Big Island Ball

I'm home after a trip to the Big Island of Hawai'i. It was my first time in the Aloha State. The city of Hilo is one of the rainiest places in the USA, averaging over 150 inches annually. I traveled with my friends Kevin and Kelly and we went to see some baseball. Their son Eamon plays for the University of Hawai'i-Hilo Vulcans. They are an NCAA Division II school in the Pacwest Conference. Here's what you see a lot of in Hilo:

The ballplayers do this so regularly they are actually pretty good at it. Our Friday night game was cancelled. A doubleheader was scheduled for both Saturday and Sunday but only three games were played. Saturday's second game was suspended and resumed on Sunday and went into extras so they only played one more game. Of the five we expected we saw three, but they were all exciting back-and-forth contests. The Vulcans won all of them against their Oahu rivals the Hawai'i Pacific University Sharks.

We were lucky enough to see Eamon pitch as he got an inning of relief in Saturday's 10-7 win. He gave up a run on a couple of ground balls but struck out the last batter to end his outing with a flourish. Dad and I agreed that he looked good and just got BABIP'd a bit. Eamon's best buddy Jake pitched four impressive shutout frames in relief in Sunday's 8-4 win so that was a lot of fun. Here they are:

Yreka's own RHP #47 Eamon "Little Moose" Velarde is on the left. He's the biggest guy on the team at 6'5" and 245 pounds. He's majoring in Marine Science. LHP #19 Jake "Big Berts" Laberta is from Arizona and is double-majoring in Communications and Business Economics.

They are a study in contrasts. Eamon is poised and has a relaxed, compact motion on the mound. He saunters on and off the field, whipping his cap off and hopping over the third base line in imitation of Johnny Cueto. Jake is extra-intense and stomps around like a bronco just released from the pen. He looks like he's going to run the ball to home plate rather than throw it. He actually reminded me a bit of Giants southpaw Alex Wood.

There was a Giants connection: slugging OF/1B/DH Joseph Gallagher is from the Sacramento area and knew Logan Webb from youth baseball, had played on a senior-level team with Sammy Long, and had also played against Mauricio Dubón! He bashed a homer in the 1st inning on Saturday. Kelly ran around meeting all the other Moms in the stands and we visited with Joe's mother Susan. She was from Massachusetts. My parents are from Boston so I'm tuned to hear that accent. I've been "Mahk" all my life! Susan was clearly Irish with her red hair, blue eyes, and freckles. We talked and it turned out that her father's family was from Sligo which is where my Dad's family is from. We joked that we were long-lost cousins. Speaking of Mom and Dad, here are the Velardes:

Kevin is also 6'5" and he played baseball in high school and has always loved the game. He keeps his hand in things by being an assistant coach with the Yreka High Miners varsity squad. Kelly was the real athlete of the two however, playing both basketball and softball in high school. She's a middle school teacher and it was Easter Week so we traveled on her Spring Break. Kevin is recently retired from an administrative job with the high school--we were colleagues for 20+ years before that. As you can see Wong Stadium in Hilo is a big place and has covered grandstands. It's college ball so there were lots of parents and local supporters. On Saturday they served a deep-fried whole fish on a bed of rice for ten bucks! A very Hawai'ian kind of ballpark food experience.

The baseball team also has a field on campus and it was right next to the new softball complex and the teams share the batting cages. We ran into a couple of softball players on our walking tour and they spotted Kevin and Kelly straight away and knew they were Eamon's parents. One of them, RHP #17 Tehani Seto quipped "come for the baseball, stay for the softball." I told her to put that on a T-shirt! There's a lot of mutual support and respect between the baseball and softball players. Here are the lads rooting for the lasses:

 Here's the view from the hill behind the outfield fence:

The Vulcans are batting and wearing black, their opponents are the Urban Knights from San Francisco's Academy of Art. That's Hilo Bay in the background. They had to play two rain-shortened games (winning both by big margins) but had two games cancelled. The women can do the tarp drill just as well as the men! I kept saying "boys" and "girls" because I was a high school teacher for 30 years but they of course say "men" and "women" at the college level. Fast-pitch is a great game that emphasizes speed and defense. Quick ball transfers and accurate relay throws play a big part. We saw lots of steals, bunts, and slash hitting, but also a couple of big dingers. Good stuff all around. The rain ultimately chased us away. We socialized with Tehani and her teammate OF #9 Kaia Bradford and both were personable, funny, and super-smart. They call Kaia "Wade" because her lefty batting stance is reminiscent of Wade Boggs. Who'd have thought that the ballplayers knew about some old guy from the 80s and 90s? It was great being with parents because I got to meet lots of Eamon's fellow students. If you ever get concerned about the future--I know I do--I can say that hanging around those youngsters was most inspiring. They move at 78 rpm all the time but I like their attitudes and their enthusiasm is infectious. I think the world will be in good hands.

Baseball is a big circle. I learned to love the game because my Mom always had KSFO AM-560 on the radio when I was a kid. Lon Simmons' rumbling baritone is a big part of my youth. He did play-by-play for both the Giants and 49ers. Mom grew up near Fenway Park and watched the Red Sox teams of the 1940s and 50s with Ted Williams in LF, Dominic DiMaggio in CF, Johnny Pesky at SS, and Bobby Doerr at 2B. In high school Eamon played in the Bobby Doerr Baseball Classic in Junction City, Oregon, where Doerr is from, and even got to meet the Red Sox legend (Doerr died in 2017). David Halberstam has a book (The Teammates) about those four fellows.

Kevin tells me he gets stopped all the time by people who see his "Y" ball cap from Yreka HS and his "FRC" shirt from Feather River College in Quincy (where Eamon played before transferring to Hilo). I believe it now. One of the flight attendants on our our trip out asked if we were from Yreka because of the hat and inquired if we knew a friend of hers. It turned out to be one of my former students! We had a long layover in Seattle and were accidentally at the wrong gate when another passenger started a conversation with us. Turns out he was from Etna (also in Siskiyou County), had played baseball in Ashland, Oregon with their state championship squad, and went to the College World Series with Oregon State. He'd also been an assistant coach with Feather River (before Eamon's time) and at the University of Michigan. He was now a minor-league hitting coordinator with the Detroit Tigers after several years with Driveline Baseball. His name was Max Gordon and he's the subject of a book by Jacob and Dylan Kornhauser as he was in a horrible accident that almost killed him (and did kill his brother) yet recovered to stay in the game. Naturally he knew a lot of the same people (other coaches and former HS ballplayers) that both Kevin and Kelly knew. Baseball really is a small world.

It was a great trip despite the rain. It rains all the time of course but even the locals, who normally have a placid take on everything, remarked on the intensity of the downpours. We got to visit Volcanoes National Park where we saw tropicbirds and shearwaters as well as flowing lava, and we did a jungle hike, three miles in to a secluded beach where we swam with the sea turtles. I bought a couple of groovy 100% rayon Hawai'i-made aloha shirts as well as some orange-and-black board shorts. We drank a lot of Hilo and Kona beers and visited the two microbreweries in Hilo. We saw waterfalls aplenty and clambered over rocks that were less than ten years old out to some spectacular ocean vistas.

The Giants have been kicking ass so I want to say "good job" to all my loyal readers. Thank you! But no more bitching about the ugly City Connect uniforms--we covered that last season. Besides, ugly unis are part of our formative years as fans. Remember the White Sox in black short pants and the Pirates in head-to-toe canary yellow? Sheesh! These are nothing compared to those 70s skin-tight double-knits in pastel blue and whatnot. Anyway I hope I don't jinx the Giants winning ways by coming home.

I'll resume posting about the team after this four-game set in New York is over. There's a double-header today after the rainout last night and a day game on Thursday, so I'll do a write-up after that.

--M.C.