As it turns out…HACK was in town.  So was Thunder.  So we had a little get-together at the Wood Ranch BBQ in Northridge on Wednesday night.  I was looking forward to seeing them both just like I look forward to seeing all of you guys.  We had an ETA of 6:30 pm.  I can’t really describe how I felt on the drive over.  I mean, I hadn’t seen these guys since 1993!

I got there about five minutes early.  At 6:30 sharp the phone rings.  It’s HACK.  “Hey coach I’m running a little late can you hit me in the nine hole and start the game with eight guys on the field?”

I called Thunder and he was a little behind schedule as well.  About 6:45 I walked in to the restaurant and there stood Thunder, waiting in the lobby.  We sat down and started talking a bit and around 7:00 in rolls HACK.  All I can say is that it was awesome to see these guys after all of these years.

We got a table and didn’t order anything until 8:15!  Too busy talking Verdugo!  We had a similar “Planning event” last year with BullOxen, General, myself and Hank and NOTHING WAS PLANNED that day!  Again, too busy talking about our Reign of Terror!

However, on this night we did try to spend the last ten minutes (which turned into about a half hour) “planning” for The Bash. I liked what they both had to say about it.  Hack will be flying in from Portland and Thunder is North of San Luis Obispo.  This will be MAJOR trips for these guys.  We have other guys who will be making even LONGER treks to make their way to our Bash.  They want to make sure that everything is SOLID and there are NO snafu’s.  Period.  I think they kind of spoke for EVERYONE who will be traveling from out-of-state.   And I agree with what they said.  I can assure all of you…the DATE we have is ETCHED IN STONE.  There will be no “Dear John” phone calls telling you it has been cancelled or rescheduled.  The Verdugo Hills Reunion will be July 9/10 2011, Period.  So make your plans in confidence, and most importantly…BE THERE!!!

I didn’t get the feeling that they were concerned about anyone flaking out, but I appreciated what they said.  I REALLY liked what Thunder said about the whole thing.  You could almost use this as a catchphrase for The Bash itself.  He said………..”It’s a road trip, but it’s a road trip where you’re going home.”

You know, it is.  While we were talking I suggested we get the MONTROSE BOWLING ALLEY for the Saturday night portion of The Bash.  It’s only fitting that we hold this thing close to our old stomping grounds.  We all liked the idea but I found out this morning that someone else has it rented out for that night.  I was a little disappointed at first, but realized that it won’t matter TOO much where we have it…it’s the people who will be there that will breathe the life into it.   We’ll find a cool place, of this I am certain.  But we are still looking and any suggestions you have will be appreciated!  BullOxen has offered to hold some portion (or even the entire portion) of this Bash at HIS HOUSE (which is pretty damn cool of Bull), and I wanted to say thanks to Bull for that. 

Both Hack and Thunder are looking great.  A little bit of grey in the hair….but not nearly as much grey as I have!    I’ve never seen Hack “looser” than he was last night.  Both guys more confident than I have ever seen them.  We had been there about 20 minutes when Hack told Thunder and I that he had a “little car accident” on Tuesday night.  “Yeah,” he said “It was a head-on collision.”  Thunder and I about fell out of our seats.  Sure enough, Hack pulls out his cell phone and shows us pictures of the carnage.  In typical Verdugo-style….the car was destroyed….and Hack was unscathed!!!  Ahhh Hack!!!  Even today, just like 17 years ago…nothing fazes ‘Ol Hack! 

I even got a text message from Hank while we were there…..it said (among other things) “Tell those FUCKERS I LOVE ‘EM!”

We left at 10:00.  We even got a couple of pictures.  I had a great time.  I can only imagine what a great time it will be with 25-30 Verdugo alumni there! 

My first instinct when the Bowling Alley was NOT available was to reschedule the date.  NO.  NO.  NO.  There will be no rescheduling.  The Bash will be July 9/10, 2011.  Again, The Bash will be July 9/10, 2011 at a Location “to be determined.”  And you know what?  We’re gonna have a GREAT TIME!  Ahhhhhhhh!!!!!  Confidently make your plans…AND BE THERE!!!

The Reunion will indeed be a Road Trip.  Some of us will travel longer distances than others.  But don’t forget guys…….it’s “THE ROAD TRIP HOME.”

The weekend STILL wasn’t over.  We had knocked off Quartz Hill on Saturday, punished North Hollywood 10-0 Sunday morning, and now we had yet ANOTHER road game.  This one was at Stengel Field.  Stengel Field?  That’s right, Stengel Field, against the Glendale team.  Glendale had refused to share Stengel Field with us after the pre-season dispute over Vic, so now we had an AWAY game…..at Stengel Field!!  It didn’t matter…our guys just wanted to play ball…and it showed on this night.

Glendale had beat us pretty badly in our third game of the year 13-2.  I was thrown out of that game.  There was a routine pop fly hit in the third inning….that’s when I got thrown out.  We actually led at that point 2-1.  Eric Berger had hit a pop fly towards Hank, who was playing first.  As Hank waited for the ball to come down he was about 70 feet down the line from home plate with his right foot in fair territory and his left foot in foul grounds.  Before the ball even came down Berger mowed down Hank.  It was a cheap shot.  Berger was called out on the play but I got run when I argued he should have been ejected from the game.  It always amazed me in the four years I had that team that when I argued about shit like that it always somehow got twisted into ME being the bad guy………

So that ejection kind of took the wind out of our sails and they ended up blowing us out.  But honestly, I wasn’t that impressed with their ballclub and I not only knew we could play with these guys…I felt we could beat ’em.  We were coming into this game on a high note, and at the very least I wanted to leave the yard that night with a little respect.  And I was happy we had gotten through the Quartz Hill and North Hollywood games without using Hank on the mound.  So everything was lined up pretty well for us going into this one…..we were playing well, and we had HANK on the mound.

Hank didn’t disappoint, shutting them off for the first three innings and we had a 2-0 lead.  We came out swinging….five hits in the first two innings.  Doubles by Weapon and Sammy and singles by Canale, Frost and Chili.  Canale came up in the third and doubled, and after Hank laced a base-hit Glendale pulled their starting pitcher.   Damn I was fired up with the way we were playing!!!!!!!!!!  We had these bitches on the ropes!!!!!!!

Hank said he was hurting in the third inning.  We sent him out to pitch the fourth.  He threw a gutsy inning.  But before the inning ended they scored an unearned run.  Chili came in to relieve Hank with two outs and the bases loaded and got us out of the jam.  We still led 2-1.  

Glendale scored another unearned run in the fifth to tie it 2-2. 

We started a rally in the sixth.  The first two guys of the inning reached base and Sammy bunted them over perfectly.  Second and third with one out.  Up came Cal Frost.  Frost hit a sharp ground ball to the Glendale  shortstop Aguilar.  There was no way we could score on that play so I held the runners.  But don’t forget…Frost could motor.  He came out of the box like a demon, and put enough pressure on Aguilar to make a bad throw to first.  The throw pulled the Glendale first baseman Aviles off of the bag.  Frosty made a great slide to elude the sweep tag but the umpire was totally out of position.   General saw it, I saw it…hell, everyone at the field saw it EXCEPT the base umpire.  There was NO TAG.  Aviles made a great sales job and they called Frost out.

I went down to discuss the call…..with the PLATE UMPIRE!!!  I remember telling him “C’mon that guy was in no position to even make that call you saw what happened.”

But he wouldn’t budge.  Fuck I was pissed.  After getting run in the first game we had with Glendale…I backed off.  Like every game I ever managed….I wanted to win this one BAD.  I decided to play it cool and stick around……..

This was a huge turn of events.  If Frost is safe, we now have the bases jacked with one out.  Frost was in the nine hole that game so VIC was coming up to hit.  Now, it’s second and third with TWO out with first base open.  If the bases were loaded, they would have HAD to pitch to Vic.  Instead, they intentionally walked him and struck out our next hitter to end the threat. 

They scored another weak unearned run on us in the bottom of the sixth to take the lead 3-2.  Hank reached base in the top of the seventh with his second base-hit of the night with two out………but we couldn’t bring him in.  It was a very tough loss.  I felt we had clearly outplayed them.  They scored three unearned runs and had seven hits.  We had banged out ten hits, played our asses off, but just couldn’t close the deal.  But we did leave the yard with one thing that night..respect.  We battled that overrated team big time and I was very proud of the way we played.  I wasn’t surprised when playoff time came around at the end of the season that Glendale was knocked out of the tournament early. 

While it wasn’t a perfect weekend….it kind of WAS a perfect weekend.  We took two out of three.  We beat a team that went 19-4 (Quartz Hill) at their own yard and we put the fear of God into another team that went 18-5.  We damn near SWEPT the three games we played that weekend….at THREE different Fields! 

One of the players came up to me after the game, sat down next to me in the dugout, and apologized for the way he played. It must have been hard for him to do that…but he did it.  It was kind of a heavy moment.  But this was the great thing about Verdugo.  We had players who had heart and took responsibility for whatever happened on the field.  He felt pretty bad about that game.  I just asked him “Were you physically ready to play?”  His answer was yes.  Then I asked him “Were you mentally prepared?”  His answer was yes.  “Then you got nothing to hang your head about,” I said “Just keep doing what your doing.”

I will never forget that it was THIS GAME that started another great tradition for us.  It was the phone calls I would get after the games we lost.  I must have got AT LEAST six calls that night from different guys who wanted to talk about that game.  Guys who were pissed we lost and wanted to vent about it.  It was good for the players, and it was good for me.  Sometimes I wanted to vent, too.  This is where I think I did more coaching than I ever could have done on the field.  I never liked kicking players when they were down…..as long as they were playing hard, it was always my style to pat ’em on the back.  I saw the effort they gave for us, and I appreciated it. 

When I went to bed that night I looked at the ceiling for about an hour and thought about how cool it was that we had some guys that wanted to win as badly as I did.  Little did I know, that this was just the tip of the iceberg.  And while all of this was going on, we were developing this image around the League as “The Bad Guys.”  Hmmmmmm…….people were labeling us “THE BAD GUYS”….and I got guys calling me up and venting after a loss?  Guys coming up to me and apologizing for the way they played?  Guys that took responsibility and weren’t pointing fingers at their teammates or blaming anyone but themselves?   You call those guys “THE BAD GUYS?”……….well then, I got one word for you…………Bullshit.

Just a friendly reminder for the guys who played for us in ’92 and ’93………Yes-sir-ree……..I still got ’em!!!!!!!!!

On the left is our Team Fungo from the ’93 season….and ’92 is on the right.  For WHATEVER REASON…beginning in 1992 I would bring with me to every game a VICTORY CIGAR to smoke after we would win the game.  Not IF…but WHEN we WON the game…I would light it up and start smoking it.  After it was burning really well…I would hand it to whomever our winning pitcher was and they would BURN a mark into the bat!!!  This is why each bat looks like it has been “Branded” with something.   This ritual went on for the entire ’92 and ’93 seasons….all to the utter CHAGRIN of our demoralized opponents!!! And it happened QUITE OFTEN….as we went a combined 38-5 during the regular season those final two years!!!!!!

Then, depending on how I felt…I might just smoke that “Gar” while I drove home from the game.  Other times…especially if it was an AWAY game….I might hang around the field for a while and make sure the other team saw me enjoying that GAR.   Then as we left the field I would grab the scorebook, the ball bag, and the GAR and walk straight out to their MOUND and STOMP THAT GAR OUT….and leave it there!!!!!!  Boy that used to piss ’em off!!!!!!!!!!!!  I don’t know why they got so irate about that!?!?!  I was just marking our territory before we left!!!!!!!!!!!!

Both fungo bats were taped up just before our season openers in ’92 and ’93 by THUNDER!!!!

I removed them from their case for this picture.  The tape is coming loose on both of them and that needs to be fixed.  I will have another VIDEO shot of the bats when they return to their case.  Case?  What Case? …you are probably asking.  Well…’Ol Gee drilled holes in the ends of both bats.  The bats then sit in a glass case I had made and I can flip a switch and they SPIN inside of the case……ROTISSERIE-STYLE!!!   AHHHHHH!!!!  So I will embed the VIDEO of these historical artifacts soon!!!!  You see….they HAD to end up in a case and SPIN because there are so many “GAR” Burns on ’em that you can’t see ALL of the burn marks unless they are spinning!!!!!!!!!

Now……….(and I am laughing as I type this)………….CALF!!!!!!!!!…………….No more talk about these bats until The Reunion!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 

Even the Los Angeles Times wrote about our little ritual……..

AMERICAN LEGION BASEBALL / STEVE ELLING : Verdugo Hills’ Evans Tries to Sweep Aside Memory of Bad Break Against Glendale

We have all kinds of stuff like that going on with this team,” Magee said.A loose bunch? Without question.Before Sunday night’s game with Sun Valley, shortstop-catcher Kirk Hagge (who is 6-foot-6) showed up wearing a blond wig. Reserve John Jackson donned it during the game and paraded around proudly with what he dubbed the “rally wig.””These kids are weird,” Magee said. “But we want them to have fun. We’ve kicked the butts of some Legion teams and their coach will have them out running laps after the game.”We’re out to kick butt, but we have fun doing it.”

Yes indeed it does.  The response we are getting from everyone who has RSVP’D and declared “I’m In” is really kind of overwhelming.  I used to say back in 90-93 what great young men you guys were….and of course no one agreed with me!!…….Yet here we are almost 20 years later and nothing has changed except the fact that NOW you’re all great men.  Just the fact that this thing is coming together like this is awesome.  You guys were great kids……..you’re great men now….and you all had great parents as well.

I got an email from “HACK” about a month ago and I wanted you all to read this excerpt from it:

BTW – after reading the “Nance” blog, I was thinking about not only her, but all the great parents that supported us over the years.  It made me also think about what a special group of kids we had, and as I thought back, you may not know this, but there is some history, pre-Verdugo that you should know, which speaks to why this group was so great.  As I was thinking about parents that were influential, I thought of Nance, Fielder’s dad, Bir’s dad, my Uncle Harold (coached little league) and my dad among others.  Then it hit me…. Rogers, Breckow, McBride, Canale (Bull), Hack, Fielder, Bir all played for Glendale City Employees (aka City) in little league.  That was the team that my uncle and dad coached.  They always smoked the rest of the managers in the draft, managing to pull off the unbelievable.  My rookie year, when Rogers, McBride, Breckow and a guy named Ryan Rieber were the 12 year olds, we went 20-0!  It all started in the pre-season when we used to play triple headers at three different parks every weekend!  The parents were dedicated, carting us from place to place, and enjoying every minute of it.  Nance on the scorebook, Mr. Bir taking us to the batting cages all the way out in Temple City on Thursday nights in his Volkswagen bus, Fielder’s dad leading the crowd in cheers as we played All-Stars back in the day.  It was the team stop at jack in the box after the batting cages, where we were always scraping together nickels to get an extra cheeseburger, or in Canale’s case, eating half a burger, catching a fly (no joke), stuffing it in his burger and going up to ask for a new one as a result…. 

 Thanks for sharing the memories HACK!!!!!!!!!!!!!  That’s right……….Verdugo not only had the Greatest Players…we also had the Greatest Parents!!!  Ahhhhhhhhh!!!!!

July 9th and/or 10th, 2011.   This is the Date.  This gives everyone a full 90 days to block off this weekend.  Whatever you need to do…..let’s make it happen!!

This is not an invitation.  This is the date.  BE THERE!!!!  Find a way…VERDUGO-STYLE!!!

If you are from out-of-state, I need to know if you need HELP with airfare or if you need the funds we will be accumulating to PAY your entire airfare.  We will do whatever it takes to get you here and home………….and take care of you while you are here……fair enough?

There will be a planning committee meeting in the next week or two that will iron out more details and we will keep you abreast of what is happening.  There is a lot of work and preparation ahead in the next 90 days, and any help you can give will totally be appreciated.  I will finish the Blog before this date and will cover our ENTIRE history……..I have alot of writing to do in the next 2-3 months….and I am looking forward to writing it all.

We get ONE SHOT at this guys.  ONE SHOT.  What’s nice is that this will be the first Verdugo event that takes place where NO ONE can remove you from our roster or throw you out of this game!!!   Pretty cool, huh?  We will have some cool stuff planned and gifts for everyone as well to make sure a memorable time is had by all!!!

I need everyone to send a simple message to the Blog here.  You can leave the comment at the bottom of this Post.  All it needs to say is two words…..the words are “I’M IN”……………..

Commenting is easy.  Put in a user name, enter your email address and simply type in the words “I’M IN”………now what could be easier than that?

“No” is not really an option……….we get ONE SHOT.  It will be great fun for all, of this I am certain!!!!!

I will see ALL OF YOU July 9th and/or 10th 2011……….The Kings of American Legion Baseball shall gather once again………..to celebrate our four-year REIGN OF TERROR!!!!!!!!!!!!