Overview:
Santa Barbara native David Ortiz, age 71, died on March 31 after a long battle with cancer
My childhood chums of the Santa Barbara Mesa showed our camaraderie in an odd way.
We needled each other mercilessly.
Humorous insults were especially fair game on the sports field. Every awkward misstep or comment invited a biting wisecrack from even the best of our buddies.
It was the only way we boys of the Baby Boomer Generation felt we could show affection.
We called it “Ragging.”
I was reminded of that last week when David Ortiz — the former “Mesa Rat” pal who became the principal at La Colina Junior High School — was laid to rest after a long bout with cancer.
David, as his longtime bestie, Don McCloskey, would say, was “an Olympic-medal kidder.”
He earned that rep as a kid during our well-manned games of Kick-the-Can and Over-the-Line.
“The number of kids back then in that one, little half-mile area was incredible,” Don recalled.
David’s keen wit grew even sharper when we became baseball and basketball teammates at La Cumbre Junior High.
He never let us forget the big hit he crushed to the fence at Laguna Park, the old minor-league baseball stadium of the Santa Barbara Dodgers.
“He wouldn’t remind us out of conceit,” Don said. “He’d talk about it because he wanted to laugh with you … and at you, too.
“David would complain that he had to settle for a double that day even though he hit it off the fence.
“He tells everybody, ‘I was rounding second to try for a triple, but I had to stop because Don was running so slow in front of me.’”
Nobody was safe from David’s rags. He once blind-sided me during a La Cumbre basketball game against La Colina in 1969.
I thought he was consoling me after I’d turned the ball over by dribbling it off my foot.
“Aww, don’t worry about it,” he began as we ran back on defense. “… You’ll be glad to have those big clown feet when you start working for the circus.”
But he’d also take a bullet — or at least a crushing blow while setting a screen — for any one of us.
“He was such a loyal friend,” said McCloskey, who played alongside David when they were senior starters on the Santa Barbara High basketball team of 1972.
“I was team captain, but David was by far the most intense,” he added. “We referred to him as the original floor slapper … You know, like J.J. Redick and those Duke guys from way back who’d psyche up by slapping the floor.
“David would get that look on his face and I’d go, ‘Uh oh … Whomever he’s guarding is in trouble tonight!’”
Letter Perfect
David Ortiz played with heart. He lived with heart, too.
I discovered just how strong it beat in his chest during the fall of my senior year at Bishop Diego High School.
I skipped school for nearly an entire week after my father died of cancer. I was bent on isolating myself behind a wall of self-pity and grief.
But then a two-page letter from David showed up in the mailbox. I remember it almost word for word.
Attending different high schools had reduced our contact, but it was as if we were back riding bikes to the Westside Boys Club for basketball practice, or turning a double play on the baseball diamond at La Cumbre.
“I know how much you loved your father,” David wrote. “I remember you saying that you want to grow up to be just like him and write for newspapers just like him.
“I loved reading your Dad’s sports column in the News-Press, and I’m really going to miss it. But I know I’m going to be reading you some day, too.
“Just remember that he won’t really be gone when you honor him like that.”
I went back to school the next day.
David stayed in school his entire life.
He took that “Walk of the Dons” at graduation all the way to San Diego State, where he roomed with his old bestie, Don McCloskey.
He then came back to town to earn a teaching credential and masters degree at UC Santa Barbara, marry his high school sweetheart, Leslie Rian, and raise their sons, Michael and Daniel.
“We worked together for the Santa Barbara Rec Department when we came back,” Don said. “David was a coach, an after-school supervisor, and he just flipped his role to become a teacher and school principal and role model … because he looked up to role models.
“He loved our high school basketball coach, Jack Trigueiro, and he kept in touch with him and with even his old teachers at McKinley School.”
Class Act
David taught at La Colina Junior High before starting a 10-year teaching assignment at Los Robles High — the school for juveniles who lived at the now-closed Los Prietos Boys Camp.
He proved adept at dishing out the kind of tough, honest love that made a difference for thousands of young boys.
“He could be both the good cop and the bad cop,” McCloskey said. “There were times he reveled in it.”
Ortiz returned to La Colina as assistant principal in 1990 and was promoted to principal seven years later. He served in that role for 22 years.
McCloskey also chose a career in education and became a middle-school principal in the San José area.
“I remember touring David’s school and seeing how proud he was of it,” he said. “I walked into the office at La Colina and saw these two memorial plaques on the wall, with a blank space next to them.
“I went, ‘Hey, who are these two guys?’ And he looked up there and said, ‘That’s No. 1 principal in the history of La Colina, that’s No. 2 … and I am going to be right next to them as No. 3.
“He was so proud of being that third principal after all those years. I looked it up, and the school had opened 56 years earlier.”
Tradition was big with David Ortiz. So was staying connected with old pals.
He and wife Leslie, who helped run Santa Barbara High’s Class of ’72 reunions, often invited me to the event.
When I finally accepted, I found myself taking a “rag-time” stroll down memory lane.
“Dave got as good as he gave,” McCloskey recalled. “I’d be talking to Wes Barrow, with David right nearby, and I’d say, ‘You know, Wes, just think how good we would’ve been in high school if we’d just had a point guard.’
“And we’d hear him go, ‘You suck! You suck!’ And we’d go, ‘We’re not talking to you, David. It’s just me and Wes talking.’
“And so, yeah, we gave it to him, too.”
Bus Stop
David didn’t give just lip service to friendship. He always showed up.
Scott Cathcart, another teammate through all those Wonder Years on the Mesa and at La Cumbre and Santa Barbara High, once found David waiting for him after one of his Fresno State football games.
“He came to say hello when we played San Diego State at Jack Murphy Stadium in 1974,” Scott recalled.
“We got the chance to visit for 15 or 20 minutes before the buses loaded … and I really thought that was cool of him … It was such a thoughtful gesture.”
David Sugich, another former La Cumbre Lancer, recalled how Ortiz would lead some of the bike rides we took as a team.
“Dave, who was up front, turned his bike around and went to the back where us stragglers were and spurned us on,” Sugich said. “He didn’t do it to make us feel small, but he did it to encourage us … and with a kind smile on his face.
“That’s the way he led, too. Not pushy, but strong.”
I often saw David doing that same thing at the high school sporting events I covered for the News-Press.
He’d be there to encourage his former La Colina students with a kind smile and shouts of support, although now without the rags he saved for only us closest of brothers.
“Remember how we used to practice basketball at the Westside Boys Club because La Cumbre didn’t have a gym?” McCloskey asked. “Well, when David became older and in a position to support it, that’s what he did … He supported the Boys Clubs.
“He’d go support his former kids, too … the ones playing high school basketball, and tennis and volleyball, and every other sport.
“He supported all of it. He was so proud of being a youth advocate.”
One of my last good conversations with David came when our paths crossed while we were each on a beach walk with our wives.
“You know, David,” I told him, “I never did thank you for that letter you wrote after my father’s death … It really did help pull me out of some serious despair.”
And that’s when he told me about his cancer.
He cut me off when I started blathering the obligatory declarations of sympathy.
“We’re all going to face these kind of challenges at one point or another,” he said.
He confronted his in that old, familiar way.
McCloskey saw it the day David returned to the golf course after one of his cancer surgeries.
“He’d gotten his bladder taken out, and part of his kidney, and he had to go through this year-long recovery,” he said. “He couldn’t play golf or do anything, while the rest of us — Wes and Barry (Eckert) — had been playing all throughout his recovery.”
But when one of those old pals hit a shot out of bounds, they all saw the old David Ortiz come back to life.
“I thought you guys would be so much better after I got well … I was so scared I wouldn’t be able to keep up,” he said.
“But you guys still suck.”
Those words never sounded so sweet.
