A Right Turn to the Track
Posted Saturday, November 7, 2009 02:18 PM

A turn to the right and that has made all the difference.
 
On the Monday after basketball finished my junior year I turned in my uniforms and hurried to change for baseball practice. After putting on my spikes, and finding them stiff and cracked from six months of inactivity, I glanced up at the bulletin board on my way out the door. I was a little late getting started, but I still loitered at the board. I quickly discovered that without a tryout I had already been assigned to the Junior Varsity team. The previous year I had been the starting center fielder on the JVees, and after switching to batting from the left side of the plate, had hit over 300.
 
As an only child I had to improvise playmates and activities. From the time I was seven our garage was frequently my best friend. My folks bought me a ping pong table. I set it up against the garage wall and played against myself. My baseball equipment consisted of a Yankee cap, a bat, a glove and a bucket of tennis balls.
 
If I wanted to play catch, there was the garage front door. It had cross supports that formed a V, perfect for pitching practice. The closer I stood to the garage, the faster I had to react to catch the ball. My grandsons have a device called a “pitch back” that serves the same purpose, although the return flight of the ball is far less predictable. To practice hitting, I quickly found that I could not throw well enough with my left hand, so with the bat in my left hand I threw the ball against the garage with my right, then grabbed the bat with both hands and swung left handed. It seemed more natural anyway.
 
There was the problem of ball retrieval. On one side, the McConnells cultivated blackberry plants, which grew along the fence between the two properties, almost too tempting to resist. I loved Mrs. McConnell; she was the grandmother I never had. The Linvilles lived on the other side, and they had a big German Shepherd that [can you believe?] was slow to warm to me. After awhile though, he would take my pants in his teeth and hold on. I soon realized this was not aggressive behavior, but "Play with me." This led to long games of fetch, always ending with the effective destruction of a tennis ball, at least for batting practice. When Rex finished with a ball, you didn’t want to touch it ever again.
 
As we became better acquainted, the dog would greet me with his leash in his mouth, and then we would go to Garfield Park, a much larger venue, to play fetch. Although he was untrained, Rex was perfectly obedient and almost seemed to know before I did what I wanted him to do. He must have sensed that if things didn’t go well we would not be returning to the park. As a bonus, I found an almost unlimited supply of discarded, but practically new tennis balls near the courts for batting practice.
 
When I started Little League at age 10, the coach wouldn’t let me hit left handed, even in practice to show that was my more “natural side.” We know now that a person’s “natural” side has more to do with their dominant eye [mine is the left] than dominant hand. I think a couple of my friends were even forced to write right handed. In organized baseball I swung from the right side of the plate, but I continued to practice lefty and hit that way when we played unsupervised pickup games, something I never see kids do today. I remember my best day in sandlot ball; we started at 10:00am and played till it was dark. I went 45 for 66.
          
When I turned out for high school baseball my sophomore year, I immediately had trouble hitting curve balls. I had played “Middle League” the previous summer, and the change from 56’ to 60’6” allowed curveballs to curve more. What's more, the pitchers were better, you were facing the best. After the pre-league season, during which I was given every opportunity to show what I could do, my place on the bench was assured. With nothing to lose, I started to hit left handed in batting practice. Instead of forbidding me to hit lefty, Coach Swartsbaugh encouraged me, and I really started to sting the ball.
 
After only a week, I got my first start in a home game at centerfield. What a thrill to take the field for your school as a starter. We retired the side in the first inning, but as I came to the plate, I immediately noticed that the opposing pitcher was a lefty. His delivery came from the side, and he was really “bringing it” as they say today. Should I bat from the right side?
          
Coach Swartsbaugh immediately saw what was happening and walked over to me.
“What should I do?”
“You’re a lefty now, you can hit this guy,” and with that he slapped me on the helmet. Geeeeeeez, I’ve just got to do well for this guy, he believes in me. This was a moment I remembered again and again when I became a coach myself.
 
Postponing the inevitable [can I hit a lefty?] I dropped a bunt down the third base line and beat it out easily. I then stole second and third. The track coach Jim Brownfield, who was my science teacher, was at the game. Who knows why because the field we played on that year was a couple miles from the high school campus? The next time up I hit a slow grounder to shortstop and beat that out. Finally my last time up I hit a long double that drove in two runs. In addition, I was able to run down several long fly balls in the outfield, earning the nickname “Wingfoot” from Coach Swartsbaugh. I had pretty good success the rest of the year hitting from the left side and I scored a lot of runs,
 
In science class, Coach Brownfield said he was really impressed with my speed, and later asked if I wanted to run in a track meet. I went out to the track after baseball practice and earned a spot in the 100, but the baseball staff quickly put an end to that idea. It would be one sport at a time. I always wondered if that was one reason why Coach Brownfield left at the end of that year.
 
Anyway, in the spring of 1960 I thought that at the very least I would get a look from the varsity baseball coach, so I was tremendously disappointed to see that I had been cut from the team before even taking a swing or catching a ball.
 
I loved baseball, the smell of the fresh cut grass, the crack of a hardwood bat on the ball, the sound of a fastball popping in the catcher’s mitt, the battle between the pitcher and the batter . . . . . everything. I can see now that it wasn’t that I wasn’t a good player, it was that the other guys were . . . . . well ....... better.
On the bulletin board beside the baseball cut list was the announcement,
 
Track Time Trials Today
 
I looked at the “cut” list and again at the track notice. I stood there for what seemed a long time, then walked out of the locker room and turned right . . . . . . . toward the track. Cut without even swinging a bat, a bleak end to my baseball career.
 
As I walked into Roosevelt Stadium the track team had already started time trials to determine the team for their upcoming meet. The previous year, while playing on the junior varsity baseball team, I had won a place in the 100 yard dash. This hadn’t worked out, as the baseball coaches complained, and the athletic department made it a policy that no one could compete in two sports simultaneously.
 
I located a senior friend, Randy Wilson.
 
“Hey when’s the 100?”
 
“It’s already been run. Hey why don’t you run the 440, its coming up,” he replied.
 
“How far is that? I asked.
 
“Once around the track, not that far.”
 
“OK.”
 
“You gonna run in those shoes?”
 
“I guess so.”
 
Randy showed me where the race would start. I put on my baseball spikes and did a poor job of warming up. I went over to where the guys were gathering and decided to go for the varsity group. I recognized Mickey Furtado, who I later learned had been second in the Rio Hondo Conference in the 440 the previous year and asked him,
 
“How do you run this race?”
 
Mickey eyed me carefully. Somewhere in the back of his mind the lights went on and he smiled.
 
“It’ll be a bunch start, and then you just try to get ahead and don’t let anyone pass you. Run as fast as you can.”
 
Anyone who knows track knows that this is not the way to run the quarter mile. I didn’t know track. When the whistle blew I did exactly what Mickey had told me to do. Since I was faster than the other guys, including Mickey, who I knew was pretty fast from football, I quickly took the lead and the race plan worked for about four hundred yards. As we came off the last turn, I was ahead of Mickey by about six yards and everyone else by twenty.
 
It would be wrong to say that with thirty yards to go I got tired. Tired doesn’t begin to describe what happened to my body. With twenty yards to go I was still slightly ahead of Mickey. At this point my body practically shut down. I’m pretty sure Mickey was actually laughing when he went by me. Later in my track career I was passed by runners who made me feel like I was standing still, but in this case I actually was standing still, although I did make it across the finish line in fifty eight seconds while Mickey had finished in about fifty-four.
 
Losing the race wasn’t the worst part of that afternoon; it was the painful forty five minutes I lay on the ground trying to recover from the effort. As I lay there, listening to my new teammates laugh while discussing the chemistry of exhaustion and throwing around insider track terms like “rigor mortis,” “lactic acid buildup” and “lunch review” which I later realized referred to the fact I was also experiencing projectile vomiting.
 
The most colorful description of what had happened to me was that, “the bear jumped on his back with all four feet,” this coming from another senior, Mike Raskin, who had been the middle linebacker on the football team. After awhile, Randy and Mickey attempted to get me to my feet so I could “walk it off” as Randy put it. I collapsed like a rag doll two more times before I was finally able to navigate. Mickey generously gave me a ride home, still enjoying my discomfort.
                                             
I don’t think I would have stayed with track if I hadn’t received some positive comments from one of the captains, Ed Loosli. I never ran another 440 at South Pas, not even in practice. My next one came in my freshman year at the University of Redlands, and although this would ultimately become my best event in college, the result that second time was much the same as my first one.
 
Six weeks later we had a meet with arch rival San Marino. By this time I had been accepted by my mostly senior teammates, and in addition to scoring points at most meets in the 100 and 220 to achieve a coveted varsity letter, I was honored to be running on the otherwise all senior 880 relay team. San Marino had some very fast runners, and although I finished out of the scoring in the 100, I did put on a strong stretch run in the 220 to take second behind the eventual league champion Doug Dwyer. Randy and Ed kept a careful count of the team scoring, and realized the meet would be decided by the last event of the day, the 880 relay. This was an amazing feat of motivation by the senior captains since the Pasadena Star News said we weren’t supposed to be within twenty points of mighty San Marino.
 
For the most part the team was self-coached. The track coach that year was an assistant football coach who didn’t seem to be that interested. Looking back now, I think we would have settled for indifference. The senior guys constantly talked about Coach Jim Brownfield who had built excellent teams during his five year tenure, including three Rio Hondo League Championships, but who had left after the previous year.
 
I eventually reconnected with Coach Brownfield, who had been my tenth grade science teacher, and he helped me tremendously when I began my own coaching career. The seniors on this team were his legacy and they had learned their lessons well. By this I mean that the captains, Ed Loosli and Randy Wilson, figured out who should run in what event and what each athlete had to do for us to win the meet. Near the end of each meet the captains would decide who was running on the relay and in what order.
 
I just stood with my teammates, happy to be in the moment, but things didn’t look good as the San Marino relay was undefeated in the conference and had already beaten us badly at an invitational. Randy, Ed and Mickey were watching the San Marino kids warm up and as they did their handoffs it was clear who they would run and in what order. The San Marino kids looked confident as they practiced some fancy baton drills, eager to beat us on our own track. Our relay team never practiced handoffs until right before the race. As we prepared mentally for the race, Randy suddenly grabbed me by the shoulders and said,
 
“You’re running anchor.”
 
I was thinking of a number of reasons why this was a bad idea, but I didn’t dare say anything. Randy Wilson had been a star athlete since we were in Little League. He could do any sport, and had been all Rio Hondo League in football and basketball. He could have been a starter in baseball but for the fact that Coach Brownfield had recruited him for track. Randy ran the hurdles, but he was generally accepted as our fastest runner, and I thought he would be accorded the honor and responsibility of running last. As I started to say something, he said,
 
“Listen.”
 
I did, but I was thinking, I’ve never run anchor before.
 
“We’re home team and we get the inside lane. I’m going to beat Muir and Loosli will hold the lead. They’ll have to break from outside us on the third handoff and Mickey can beat their third guy. That leaves you with Dwyer.”
 
“Yea but........”
 
“Listen, you have the best chance. He’ll come at you but you can take him. He only beat you by three yards in the 220. We’re going to give you five.”
 
It had seemed like a long three yards. I expected they would beat us; they were really good, but I had thought that someone else would be suffering the indignity of having Dwyer go by them on the anchor leg. My best 220 that year was 23.1, set earlier that day while Dwyer had run 22.2. Put another way, he had actually beaten me by ten yards, easing up as he did it someone told me later. The bullshit meter should have been redlining, but I knew almost nothing about track times then.
 
“Yea but......... I mean, shouldn’t you.........”
 
“Just stick with the plan; this gives us the best chance. They aren’t used to running from behind. Maybe they’ll botch a handoff.”
 
“Yea but.........”
 
“You’re as fast as I am, you just don’t know it, and this isn’t a 100 yards. This is a 220. This is YOUR distance. You can do this, and this is the way it’s gonna be. Just do it.” If only Randy had remembered that this was HIS phrase.
 
We went to our positions on the track. We ran from the middle of the track in those days, not from the end of the straightaway as they do now. This meant that when we came off the turn there were only thirty yards to go instead of the 100 there are now. Randy would start in front of the stands and hand to Ed Loosli across the track. Ed was fast; he went to the CIF Finals that year in the high hurdles and was also a tremendous football and basketball player. He would hand to Mickey Furtado in front of the stands and he in turn would connect with me across the track.
 
The gun went off and I watched as Randy, true to his word, opened a commanding lead over Downey Muir on the first leg. His connection with Loosli was near perfect and Ed scorched his leg to hand Mickey a 10 yard bulge with another perfect handoff. Sure enough, the surprised and overanxious San Marino kids bungled the baton exchange, losing more ground. Although their third guy made up some ground on Mickey, our lead was almost eleven yards when I took the baton from him on another perfect switch over.
 
As I took off I remember thinking The seniors are going to kill me, but my feet flew over the track. At first I was just running alone, but soon enough I could hear the hard charging Dwyer behind me. Stay loose, I told myself. Randy and Ed were on the inside of the track yelling at me as I came off the turn with the tape in view. I was tired and I could feel Dwyer closing on me.
 
My friends told me later that after a less than perfect baton pass Dwyer ran a magnificent final leg, making up six yards in the first half of his carry, but in the third part of the race he must have panicked because he started to over stride. Although he continued to gain on me all the way to the finish line he ran out of room and I finished into a sea of happy teammates. Guys didn’t hug in those days, but I had bruises the next day from the pounding that I joyfully accepted, amazed at the credit I received for not losing.