Overview:
Fairly developed three future Major Leaguers during 17 seasons of mentorship
My first impression of Santa Barbara City College was that it was a great place to watch a sailboat race.
I learned as a student, however, that it was much more than a venue with a view.
The best education I got for my profession came from Ray Canton, the late, great director of SBCC’s journalism program. It led to a full scholarship at USC, an editorship with the Daily Trojan and the career opportunities that followed.
Some of the best mentorship I ever received also came from Harold P. “Rusty” Fairly, the school’s late, great baseball coach.
It didn’t lead to much playing time, let alone an athletic scholarship, but I did learn how to handle the curveballs of life.
Fairly taught us to dig in and take our jobs seriously … and ourselves not so seriously.
One of my more important tasks as his player was to chase the hobos out of the Pershing Park dugout before our games and workouts.
“Be nice,” Fairly advised me. “We don’t want to lose our only fans.”
He once added this instruction to my mission: “If any of them are left-handed, ask if they’d like to pitch in tomorrow’s game.”
Fairly’s wit and wise candor guided hundreds of baseball players from 1965 to 1981 in a career that SBCC will honor this week.
He, along with women’s basketball player Faha Banks and volleyball coach Ed Gover, will be inducted into the Vaqueros Hall of Fame in a 5 p.m. Friday ceremony at the SBCC Sports Pavilion.
SBCC will also honor the induction class of 2020, whose original ceremony was canceled because of the coronavirus pandemic.
That group includes Jesse Orosco, the ace of Fairly’s 1978 pitching staff, who made the first of his Major League Baseball-record 1,252 appearances just one year later.
Orosco will be joined by fellow 2020 inductees Don Ford (basketball), Tim Tremblay (football), Cindy Banks (track and field) and Kieran O’Leary Roblee (volleyball); coaches Ed DeLacy (basketball) and Kathy O’Connor (volleyball), and the 1983 state championship men’s volleyball team.
Tickets for the dinner and ceremony are $50 apiece and can be obtained by emailing Ashley Farias at amfarias1@sbcc.edu or calling 805.965.0581 x2276.
A Community Calling
A common thread for these Hall of Famers was how seriously they regarded the community portion of the community college mission.
Gover, who coached the Vaqueros to 11 conference championships and a 378-216 record during 28 seasons as women’s volleyball coach, didn’t limit his guidance to the fine athletes of SBCC.
He also volunteered to coach the kids at the Santa Barbara Volleyball Club.
He was even coaxed out of retirement a few years ago to serve as Dillan Bennett’s assistant at Bishop Diego High School.
They won a CIF-Southern Section championship together in 2021. Gover used the opportunity to tutor sixth-grader Karina Urzua when she sat on the Cardinals’ bench to cheer on her three older sisters. He even had her call out their service areas.
Banks, an All-State point guard for the Vaqueros in 1992, later returned to SBCC for three seasons as an assistant basketball coach.
She also helped former UCSB star Carrick DeHart start the Blazers’ girls basketball program and then returned to her alma mater, Santa Barbara High School, to serve as its junior varsity coach.
Her work with the youth at Los Prietos Boys Camp spanned more than 21 years. Banks also now serves our community as the family engagement liaison for the Santa Barbara Unified School District.
Fairly didn’t just fade away like Gen. Douglas MacArthur’s proverbial old soldier after his final baseball game in 1981. He joined SBCC’s Academic Senate and was even elected as its president.
He was later voted to three terms on the Santa Barbara City Council. He also joined just about every charitable organization he could find on the South Coast.
Bound for Santa Barbara
Fairly came to Santa Barbara only after two twists of fate — one calamitous, the other fortuitous — spurred an abrupt turn in his life.
He suffered a serious knee injury in 1955 while playing in the Canadian Football League — just one year after his All-America season as the quarterback at the University of Denver.
He promptly returned to Denver and began coaching much sooner than he had anticipated.
Jack Curtice, whose University of Utah football team was beaten by Fairly’s playmaking in a 1954 game in Salt Lake City, wooed him away from Denver to join his own, new football staff at UC Santa Barbara in 1961.
Just three years later, Fairly was whisked away again when SBCC hired him as its head baseball coach and assistant football coach.
He compiled a record of 225-160 during 17 seasons of Vaquero baseball. He also developed such future Major Leaguers as Orosco, Gary Woods and Lemmie Miller.
But Fairly also saw a picture that was much larger than big-league baseball.
I realized that during the summer of 1979 while on my way to Dodger Stadium to interview Orosco during his rookie season with the New York Mets.
I had talked my old coach into joining me on the assignment. It was during that drive that Fairly turned protectively paternal about Orosco’s sudden promotion to the Major Leagues.
“Jesse’s only 22,” he told me. “He’s pitched just one season in the minors and this is a whole new ball game, facing guys like Steve Garvey and Dusty Baker.
“Those guys will just crush the spirit of a young pitcher.”
His pregame talk with Orosco came back to me about a decade later as I was watching the movie Bull Durham. His words that day sounded much like what Crash Davis told Nuke LaLoosh when he was called up for his own fictional, Major League debut.
Fairly said something like, “Look, Jesse, these big-league hitters might light you up like a pin-ball machine for a while … Don’t worry about it …”
“Believe in yourself,” he told Orosco, “because I sure do.”
Teaching the Teachers
He took a similar, fatherly approach with John Kirkgard just two years later.
“A puppy fresh from college, I was looking to quit the management trainee program at Crocker Bank when I approached Rusty about a volunteer position on his staff,” Kirkgard said. “He tried to talk me out of it, explaining I wasn’t making a wise choice. But he told me to think about it over the weekend.
“When I showed up that first Monday, he told me, ‘If you were my son, I would give you a swift kick in the rear.’ He then handed me his keys and said, ‘Go start practice.’
“He spent that first year mentoring me and buying most of my meals so I could survive.”
He also set up Kirkgard with a teaching position so he could pay his bills.
“He was a teacher, and he taught me how to teach,” he said.
Two years later, Kirkgard began a 13-year tenure as the head coach at Westmont College. He also served on coach Bob Brontsema’s staff at UCSB.
Bill Pintard, the long-successful coach of the Santa Barbara Foresters summer collegiate program, once sought Fairly’s advice when two of his assistant coaches began feuding.
“He didn’t give me the quick answer, but instead talked about the situation and helped me draw the answer from myself,” he said. “When I finally did that, he gave me that smirk of his to let me know I had the right answer.”
Fairly’s passion could turn red-hot, but even that often served a bigger purpose.
He once put freshman pitcher John Martony on the spot about an umpire’s call at first base.
“What happened, John?” he asked, having missed the play.
“Ump called him safe,” Martony replied. “He was out by a mile.”
Fairly promptly charged the umpire, his red hair flaring from beneath his cap, and was ejected from the game after declaring, “That was the worst call I have ever seen in 30 years of coaching!”
His ulterior intent wasn’t lost on Martony: He was showing enough trust in a young player to go to war on his word alone.
“After seeing that,” Martony said, “I’d run through a wall for him.”
A Trip Down Memory Lane
Fairly’s passion came with the compassion he felt for his players. They included even the benchwarmers who best served him by clearing the dugout of hobos.
My most humiliating moment as an athlete actually came after one of my better swings as a Vaquero. I yanked a sinking line drive that the shortstop could only knock down with a diving, back-handed effort.
My ecstasy turned into agony when I tripped over home plate. I avoided a total face plant only by landing hard on both hands.
When I saw the shortstop scrambling for the ball on all fours, I began doing the same toward first base. I had degraded the game into a dog and pony show.
The next excruciating seconds seemed to unfold in slow motion:
The shortstop grabbed the ball, rose to his feet, and looped an off-balanced throw toward first base.
I, on the other hand, pushed myself back upright before struggling to find any kind of balance or stride down the baseline.
I could hear Fairly shout as I trudged, the cadence of his words sounding as though they were meant for Forrest Gump:
“Run, Pat-ton, run!”
I was out by three steps.
I plodded past the bag and was tempted to continue to my car in the parking lot. But then Fairly put his hands on my slumping shoulders and said through a chuckle, “Next time, just send a postcard … It’ll get here faster.”
And so I laughed instead of cried.
Harold P. Fairly died at age 83 on Feb. 14, 2016.
The last time I saw him, Alzheimer’s disease had stripped him of many of these memories. I was one of the many former players that his son, Steven, one of his three children, had called to come to his side during his final days.
Fairly spent most of our last visit by reciting, over and over, the corny jokes he could still pluck from his foggy mind.
He even made up one that I knew was untrue. It was about how he had gotten the nickname of Rusty.
“It comes from the swing I had,” he said, his clouded eyes still managing a twinkle.
And for one last time, he made me laugh instead of cry.