The Santa Barbara of my youth made for a lively summer playground.
It had enough ballfields, beaches and woodsy trails to stir the adventurous spirit of any kid.
And there were thousands of us 60 years ago to fill those venues.
I turned 11 during my favorite summer of 1965 … the last year of our imagined innocence.
America was at the height of the baby boomer era. Our Mesa neighborhood was teeming with children.
The sense of our American utopia had not yet been shaken by the news dispatches from Vietnam.
We were ignorantly oblivious to the racially charged volcano that would erupt in Watts during the next few weeks.
Video games had not yet been invented to stunt our growth or numb our verve. Daytime television provided little distraction.
Saturday morning cartoons were the only programs that could tether us indoors. Watching them, however, came at great risk.
Laughing out loud to the antics of Moose & Squirrel was sure to wake Dad and lead to a weekend of yardwork.
Best to escape into the great outdoors at daybreak before he even caught wind of us.
Game On
My brothers and buddies all preferred real games like Kick the Can, Capture the Flag, Over-the-Line baseball and pad-less tackle football.
We didn’t return home until Mom’s sing-song call to dinner gave way to a bellowed threat from Dad that we faced the paddling of our lives if not home in the next 10 seconds.
I’m pretty sure I once beat Bob Hayes’ 1963 world record by clocking nine-flat in a 100-yard dash to the dinner table.
No parent could confine us, however, when we camped out in the woods that bordered La Mesa Park. It gave us a good head start to the front of the morning surf lineup at Mesa Lane.
Our moms would worry, of course … but not about our crossing paths with a serial killer.
They were more concerned about the paths that led through poison oak, or down the crumbly ocean bluffs we navigated while hauling our 10-foot Yaters.
The dangers of the world didn’t weigh on us as heavily as the hefty surfboards of those days.
We did have our gangs. I wore the colors of the Cordova Drive Cowboys.
One of the neighborhood moms even ironed stick-on patches to our T-shirts — one on the front that said “Cowboys” and another of a number on the back.
We’d wear them in games against a mish-mash of neighbor kids from Salida del Sol, Payeras Street, and El Monte and Loyola drives.
The best basketball battles were waged by Bands of Brothers on the driveway courts of our neighborhood.
A backboard and hoop loomed above just about every garage door in the neighborhood for our rousing games of two-on-two.
We didn’t mind if a parked car was part of our driveway court. It served as an effective screen for our own drives.
Our street alone fielded the brotherly teams of Sammy and Scott Cathcart, Dana and Dennis Meaney, Ron and Roy Noel, Bob and John Schuck … and Greg and Mark Patton.
Payeras had Chuck and Steve Lowe. Salida del Sol had Mark and Mike Kashmar.
The stakes could not have been higher. Losing meant facing the Wrath of Kin.
Our Game Was Mud
Nothing was more red-blooded American than our sandlot baseball and football. We’d play come hell or high water.
The sprinklers at nearby Washington School once sprang to life during one of our pickup baseball games.
It quickly degraded into a wet game of “chicken.” Nobody wanted to be the first to gurgle “uncle.”
My dad had volunteered as an umpire, but he wanted no part of a mud bath.
He slogged home as the gangs of Cordova and Payeras soldiered on in a lawless, messy turf war.
Some of the best head-first slides in the history of sandlot baseball were made that day … a few of them unintentionally.
Nobody loved to add a little water to the action more than Cordova Drive’s Scott Cathcart.
His dad, Santa Barbara High School coach Sam Cathcart, once organized a football contest at Washington School for all of the Mesa’s future Dons.
Scotty took over as general manager for all of the boyhood games that followed.
It was a calling that would lead to a career in athletic administration at Long Beach State and Temple University. He would later become the athletic director at Allan Hancock and Palomar community colleges.
We always expected his call during a rainstorm. Nothing was more fun than muddying up a football game.
When the turnout was low, we’d just play on the smaller gridirons of our front yards. The sidewalk provided a very linear goal line.
We stopped diving into the end zone, however, after a touchdown scored by Don Smith came at the expense of a broken arm.
These were the days before the Youth Football League and American Youth Soccer Organization. Little League didn’t come to Santa Barbara until 1968.
Santa Barbara’s city Recreation Department did offer a summer youth baseball program for many years.
Leagues were set up in such city districts as the Eastside, the Westside, Hidden Valley, Willow Glen, San Roque … and at Monroe School on the western end of our marvelous Mesa.
The champion of each league got to keep playing in a postseason tournament.
Advancing to the City championship game at Laguna Park was like making it to Williamsport, Pennsylvania, for the Little League World Series.
The old minor-league baseball stadium, located just three blocks off downtown State Street, was the mecca of every baseball-playing boy in town.
Saints Be Praised
I got there once — during that magical summer of 1965 — when my team won our district’s “California League” championship in the Pee Wee League division.
They named us the “Saints” … and no greater misnomer was ever bestowed upon a more squirrelly, sugar-hyped gang of preteens.
But we could play ball.
I was saved countless times that summer by Joe “Pepe” Peinado, who used an oversized first baseman’s mitt to corral my many errant throws from shortstop.
A frayed, yellow clipping from the Santa Barbara News-Press reminds me how Rick Vega pitched a five-hitter in our 4-3 victory over the Willow Glen Matadors in the semifinals of the Pee Wee League playoffs at MacKenzie Park.
And another tells of how the Saints held on to win the championship at Laguna Park after withstanding a five-run, final-inning rally by the Coast League champion Falcons.
What it doesn’t say is that it could’ve gotten fatally worse if Pepe hadn’t scooped my final throw of the game.
Much has changed in the last 60 years.
Joni Mitchell’s iconic song “Big Yellow Taxi” hit the charts in the spring of 1970 to foreshadow Santa Barbara’s own imminent trashing of hometown spirit.
Just a few months later, the City of Santa Barbara bulldozed Laguna Park into a million splinters.
“They paved paradise and put up a parking lot” for municipal vehicles, maintenance buildings and affordable housing.
The city deceitfully vowed to build a new municipal baseball stadium at a different location.
But the politicians in 1970 were no different than the ones today who continue to ignore that promise.
Technology has changed sports, as well, making spectating easier but infinitely less intimate.
Watching granddaughter Mykala McCann play for her 12-and-under travel softball team this weekend has stirred nostalgic memories of my own time under the summer sun.
But I rooted her on from 340 miles away, thanks to a cell-phone app that provided a livestream broadcast of every game.
That same iPhone also receives almost daily text messages from my old buddy, Scott Cathcart … usually to discuss the latest sports news.
He hasn’t asked me to come out to play in a while — rain or shine — but I have extended my ball-playing days into extra innings.
I still trot out to the diamond two days a week to play senior league softball.
And if I live long enough, I plan to make the long drive to St. George, Utah, in October to play with my team at the Huntsman World Senior Games.
Most of those squirrely Saints of yore would now consider me nuts, but Pepe Peinado understands.
He remained a teammate — and sometimes an opponent — on the ballfield for much of the last half-century.
I even coaxed him out of his retirement as a painting contractor four years ago when a few rooms of my house needed a fresh coat of paint.
It took him several months to finish the job, although I was most to blame.
Pepe had to spend much of the time just listening to me embellish my exploits during that Wonder Year of 1965.
He always could handle the wild ones I throw.
