Jul 25, 2008

Summers of glove

Small ballpark brings back larger-than-life memories for those who played there through the early years of Palo Alto Little League

Don McPhail / Special to the Daily News

People relate to baseball. Thanks to Little League baseball, kids play ball on smoothed infields and dream their major-league dreams in nearly every town in America. Our town was Palo Alto. Our time was more than 55 years ago, when Palo Alto Little League was formed. My story began in the league's second year, 1952, when a new stadium was built off Middlefield Road. It's still in use today, and that's where I recently went to reconnect with the place where we learned to play ball. Palo Alto's Little League Stadium was patterned after Stanford University's Sunken Diamond, and it has endured almost as long. Not surprisingly, when I stand on the pitcher's mound today and look toward the outfield, the view is decidedly different. Back then, beyond the outfield fence we saw orchards and fields filled with carrots and apricots and other crops boys could munch on before a game. The area is now Mitchell Park. Carrots and apricots have been replaced by swing sets and lawns.

Behind the backstop is the spot where Hall-of-Famers Ty Cobb and Pop Warner were honored during the grand opening on June 29, 1952. Back then you saw players such as Dick Holden, Hal and Howie Turner, and Ted Tollner playing for sponsors such as Palo Alto Sport Shop and Golden State Dairy.

The current outfield fence is placed at the foot of the berm, and you can't easily detect the below-ground placement of the field. But beyond each baseline you can see that the stands are a few feet higher than the field - the result of the removal of more than 5,000 yards of soil, work donated by volunteers and local contractors. You have to walk along the outfield fence to realize the elevation continues all around. The players knew about Sunken Diamond and its tradition, so the design of a below-ground Little League field proved to be popular with players and the parents who helped build it.

A year earlier, in the spring of 1951, the founding of Palo Alto Little League created one of the most enduring youth programs in the city's history. Just the year before, several visionary sports enthusiasts joined to create a program that encompassed not just Palo Alto but adjacent communities of Menlo Park, East Palo Alto, South Palo Alto and Los Altos. These local men and women created an official branch of Little League baseball.

The first official season was played in 1951 at El Camino Park, just north of the Palo Alto train station, and across from the current Stanford Shopping Center. It offered a "skin" infield consisting of smoothed dirt with no grass - and no rocks or weeds. Bases could be set up with short baselines for fast-pitch softball, or longer for the hardball played by the semi-pro Palo Alto Oaks.

Little League field dimensions were similar to softball, so this ballpark was a natural place to start. The layout provided an excellent place for our miniaturized version. The outfield was vast, and sharply hit balls often became home runs, the hitter streaking around the bases while the fielder chased down the ball.

There were four teams in that initial season. The first coaches were men like Howard Bertelsen, who looked like Jackie Gleason with his pencil mustache and cigar; Bill Alhouse, with his brisk, U.S. Marine style and shortstop's savvy; and portly Frank Pfyl, who looked like the ex-catcher he was.

Our team, P.A. Sport Shop, won the first championship with 14 wins and two losses. We were followed by Lowe's (10-5), Golden State (5-10) and 20-30 Club (2-14). In postseason play, Palo Alto's all-star team won its district games in Salinas and traveled by train to Santa Monica for the Western State playoffs. Our team didn't win, but we got valuable tournament experience that helped in subsequent years.

Some of the best-known first-year players included 12-year-olds Noel Barnes and Dennis Brewick, both of whom later starred at Cal; Bob Wendell, who captained an NCAA champion basketball team at Cal; Frank Farmer, who played at Paly before signing a pro baseball contract; and 11-year-old Ted Tollner, who played football and baseball at Cal Poly then became a successful head football coach at USC and San Diego State and is now the quarterbacks coach for the San Francisco 49ers.

Palo Alto's new Little League park was constructed at an estimated cost of $100,000 in time for the 1952 season. All games were played at the new field on Middlefield Road. The league expanded to 12 teams, and new team sponsors were primarily civic organizations, including Knights of Columbus, Lions Club and Jaycees.

The project was nurtured and managed by real estate executive Floyd Lowe, who made not a nickel from the project. Funding was a community effort with donations of cash and material patterned after a fundraising program in Salinas that combined large and small donations from families with major ones from businesses and civic organizations.

On opening day, the honored guests were Ty Cobb, a baseball legend and controversial figure then in his 70s and known for his salty personality, and famed Stanford football coach Pop Warner, who was 80 at the time. The festive day was widely featured in the Palo Alto Times newspaper, which assigned a young student writer, Gary Williams, to follow every game and featured the Little League games nearly as prominently as Stanford. This included generous articles about each game and detailed box scores with all of the players' names. Those of us whose moms or dads saved the clippings still keep them in weathered scrapbooks down in the basement. Young sportswriter Williams has since passed away after becoming a nationally respected sports journalist for the Times and San Jose Mercury.

Some of the best-known players included the Turner brothers and Bob Ralls from Menlo Park; Tollner, Mike McClellan, Shibun Tana, Dick Fregulia, Roger Baer and scores of players who went on to play high school baseball at Paly, Cubberley, Menlo-Atherton, Bellarmine and elsewhere.

The establishment of Palo Alto Little League was a lasting investment, evidenced by the continuous use of the original Little League field for more than 55 years, wisely protected by its founders from outside development. I can still picture the faces of men like Bertelsen, Alhouse, Frank and Monte Pfyl, the Hoffaker family and many others who continued to play a major role in local youth sports, by continuing as active coaches and mentors for these same boys as they progressed through Pony League, Babe Ruth League, American Legion and the Oaks. Palo Alto youngsters were fortunate to have such examples.

Exploring the park today, of course it is considerably smaller than it seemed back then. But to the boys who played there, it is still large and full of experiences. For those of us who started with the league more than 55 years ago, the selective memories are enormous. This was where we wore our first big-league style uniforms. We learned how to use the thin white undersocks beneath the stirruped game socks, and to roll the pants down just right, halfway toward the ankles. We wore our first spikes, the rubberized Little League version, so we wouldn't hurt each other sliding in, spikes high, the way the pros did it. We learned the fadeaway slide - to slip a leg across home plate just ahead of the catcher's tag - and to glide across second base, skimming the bag while we gathered the toss to begin a double play. We cheered and cheered when Neill Parkin hit that game-winning homer over the fence, and we learned to live with the occasional heart-breaking defeat when we didn't get the that crucial run across the plate.

In the end, the Palo Alto Little League park is a small and special place. It is a miniature ballfield where we got to play good baseball and learned to love the game. To hold all these memories, it is also larger than life.



Don McPhail is a freelance writer who lives in Mountain View with his wife Gretchen. He is Chairman of the Board for Hanna Boys Center, a renowned residential treatment center for troubled boys located in Sonoma. His articles have appeared in travel publications and newspapers in the U.S., Canada and South Africa.