My longest walk was supposed to be my last as a Santa Barbaran.
The Sacramento Bee had called with an offer they thought I couldn’t refuse.
Marco Smolich, one of my late father’s old newspaper buddies, wanted Phil Patton’s kid to join his staff.
The Bee’s longtime sports editor promised glitzier assignments, better pay, and Sacramento’s lower cost of living for my young, growing family.
I truly enjoyed my job at the Santa Barbara News-Press — an award-winning publication when daily newspapers mattered — but this bigger platform offered a very promising future.
And so I devoted an entire December day to walking the streets of Santa Barbara to think through this life-altering change of direction.
Mostly, I just wanted to say goodbye to the town that raised me.
I headed out of the historic News-Press building — now vacant for these last two years — and strolled past the Santa Barbara High School gym where Basketball Hall of Famer Jamaal Wilkes once played.
I recalled hoping to follow in the footsteps of his Converse hightops … I fell 14,644 points short of his NBA total.
I next passed the football field behind the Eastside Boys Club where I tried to fill the cleats of Sam Cunningham … I wound up just 49 touchdowns shy of his NFL tally.
My route also took me to the La Cumbre Junior High School diamond where I once ran the same basepaths as Hall of Famer Eddie Mathews.
I trail him by only 512 Major League home runs.
Wilkes, Cunningham and Mathews were all rewarded for their Herculean feats with induction into the Santa Barbara Athletic Round Table Hall of Fame.
I spent my bubble-gum days dreaming about walking their walk to get there, too.
Dad got there with his induction as a community leader in 1977.
My older brother, Greg, was honored two years ago on the strength of his two NCAA Coach of the Year Awards in men’s tennis.
But it feels ridiculous for it now to happen for me during a ceremony set for Monday night at the Cabrillo Pavilion.
I’m to be inducted simply for having written about Santa Barbara’s athletes and their games for nearly a half-century.
The other inductees are athletes — Mark Basham from Santa Barbara High tennis, Larissa Godkin Feramisco from Carpinteria High track and field, Mike Fryer from Santa Barbara High football, Amber Melgoza from Santa Barbara High basketball, and Michele Romero from Bishop Diego High soccer — along with coach Bill Oliphant from Santa Barbara High baseball.
But it does say something about a town that values not just the famous superstar or coach.
You can just be someone who values that town the best way you know how.
Change of Scenery
Some of the Santa Barbara of my childhood had changed when I took that walk — some for the better, some for the worse.
Laguna Ballpark, where I’d won a Pee Wee League baseball championship and hawked game programs that same night for the minor-league Santa Barbara Dodgers, was as long gone as one of Mathews’ clouts.
The city had torn it down in favor of some low-cost housing, warehouses and an equipment yard.
At least the sands of time hadn’t changed East Beach, where the careers of such volleyball legends as Olympic gold medalist Karch Kiraly were spawned.
I covered his indoor triumph at the Long Beach Arena during the 1984 Olympic Games. He’d win another indoor gold in Seoul, South Korea, in 1988 and a beach volleyball gold in Atlanta in 1996.
East Beach also was where I was talked into doing a first-person series about the Santa Barbara Triathlon.
Dawn Schroeder trained me for several months in her Momentum4Life group, and then turned me loose into the waters, bikeways and running paths of my town.
I finished near the bottom of my age division … but was so happy to live to tell the tale that I returned for future triathlons.
I was rewarded later with a slightly better finish in an older group. Aging, I learned, wasn’t all bad.
My supposed farewell tour also took me to Pershing Park, where Mom taught me how to play tennis on an ancient pair of cracked, cement courts.
Rita Patton once asked a hobo to join us when he emerged from the bushes to watch. She even let him use her backup racket and told him to keep it when we were done.
By the time I’d taken my long walk, the park had been remodeled into a full-fledged athletic complex.
The eight new tennis courts, two softball fields and baseball diamond had been the vision of Bill Bertka, the former city recreation supervisor who moved on to become a coach for the NBA’s Los Angeles Lakers.
When my walk took me into one of Pershing’s dugouts, I flashed back to the most important role I played during my stint with the Santa Barbara City College baseball team.
Coach Rusty Fairly tasked me with evicting the homeless squatters who congregated there before our practices and games.
“Why me?” I protested.
“Because I know you’ll be nice … and we can’t alienate our biggest group of fans,” Fairly replied through one of his devilish smiles.
Methinks, however, it was more a case of expendability. If someone is to be knifed, better it be a banjo-hitting utility infielder.
My heart bled a different way, however, the day I evicted a familiar, weathered face from that dugout.
He still had Mom’s backup tennis racket.
Fields of Dreams
My walk continued through the Mesa neighborhood where I played games of pickle and kick-the-can, and rode my bike until Mom’s sweet dinner call turned into a scream.
I lived just around the corner from Washington Elementary School, our favorite stomping grounds when school wasn’t in session.
We played kickball on its blacktop and over-the-line on the grass of its bottom field.
The chain-link fence on the eastern end made for a great home-run barrier, although we never tried to retrieve the baseballs that landed in one of the backyards.
The rumor in my circle of pals was that the grumpy old man who lived there was an ax murderer … or had pet alligators … or something like that.
My journey continued down Cliff Drive, toward a place called Arroyo Burro Beach by some and Hendry’s Beach by others.
We Mesa Rats knew it simply as “The Pit.”
It’s where I took my first surfboard ride … and my first notice of a bikini.
My sentimental journey continued down Las Positas Road, past Elings Park, where I was able to keep my ball-playing obsession alive in the senior leagues of slowpitch softball.
I then headed north to Bishop Diego High School, where I tried four different sports in an unsuccessful search for stardom.
I broke my wrist in a baseball game against Fillmore, suffered a concussion in a basketball game against that same high school, and limped out for passes on a grotesquely swollen left ankle throughout one entire season of football.
I did escape serious harm while playing tennis for the Cardinals — and also met my future wife, Theresa, in biology class — so my Bishop experience wasn’t all injurious.
My walk finally reached its most poignant stop at Calvary Cemetery. Dad has rested there ever since my senior year of high school.
Cancer took him from Mom and we seven kids when he was just 45.
I stopped there long enough to wonder what he would have advised about the Sacramento job.
He probably would’ve said to think long and hard about what I’d be missing here.
The Road Not Taken
I would’ve missed the quality time I got with my four daughters by coaching them in the Goleta Valley Girls Softball Association and in the Page Youth Center Basketball League.
I would’ve missed writing about the South Coast Special Olympics, where I once choked up while watching my little sister run with her most joyous abandon.
I would’ve missed covering countless CIF championships, 42 seasons of UCSB baseball and basketball, and the two NCAA men’s soccer championship matches played by the Gauchos.
I would’ve missed the 2 a.m. phone call from basketball coach Ben Howland, an old friend who later took UCLA to three straight NCAA Final Fours.
He couldn’t sleep after learning that he didn’t get his dream job at UCSB in his hometown of Santa Barbara.
“You’re lucky you’re still there,” he said before hanging up.
I remained there until 2021, when the withered News-Press was in its death throes.
Theresa and I thought it best to retire in Idaho, where we could live near our two youngest daughters and watch the six youngest of our dozen grandchildren grow up.
Some old News-Press brethren, however, offered a way for me to keep my heart in Santa Barbara.
Barry Punzal, Bill Macfadyen, Tom Bolton and Kim Clark all invited me to write this weekly sports column for Noozhawk.
Four decades earlier, I figured that Marco Smolich would think me crazy for changing my mind about his own offer.
I told him that I planned to stay in Santa Barbara as long as it had a daily newspaper.
A legitimate newspaper, anyway.
He laughed and wished me well.
“Your old man never would’ve left that place, either,” he said.
