The Indians - The 1966 Mill Valley Little League Pennant Winners
My earliest memories are of the redwood grove behind our home at 37 Ethel in Mill Valley. I’d bound out the backdoor, skip across the creek, to the stand of giant red trees. I spent hours playing in that circle of redwoods, with the sun shining through their dark green branches. When I tired, it was down into the creek hopping along rocks and searching for crawdads, a perfect afternoon for a little boy.
These early memories are happy ones, perhaps unusual for a young child who had been burned head to toe and lost his older sister in a house fire only a year before. But the doctor turned out to be right, “let him talk about the fire as much as he wants” he told my parents. And sure enough all the painful memories of the tragedy passed from my early memory replaced by happy childhood recollections of freedom, living in a small village just fourteen miles north of San Francisco.
We lived outdoors. My friends and I rode our bikes to Boyle Park to gather for pick-up baseball games. Andy and I borrowed our neighbor’s dog, exploring the trails of Mount Tam. Jan and I built treehouses with three or four stories in his backyard eucalyptus trees. We collected old railroad spikes on the pathway of the former mountain railroad. Some nights friends and I slept on platform in a tree in my backyard, listening to the sounds of the creek and watching the stars through the trees.
Of course, there were challenges, too. At five I started elementary school at Old Mill. My mom packed a peanut butter and jelly sandwich each day. I walked along the creek all the way to the school. Each morning an old goose living under the foundation of a nearby house chased me as I passed by. I ran, with heart beating fast, as the watch-bird attempted to peck at me and grab my lunch. But I made it to Mrs. Shehi’s Kindergarten class triumphant, although often with wet tennis shoes and a little disheveled.
Old Mill Elementary had a lower yard for younger children and an upper yard for the higher grades. I soon distinguished myself by walking on my hands the distance of the lower yard. Apparently, my feat did not impress my second-grade teacher Mrs. Meadows. She kept me and my friend David after school almost every day for talking. My mother had to negotiate on my behalf. She suggested that David and I be given extra work in class, so that perhaps “idle hands” would be put to more productive uses.
In any event, I managed to graduate to the upper yard and benefited from several influential teachers. My 4th grade teacher Mrs. Bartolucci was strict, but she let me run the class movie projector, thus launching me on my earliest experiment in educational technology. Mrs. Teather, my dignified 5th grade teacher, provided wonderful lessons on the American Revolution nurturing my passion for history. Mr. Hull taught his 6th graders to make ceramic dishes. As I recall, I volunteered at lunch to help him fire the pots, mainly so I could ask Mr. Hull more specific questions about his lessons on sex education.
No discussion of my Mill Valley memories could be complete without baseball. My dad treated me each year to a trip to Candlestick Park in late June to celebrate my birthday. We watched the epic Giant-Dodger rivalries, starring my childhood hero, Willie Mays. Not surprisingly, when I started Little League at eight I chose to play center field. I felt I had to prepare to replace the great Giants center fielder when he retired.
My dad taught me the basics of baseball. He and I would play catch many evenings. As I became more confident I asked my dad, who had been a pitcher, to throw harder and harder to me. My baseball career was almost cut short when I took my eye off the ball, and my dad’s throw nailed me in the forehead. Down I went, but it didn’t cool my passion for baseball.
As the Bears smallest player, my coach Lloyd couldn’t find a regulation Little League batting helmet small enough for me. He creatively substituted a child’s motorcycle helmet. Although I could barely hit the ball out of the infield, he batted me in the leadoff spot. With such a small strike zone, I almost always walked.
The strategy proved effective until one day rounding second I was decked by a hard-hit line drive. I was out cold, and as the story goes, Lloyd lifted me off the infield by my belt. When I came to, I asked, “you aren’t going to take me out are you?”
The first couple of years we really were the “Bad News Bears.” But Lloyd was a patient coach. He followed many of his players into the Little League majors, becoming the coach of the Indians. At twelve, our final year of the Little League, we won the pennant. I played catcher for the league All-Star Team, retiring at the pinnacle of my baseball career and robbing the SF Giants of a successor in centerfield.
In the main, “I was a good kid,” as my dad used to say. However, I did have a few lapses in conduct. The earliest transgression I can remember was grabbing a flaming stick from a campfire and running through the trees with the burning branch. My dad subdued me by grabbing me around the waist. I attempted to shift the blame to him by yelling, “he’s choking me.” My dad who had kept me from burning down the forest, worried that this single incident might have kept my mom from marrying him. Fortunately, I was not believed.
On a slow day, Andy and I shot metal tipped arrows up into the redwood trees. The excitement was watching them careen down, bouncing off the branches to see where they landed. The game quickly ended when one of the arrows pierced the tip of my tennis shoe, luckily missing my toes.
My most serious brush with a life of crime began in the local barbershop. “Ray the Barber” often sent me with a sack full of cash to the local bank to make his deposits. In return I never paid for a haircut. When I was much older my dad explained that “Ray the Barber” ran a gambling operation in the back room of his barbershop, and that my deposits were really the proceeds from the operation. However, he assured me that I was never really in danger of being arrested, given that many of the gamblers included the local police chief and city fathers.
Mill Valley in the days of my childhood really was a village. We knew all the shop owners: the Greens ran the pet shop where we purchased parakeets and fish. You could get a picture framed at Dimitroffs and next door eat the best burger in town at their Palette Restaurant. The largest variety store was Bennett’s, but the best candy was purchased at the small five and dime, whose owner had one arm. Toys were purchased at Santa’s, clothes at Mayers, and for shoes you went to Moshers. Si stood outside his liquor store greeting all who passed by. Our very favorite stop was Baskin and Robins 31 Flavors for ice cream.
My mom used to say that I knew everyone in town and would one day become the mayor of Mill Valley. I doubt I could have been elected to this high office, especially if my opponent had discovered my early career as a money launderer for ”Ray the Barber.”
As I was growing up the grove of redwoods that I first played in was cut down to make way for an apartment complex. Fancier restaurants and boutiques replaced small shops. Although still a beautiful place, Mill Valley became too expensive for many of its original residents.
Nevertheless, the Mill Valley of my childhood memories was a perfect place for a small boy to lose himself in creeks and canyons. It was a village where a child could head downtown without an adult or explore the mountain with a friend, as long as you checked in with Mom or Dad by five o’clock.
-- August 2009