| The Palo Alto History Project |
| Sunken Diamonds 3672 Middlefield Road |
| Sunken Diamonds A Guest Article by Don McPhail People relate to baseball. Nearly every city and town in America has a ball diamond. Some are empty lots where base paths were created by kids crunching them day after day, the way a deer path happens in the forest, a few tiny hoofs at a time. The infield and outfield may be pocked with stones and weed-tufts, giving the advantage to a player with quick hands and local knowledge, who knows where stand to minimize the bad hops. You don't have to have played the game to love it. Boys, girls, moms and dads can relate. Some of the greatest fans are grandmothers who keep meticulous line scores of their grand-son's and granddaughter's games. Baseball can be played on rainy days in Oregon and Washington, where you don't have a season if you can't play in the rain. Or in hot and dusty Cuerna-vaca, or humid Biloxi. Thanks to the formation of Little League Baseball in Williamsport, Pennsylvania over sixty-five years ago, kids all over the globe can play ball on fields with regulation baselines and smoothed infields, and they can dream their major-league dreams. Our town was Palo Alto, over fifty-five years ago. My friends and I began in the late forties, when we were eight or nine, playing softball in elementary school. Our hardball experience began in 1951 at El Camino Park, when Palo Alto Little League was formed. My Palo Alto Little League story really began in its second year, 1952, when the current Little League stadium was built. It's still in use fifty-five years later, and that's where I recently went to reconnect with the place where we learned how to play ball. Palo Alto's Little League Stadium was patterned after neighboring Stanford University's legendary Sunken Diamond baseball field, and it has endured almost as long as its model. Not surprisingly, when I stand on the pitcher's mound today and look toward the outfield, the view is decidedly different from those first days. Back then, beyond the outfield fence we saw orchards and fields filled with carrots and apricots, and other farm crops that boys would pull from the ground or pick from the tree, wipe off on their pants, and munch-on before the ballgame. This area is now known as Mitchell Park, one of Palo Alto's large and green city parks. Instead of carrots and apricots, you see swing sets and lawns where young moms and their children mingle with grandparents and family friends. Back in the ballpark, if you turn and look past the backstop you can see the place where Hall-of-Famers Ty Cobb and Glenn "Pop" Warner were the honored guests for the grand opening, on June 29, 1952. That's when Palo Alto Little League field was formally christened. Back then you saw players like Dick Holden, Hal and Howie Turner, and Ted Tollner ,playing for teams named Palo Alto Sport Shop and Golden State Dairy. Like Stanford's Sunken Diamond, the current outfield fence is placed at the foot of the berm, so you can't easily detect the below-ground placement of the baseball field. You need to look beyond each baseline and see that the stands are set a few feet higher than the field -- the result of the removal of over 5,000 yards of soil, all work donated for the project by volunteers and local contractors. You need to walk along the outfield fence to realize that the elevation continues all around. But the players know about Sunken Diamond and its proud traditions, so the design of a below-ground Little League field proved to be popular with players and the parents who helped to build it. A year earlier, in the spring of 1951, the founding of Palo Alto Little League created one of the most enduring youth programs in the city's history. Just the year before, several visionary sports enthusiasts joined together to create a new program that encompassed not just Palo Alto, but adjacent communities of Menlo Park, East Palo Alto, South Palo Alto and Los Altos. These local men and women created an official branch of Little League baseball. The first official season was played in 1951 at El Camino Park, just north of the Palo Alto train station, and across from the current Stanford Shopping Center. It offered a "skin" infield, consisting of smoothed dirt with no grass, and no rocks or weeds. Bases could be set up with short baselines for fast-pitch softball, or longer for the semi-pro, hardball Palo Alto Oaks. Little League field dimensions were similar to softball, so this ballpark was a natural place to start. The layout provided an excellent place for our miniaturized version. The outfield was vast, and sharply-hit balls often became home runs, as the hitter streaked around the bases while the fielder chased down the ball. There were four teams during this initial season. The first coaches were also the league's first officers: men like Howard Bertelsen, who looked a lot like Jackie Gleason with his pencil mustache and cigar; Bill Alhouse, with his brisk, U.S. Marine style and shortstop's savvy; and portly Frank Pfyl, who looked like the ex-catcher that he was. Our team, P.A. Sport Shop, won the first championship, with 14 wins and only 2 losses. We were followed by Lowe's (10-5), Golden State (5-10) and 20-30 Club (2-14). In postseason play, Palo Alto's all-star team won its district games in Salinas and traveled by train, all the way to Santa Monica for the Western State playoffs. Our team didn't win, but they got valuable tournament experience that helped in subsequent years. Some of the best-known first-year players included twelve-year-olds Noel Barnes and Dennis Brewick, both of whom later starred at the University of California; Bob Wendell, who captained Cal's NCAA-championship basketball team; Frank Farmer, who played at Paly before signing a professional baseball contract; and eleven-year old Ted Tollner, who played football and baseball at Cal Poly, and became a successful head football coach at USC and San Diego State, and professional coach with the Forty-Niners. Palo Alto's new Little League park was conceived, funded and constructed at an estimated cost of $100,000, in time for the second year, the 1952 season. All games were played at the new field on Middlefield Road where it currently stands. The league had expanded to 12 teams, enabling many more players to participate. The new team sponsors were primarily civic organizations, including Knights of Columbus, Lions Club, and Jaycees. The project was nurtured and managed by real estate executive Floyd Lowe, who made not a nickel from the project. Funding for the new ballpark was a community effort, with donations of cash and material patterned after the successful fundraising program demonstrated by the nearby city of Salinas, combining large and small donations from families, with major ones from businesses and civic organizations. On opening day in Palo Alto, honored guest Ty Cobb, a controversial figure then in his seventies and known for his salty personality, along with famed Stanford football coach Pop Warner, eighty at the time, were active participants at the ballpark opening -- a festive day that was widely featured in the Palo Alto Times, a leading daily newspaper. The Times had even assigned a young student writer, Gary Williams, to follow every game and feature it on the sports page, nearly as prominently as Stanford and the local high schools. This included generous articles about each ballgame during the season and detailed box scores with all the player names. Those of us whose moms or dads saved the clippings, still have them stored away in weathered scrapbooks down in the basement. Young sportswriter Williams has since passed away after going on to become a nationally respected sports journalist for the Times and San Jose Mercury. Best-known players included the Turner brothers and Bob Ralls from Menlo Park; Tollner, Mike McClellan, Shibun Tana, Dick Fregulia, Roger Baer and scores of players who went on to play high school baseball at Paly, Cubberley, Menlo-Atherton, Bellarmine and elsewhere. The establishment of Palo Alto Little League was a lasting investment, evidenced by the continuous use of the original Little League field for over fifty-five years, wisely protected by its founders from outside development. I can still picture the faces of men like Bertelsen, Alhouse, Frank and Monte Pfyl, the Hoffaker family and many others who continued to play a major role in local youth sports, by continuing as active coaches and mentors for these same boys as they progressed through PONY League, Babe Ruth League, American Legion and semi-pro Palo Alto Oaks. Like many small communities, Palo Alto youngsters and parents were fortunate to have such community and personal examples. Exploring the park today, of course it is considerably smaller than it seemed back then. But to the boys who played there, it is still large and full of experiences. For those of us who started with the league over fifty-five years ago, the selective memories are enormous. This was the place we got to wear our first big-league style uniforms. We learned how to use the thin white undersocks beneath the stirruped game socks, and to roll the pants down just right, half-way toward the ankles. We wore our first spikes, the rubberized Little League version, so we wouldn't hurt each other sliding-in, spikes high, the way the pros did it. We learned the fade-away slide, to slip a leg across home plate just ahead of the catcher's tag. And to glide across second base, skimming the bag while we gathered the toss to begin a double-play. We cheered and cheered when Neill Parkin hit that game-winning homer over the fence. And we learned to live with the occasional heart-breaking defeat when we didn't get the crucial tying run across the plate. In the end, the Palo Alto Little League park is a small and special place. It is a miniaturized ball field, where we got to play good baseball and we learned to love the game. To hold all these memories, it is also larger than life. -Don McPhail |
