verdugo288

Ok gentlemen the time is here to get this thing going again.

Yeah it’s true….going into the 1992 season was a little crazy to say the least.  Only 14 names on the official roster.  But what the hell?  I had spoken with all the players in depth and for the most part they all had me pretty much convinced they would be at the games.

I had to admit having a smaller roster would make things better for everyone.  It gave everyone more opportunities to see action on the field.  Having a smaller roster also would allow me to sit down with everyone before the season and explain what I felt their role would be with us….

At the end of the day we decided to roll with the smaller roster.  We had made some improvements as well not only in our roster since last season but we picked up some new catching gear….secured a deal with the Glendale Legion Team to share Stengel Field with them and best of all….we finally had official  Verdugo Caps!

Yes-sir-ree….gone were the Cleveland Indian caps we donned in 1990 and the Atlanta Brave caps we had in 1991.

Lets face it we needed our own cap!  Jack Heaney down at Tiernan Athletic in Glendale (who made our uniforms) designed the caps and stitched the new logos on to a generic wool cap.  They looked pretty good.  With the jerseys, they looked damn good.  I still got plenty of complaints from everyone that the caps weren’t fitted etc but all in all I think everyone was pretty happy we finally had ’em…..

Tiernan Athletic was the place to get your custom jerseys made…..and Jack also made the uniforms for the Lakers at that time.  One time I was down at his shop and he busted out a couple of gloves and a ball and we played catch for about a half hour in his parking lot!   We threw curves and knucklers and sinkers and two/four seamers at each other and everything we had until our arms were hanging and we went inside and had a beer.  I told him I finally figured out why he makes such great uniforms….and why he was the best around at what he does….he said “why’s that?”

i said “c’mon now you’re a LEFTY!”

I remember telling everyone we needed stickers that matched our logo to put on those boring navy blue batting helmets everyone in the league used to make ours stand out and how it would be intimidating…..well guess what happened?  Dave Fielder stepped up.  He took his new Verdugo Cap to his print shop class at CV and scanned an image of it and tweaked the color till it matched….made it perfect…..

I won’t ever forget the smile on my face when he handed me a couple of big sheets of plastic/nylon or whatever it was that had our logos on it….exact size and color of the one on our caps!  I peeled ’em off that sheet one by one and tried to center them perfectly on our old beat-up batting helmets!  Damn we were ready for 1992!

And to “cap” it all off….we had the Gatorade cooler which would now be entering its second season with us.  I can’t tell you how many coaches and umps and players asked me where the hell I got that thing.  This was 1992!  Pre-Internet days!  I bet now it would be easy to find.  I just kept making lots of phone calls until I finally tracked one down.

Many of you saw the 1992 scorebook at the reunion we had July 9, 2011.  I still have that, too.  I’d rather tell you I lost the scorebook and that my “steel-trap” memory is the reason I can remember everything I’m about to report to all of you about what happened that season….but thankfully I have the scorebook, and I looked at it today and many things I had forgotten did come back to me (thanks to some great scorekeeping by Nancy Canale.)

We also have a videotape with about six hours worth of highlights that Mrs. Brancheau gave me at the end of the ’92 season.  I will try and include some highlights along with the blog posts as we go through the season here chronologically.  These are the only things we have left to guide us through what happened that summer as I go through it all and piece together what I will always consider our greatest season.

And yeah….just like the 1992 and 1993 fungoes…..I still got the Gatorade cooler too!

We had come a long way from 1990….no home field (now we had TWO….Glendale High and Stengel)….now we had nice uniforms and I felt we also had somewhat of a fresh start….now that I had retired from coaching at the High School level.  I was pretty jacked up for 1992.

It was time to play.  Time to have some fun.  Time to grow out my hair a bit.  Time to smoke some cigs in the dugout if I could get away with it, too (I never got caught by the way either)……  Time  to get back to basics and remembering  what a “game” is.  I think I had been coaching for so long I had kind of forgotten what a “game” is.  It’s a game.  Games are meant to be fun….right?

I think for all of us who were involved in the 1992 season for Verdugo….if you had “forgotten” about what a “game” is supposed to be (like I certainly had)….well, the fog was pretty much lifted….and we all (in our own way) started to remember what it was like to have some fun again on a baseball field.  And how fun playing the “game” and coaching the “game” of baseball can really be…….

And once the fog was lifted, and we started to remember, and started to embrace that concept…..well, then the fun REALLY began…..