On its best days, the inviting curves and lush countryside along Altamont Pass Road provide an eye-pleasing alternative to the jammed interstate filled with harried motorists inching over the Diablo Range. Drivers feeling nature’s tug drop into a landscape painting of flowing, grassy fields and dilapidated barns in the distance.
But I had an ulterior motive to leave the I-580 thoroughfare behind one March afternoon last year as the sun pierced through clouds to illuminate the picturesque roadway. Altamont Pass Road was a faster route to Antioch where I would watch my son’s first road game of the 2020 season for his Amador Valley High junior varsity baseball team.
I felt fortunate seeing my 16-year-old son Brady on the mound when his teammates turned a game-ending double play to seal the victory in his first appearance of the season. Little did I know just how fortunate.
Within 24 hours, the World Health Organization declared the coronavirus was a global pandemic. Local and state officials began limiting gatherings, closing schools and canceling sports events.
Some say parents placed too much emphasis on the youth sports hiatus over the past year. But recreational sports are the embodiment of summers like a comfortable T-shirt and a pair of shorts. When they stopped, we were left rudderless, pining for the simple cry, “Batter up.”
It would take time to fully appreciate a moment like watching my son play ball. But on March 10, my only concern had been reaching the field in time for the first pitch.
Dads sharing a baseball experience with sons is a time-honored rite of passage in America. But as I’ve learned, it’s not a father’s right; it’s a privilege. For every big moment or rough time that I witnessed from Hayward to Hartwick, New York, with plenty of California stops in between, there were too many others I had missed. I didn’t realize why it bothered me so much until heading to the diamond that day on Altamont Pass Road, worried I’d be late.
As careful as I’ve been to make Brady’s baseball experiences strictly about him, it suddenly hit me how personal it also was for me. I did not get to enjoy the same connection with my dad while growing up in San Leandro. As much as Dad wanted to be there, his work schedule as a pipefitter and steamfitter almost always got in the way. By the time I was in high school, I’d usually have to fill him in on the game later that night because he was eager to talk baseball.
Unless I relayed the details to him he never got the full picture even when attending games because Dad was nearly blind. His visual impairment also prevented him from playing with his three sons. It still pains me that I can’t remember ever playing catch with my late father.
I’m thankful, I’m still able to play catch with my son, who has no illusions about pitching in college. I’m going to soak up every precious moment until the time comes to hang up the glove.
But I understood why Rodger and Kathy Kobayashi of Pleasanton felt temporary relief that their sons’ baseball games and swim meets had been canceled during the height of the global health crisis.
The parents had been on hamster wheel schedules for years to shuttle four children to games for Amador Valley High and club teams. It started with daughter Lauren, now 24, who participated in competitive cheer and dance competitions before becoming a University of California, Berkeley cheerleader.
COVID-19’s enforced shutdowns offered a welcomed pause from rising early virtually every weekend for sports events across the Bay Area.
“We could actually wake up later,” Rodger Kobayashi said of those early days of the shuttering. “It was nice. It slowed everything down.”
Like many, Kathy Kobayashi expected life to perk up by summer. When it didn’t the emotional toll began to mount.
The Kobayashis grew restless as the weeks of inactivity stacked up. Ryan Kobayashi, who plans to swim at Wesleyan University in the fall, went without any meets for months. Ross, an Amador JV teammate of my son’s, also grew anxious over what he felt was becoming a lost season.
“I’ll never complain about an 8 a.m. game again,” Kathy Kobayashi vowed.
Like many Californians, the parents wrestled for months with the idea of letting Ross play travel baseball in less restrictive locales. Thousands of sports-mad people migrated out of state when California public health officials kept us locked down. The quarantine could take a hike, as far as they were concerned.
The Kobayashis were much less cavalier about their three trips to Arizona during the fall where Ross played for two Bay Area teams. Each trip led to varying degrees of trepidation, they said, because of the more lax COVID protocols there. The valuable experience Ross gained on the desert diamonds turned out to be one of the few benefits they saw in the travels.
Meanwhile, the 50-and-over Bay Area Merchants, two-time fastpitch softball national champions, pretty much have to traipse around the country to play in tournaments.
Fred Williams, the Merchants owner and manager, cobbled together enough players to enter two of the few fastpitch tournaments offered since the pandemic began. In July, the team uncharacteristically lost all three games and had a couple of players suffer heat exhaustion in Ashland, Ohio, at the first tournament held in the country in almost five months. Things went much smoother two months later in Bullhead, Arizona, when the Merchants walked away with a second-place finish in a national tournament.
The Merchants headed into the summer of 2021 feeling optimistic with tournaments starting in June in Morro Bay. Then they travel to Fort Myers, Florida, in July and return to the Sunshine State in August for another tournament.
Don’t get Williams, 71, started on what the shutdown did to what’s believed to be the last remaining men’s fastpitch league in the East Bay. Fields weren’t available, so games were canceled and sponsorships dried up and the 55-year-old Hayward league died. He said it devastated dozens of diehards who enjoy the postgame camaraderie and beer at least as much as the competition.
“People live and breathe this softball stuff,” said Williams, who ran the league and is hopeful it can be revived. “That’s what they think about all the time.”
At least Williams does. The Hayward man has played or coached for six decades and is Cal State East Bay’s all-time winningest women’s coach with 318 victories from 1983-93. He finally stopped playing in 2015 after decades of pitching took its toll and he had hip replacement surgery.
Williams said he is excited about the USA Nationals in Houston in October for 60-and-over players. By then, Williams said, many of his players will be turning 60 and the Merchants will be eligible to compete and potentially win their first national title since 2013.
It’s nice to see that winning ages well.
However, the consensus at Purissima Park in Los Altos Hills is getting the chance to play sometimes is a great joy.
The longtime home of Los Altos and Los Altos Hills Little Leagues is now a testament to youth baseball in the COVID era. Opening day in late March was unlike any of the previous 68 seasons.
While mayors of the two cities both tossed out the traditional first pitches almost everything else that day at the sycamore-lined baseball fields tucked against a green hillside looked different.
For the first time since anyone could remember, the leagues did not hold a parade. Baseball staples such as sunflower seeds and high fives were out.
Everyone from umpires, players, coaches and socially distanced fans wore face masks. Dugouts were empty, save for the upcoming two batters. Kids kept both their water and hand sanitizer bottles within reach.
None of it seemed to matter to those who embraced being there. A similar temperament prevailed in April at San Jose’s Allen at Steinbeck Elementary School, where 50 boys and girls enthusiastically played outside at a Silicon Valley National Junior Basketball League camp.
The youth basketball league, which has 1,300 kids from Redwood City to Hollister, was left with no choice but to conduct spring camps and perhaps even its summer leagues on the uneven pavement because of limitations on indoor activities.
Silicon Valley NJB, like almost all Bay Area youth basketball organizations, mainly relies on the use of public school gymnasiums. Without his own gym, director Andre Hunt said he had to improvise to give families an alternative to being cooped up for so long.
“They’ve been encased at home in front of their TV screens, getting Zoomed out,” Hunt said of the kids. “They wanna get out.”
Steve Apfelberg, Los Altos Hills Little League president, discovered that dispensing with the usual adornments did not matter as long as the kids could play.
“No one cared,” he said. “Some teams didn’t even get their uniforms yet. Ordinarily, there would be complaints about that.”
Not this year. Not after so much that had been lost on the diamonds and ballfields.
To think, the analytics crowd still says sacrifices should not be a part of baseball.