just trying to be there for him when he wanted a ride down to the field."
The Seattle Mariners thank you, Rick.
Luce, a ninth-round pick in last year's June draft, has developed into one of the organization's top prospects. He was 10-1 with a 2.81 ERA in the first half and earned high marks from JetHawks pitching coach Jim Slaton.
"I wish I had a whole staff with the makeup he has," Slaton said. "He does all the little things well."
Slaton has been especially impressed by Luce's composure, even though he's only in his second year as a pro.
"His success has been because he doesn't change his game plan," he said.
That may come from all those years Luce was a shortstop. He only was converted to pitcher three years ago, when he was at American River College in Sacramento, but Luce talks like a seasoned veteran.
"If I give up a solo home run," he said, "I have to come back and face the next hitter with the same mind-set that I faced the previous hitters before that.
"If I make a good pitch and the guy gets a hit, then you have to tip your hat to him, he said. "You have to go back and make that same pitch. You can't be scared to throw it to the next guy, just because one guy put a good swing on it."
Not trying to dominate the opponent has been the key to Luce's success. While he gives up more than a hit per inning (100 in 86 1/3), Luce spots his pitches and keeps the ball down.
He is good at scattering hits and staying away from the big inning, two remnants of his days as a closer at UNLV. That was where Roger Jongewaard, the Mariners' vice president in charge of scouting and development, first saw Luce pitch.
"I thought he had good stuff, threw strikes and was aggressive," Jongewaard said. "We liked him for his style and his pitches."
But then Jongewaard added: "We would have drafted him higher if he would have been bigger. We see a lot of advantages in size. . . but there are exceptions and we hope he's one of them."
That's where the Greg Maddux comparisons come in. Like Maddux, Luce is slight (6-feet, 168 pounds) and he's becoming known as a thinker on the mound.
"I would never make that comparison," Rick Luce said, chuckling a little bit. "(But (Robert) does kind of hit his spots and he doesn't challenge the hitters."
Even though he's been composed on the mound, Luce says he still can't totally understand the run of success he's having.
"I didn't expect it to work out the way it did, but all I have ever asked for was an opportunity," he said. "So far, I've made the best of it."