He was down south one year, playing in the Texas League. He went in to the local record store looking for a record. My mother was the sales associate who helped him.
Back then, there were no big record store chains, but usually regional record stores. My mom was a "musicologist" and believe it or not, famous musicians like Louis Armstrong, Count Basie and Duke Ellington would come to her store and would personally request her to recommend their records. She was also a huge baseball fan, particularly liking the Cubs and Cardinals.
So one day, my father goes in to the record store in Amarillo, Texas looking for a record. My mom begins to help him and she looks him over and says "I know you, you are the catcher." And the rest is history. The twin loves of baseball and music have ever since (and always) been in our family. How did the youngest son relate? He was known back in the 70s for making incredible music tapes that were used for weddings, prom dates, and parties. Today he has an iTunes collection of 17,000 songs. And of course, he is even more into baseball. Friends on Facebook tease me that "I only post on three subjects: baseball, music or food."
So after my brother and sister are born in San Francisco, the family settles in the Santa Clara Valley.
Almost immediately my dad joins the Falstaff (San Jose, CA) Brewery Semi-Pro Baseball team. He is elevated to player manager. They play every weekend, either 2-3 games at Washington Park in Santa Clara or 2-3 games on long road trips throughout Northern California. Mom tells me Falstaff would give dad a huge amount of cash for the road trips (for the team), something like $400, and was told to spend every penny of it. This was the 1950s folks. Stories and stories galore. Mom tells the story of the time they were in Eureka or something and had no table to play cards with at the hotel. So the guys unhinged a door, laid it on a bed or some chairs or something and used that as the table for the all night poker game.
Santa Clara for some reason seemed to be a magnet for good baseball players. It was still orchards then, not quite Silicon Valley yet. Jim Brown was a player for Cal and was a starter on the team that won the first college world series in 1947 (one of the opponents was Yale featuring future president George Bush 1). He was a good hitting 2B and SS. Oh maybe 20-25 years ago I saw an ESPN special on the first world series (when Bush was president) and Jim was interviewed. Too cool. Jackie Jensen was another member and there were a few all-americans on that Cal team.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1947_California_Golden_Bears_baseball_team
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1947_NCAA_Baseball_Tournament
Another standout was pitcher Red Walsh, a tall, strong, flame throwing RH pitcher. There were many other good players and they all became part of a group that played together, coached youth baseball together, and became lifelong friends. My good friend Jeff Walsh, son of Red Walsh, played in the LL World Series in 1969. Another son of Red, Tim Walsh, was a 6' 7" college athlete, he married another college athlete and one of their children, daughter Kerri, became an all American basketball and volleyball player at Stanford and later a famous Olympic Beach Volleyball player. Jeff and I reconnected on Facebook after about 44 years about 2 years ago!
My mother had to be moved to an assisted living facility a few weeks back and we had to prepare the house for selling and arrange for what to do with all of her belongings. We went through some of dad's old baseball clippings he kept in albums. We randomly flipped to one page and there was an article about the game. All dad did was hit 2 singles, a solo HR, and a grand slam, driving in 8 runs. Wow.
Later the group formed the Santa Clara Oldtimers, and played other oldtimers teams, similar to the Falstaff semi pro era. I was around this time and saw my dad hit a zillion home runs. One time we were in San Mateo (funny how I remember this) and when announcing the pregame lineups, the announcer said "Rocky (his name was Rocco) could hit them all the way back to Santa Clara." In his second or third at bat he about did, hitting a ball farther than I have ever seen before or since.
Santa Clara became a hot bed of youth baseball. The Colt league team finished second at the Colt world series in 1968 - (I was part time bat boy) and won it in 1969 and 1975. The Pony league team won the Pony championship in 1973. Briarwood LL (including Jeff Walsh) won the US championship at Williamsport in 1969, but became the first team to lose to Taiwan in the international title game.
Top photo: Falstaff Brewery Semi-pro team, 1956
Bottom picture, a reunion of sorts at my sister's wedding in 1978 L to R: Red Walsh, Jim Brown, Frank Volpi, Cy Taylor, Joe DeSanti, Dad
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