BIG-LEAGUE STAR SEARCH : SQUAD OF SCOUTS WITNESSES BATTLE BETWEEN AREA'S TOP PREP PITCHERS.

Byline: KEVIN MODESTI

A few dozen stood behind the fence along the right-field foul line, writing in pocket-size notebooks as a gawky pitcher from Antelope Valley High School took his warmup tosses. An equal number camped out behind the backstop with radar guns in hand, so they'd be ready when a towering teen-ager from Kennedy High fired the first pitch of the game.

But one major-league scout had more important things to do in the minutes before the prep baseball event of the year unfolded at the Pierce College diamond in Woodland Hills. He was the scout in charge of counting the scouts.

See, the guys with the radar guns and the stopwatches and the wrap-around sunglasses and the beer bellies had placed wagers on exactly how many of their brethren would be on hand when the baseball world descended on the San Fernando Valley on Friday afternoon.

``I counted 47 on this side,'' the man said, laughing, as he hurried past the first-base bleachers, where the small gathering of fans seemed almost incidental to the scene at this Daily News Invitational game.

He counted more than 70 scouts before taking his place among the crowd that lined up a dozen deep behind the chain-link backstop to watch an early-season showdown between Kennedy's Jon Garland and Antelope Valley's Sean Douglass, the hottest pitching prospects in the area.

It's not every day you see 30 radar guns in one place. It's not often a game is moved from Kennedy High to Pierce, as this one was, just to make room for the scouts.

``Throughout the country, there's maybe 10 or 12 (such closely watched games) in a year,'' one scout said.

The crowd included, it's fair to assume, at least one representative of every major-league team, and as many as three from some clubs. The Arizona Diamondbacks - already stockpiling talent for a team that won't debut until next season - sent their area scout, their West Coast scouting supervisor to look over his shoulder, and their national scouting director to look over two shoulders.

``Pitchers are hard to see,'' George Bradley, a heavy, cigar-smoking man from the Chicago White Sox, said, trying to explain Friday's phenomenon. ``Hitters play every day. Pitchers, you don't get that many chances. When two good ones are going, the result is this.''

Bradley, a former minor-league umpire, is what they call a ``cross-checker'' for the White Sox. From his home in Tampa, Fla., he was on day 11 of a 19-day road trip to every corner of the country.

``My job is not to say if a guy is a prospect or not a prospect,'' he said. ``When I walk in here, I assume they're prospects.''

He assumes that because the White Sox's area scout has told him so.

``My job,'' Bradley said, ``is to compare them to the kids I've seen in Mississippi, the kids I've seen in Virginia, the kids I've seen in Minnesota, and put them on a list in order.''

That's the list the White Sox will use when baseball drafts fresh talent in June. That's the list that could make your 17-year-old neighbor a millionaire thanks to a seven-figure signing bonus.

And that means that amid the relative insignificance of Kennedy's 6-1 victory Friday, hundreds of thousands of dollars may have been on the line for Garland and Douglass.

``Usually you only get one shot (to grab a scout's attention),'' said one of the men with the notebooks. ``Scouts are human. What they see is what they think.''

After Friday's spectacle, they just might think that Garland, 17, is the reincarnation of Don Drysdale, the Valley's greatest pitching product.

A 6-foot-5 right-hander with an astonishingly polished delivery, he struck out the first three Antelope Valley batters on 10 pitches, walked the leadoff hitter in the second, then struck out the next four. By the time his coach removed him from the mound after five innings - an early-season precaution - Garland had recorded nine strikeouts and had not allowed a base hit.

Oh, and he collected three hits of his own.

As for the numbers that really counted, the radar guns clocked his fastball between 90 and 93 mph and his curveball at nearly 80. That's big-league heat.

Douglass - who, like Garland, is 6-foot-5 and wears glasses - pitched two rockier innings before leaving the game. His fastball never broke 90 mph. He'll have better days. But not in front of this many scouts.

Someday, the 300 spectators at Pierce College may look back and laugh. There's no guarantee that either pitcher will make the majors.

``The failure rate is a lot higher than the success rate,'' Vikki Garland, Jon's mom, admitted before the game. ``I know that.''

But more likely, we'll look back and say we were there the day Garland and Douglass dueled for the first time.

``They could both go to the big leagues,'' said Jim Johnson, one of the scouts from Arizona. ``I hope they do. I've seen a lot of pitchers in the big leagues with less stuff than these guys have.''

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2 Photos

Photo: (1--Color) All eyes were on Antelope Valley High ace Sean Douglass.

(2) Most of the baseball scouts attending Friday's Daily News Invitational game were armed with radar guns.

David Sprague/Daily News