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One of the softball fields at Memorial Park, a place where I did MUCH coaching and playing. Photo courtesy of santamonica.gov

One in a series

IT’S INCREDIBLE THAT IT HAS BEEN A FULL THIRTY YEARS TO THE MONTH.

Let me start at the beginning…

If I recall correctly, it was in April of 1994;

I was on the coaching staff of the Santa Monica College softball team, which had just started up again that spring after a hiatus.

Not that I could have really been considered a coach as career and just plain life-wise, I wasn’t in too good a shape as I had spent the previous seven months being unemployed, having been fired from a job that I hated anyway and routinely being rejected from even the most smallest of gigs.

Though I was eventually paid a small sum after the season, the SMC gig was a volunteer one, something to get me out of the house to be honest as I was more of a helper than a coach, keeping score during the games and doing various tasks during the practices.

Plus I didn’t get along with most of the players for whatever reason.

After an SMC game at Clover Park, a lady whose daughter I knew from having worked with her at my first post college job as a P.E. coach at an elementary school, approached me and asked if I would like to help coach her daughter’s softball team.

She played in what was then called the Santa Monica Bobby Sox Softball League on the minor division Royals, made up of young girls ranging from 9 to 12 years old.

It turned out to be a much better fit for me as I got along with the players better and was more involved with that team, coaching first base during the games and pitching pregame batting practice along with teaching them how to best approach playing, doing their best and all of that.

Unfortunately,

For reasons that I still don’t know three decades later, the president of that league both seemingly and absolutely hated me and didn’t want me anywhere near that league in any form, talking to me like I was something worse than dog poop as she ordered me to stay away until the board could decide whether I can coach.

Fortunately, I got a phone call a few days later where I was informed that I was okay and good to go for being an official coach of the Santa Monica Bobby Sox Minor Division Royals.

One of the softball fields at Clover Park in Santa Monica, where I likewise have a long history of coaching, playing, and even umpiring. Photo courtesy of alamy.com

What followed was two and a half months of what was, looking back, one of the best experiences of not only my coaching career, but working with youngsters in general;

Particularly when the league’s postseason championship tournament came around in June as although those blue jersey wearing Royals finished the regular season in the middle of the standings,

They caught fire during that double elimination tourney as everything just clicked with those young elementary school-aged ladies.

Incidentally, a very infamous event that will always be remembered not too fondly by too many people was happening around that time:

The murder of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman by O.J. Simpson (which he eventually got acquitted for even though everybody knows otherwise) and the subsequent slow speed police chase up the 405 in his Ford Bronco, which happened on June 17th with my birthday being the day after,

Which the Royals were scheduled for a playoff game that day with a team that ended up forfeiting to them due to all but three of their players going on family vacations, with the school year ending.

Which upset that team’s coach and which I completely did not blame her for.

I remember someone telling me that at least I got the present of a win, which I responded that I did not like to win by forfeit, and neither did the rest of the Royals;

At least I got a nice birthday cake that weekday afternoon at Memorial Park.

We ended up beating that particular team legitimately, with all of their players present, in the playoff semifinals a few days later.

Then, needing to beat another team twice to win the whole shebang, we proceeded to beat such team on the big Saturday championship day with the whole league watching before we ran out of gas and lost to them the next day, finishing in second place.

The biggest thing I got from the experience was not so much how good those Royals were or how well they performed,

But how they were such nice young people in which the chemistry between them, their parents, the coaches (including me) and each other was good to the point that I believe it was that chemistry that got that team as far as it did.

The fact that I’m writing about this thirty years later, with those young Royals now in their late thirties and early forties, should illustrate how significant a memory it was for me.

And how much of a positive experience it all was.

So much so that if they ever held a reunion, I would be there.

Oh, and by the way…

I was hired at a school in West Los Angeles that following fall, finally being able to earn a steady paycheck after nearly a year.

Another shot of Clover Park, where I spent so much time and where a lot of the games I coached with those Bobby Sox Royals in ’94 were played – along with it being the home field of Santa Monica College’s softball team that year…