1970

The echo has diminished like the denouncement of A Day in the Life. A single chord losing its volume over time. What used to sound like a cannon shot, ball meeting bat, now nearer resembles Play-Doh falling from five feet to a marble table top. Plop.

It has been forty years. In 1970 St. Bernard's fielded a make-shift, do-the-best-you can, rag-tag farrago of Southern California high school kids and called them the varsity baseball team. We were coming off several successful seasons of high caliber championship play, routinely feeding the local colleges and MLB with talent. But not that year. The cupboards, while not completely bare, were no longer jam packed with experience. The tool kit barely contained one, let alone 'the five'. Speed was absent, power scarce, arms were sore and bats woefully silent. Worse, we played porous defense and didn't laugh a lot. That was 1970.

Things had changed. Last night at our pre-reunion BP, we laughed about it. We argued a little about our record, did we play 500 ball? Did we beat Crespi? What ever happened to DeWitt? We looked at the left field short porch and wondered why the team leader in HRs had but one. For forty years we had blamed the coach, now we just laughed, knowing that it wasn't even remotely his fault.

It was nobody's. We did the best we could. We played hard. We had our moments. We suited up and went out to battle. That team produced lawyers, teachers, programmers, bankers, brokers and businessmen.

Last night we took a couple of cuts, played a little catch, shagged some flies.

It was fun.

It was fun seeing the guys again. Being out there once more. We may not have won a lot of games in 1970, but last night as the last note of forty seasons of cracked bats decayed, it was OK. We can't change the record books, but we can change the way we interrupt it. A different, softer spin on the same pitch.

Last night, forty years later, we won both ends of a rain delayed double-header. Cressman went deep, Krier tossed a shutout, and Lynch, Billups and Soto went 6-4-3. Kavanaugh ran another one down, Brannigan tripled.

We left the field winners, headed into the MPB for diner with 200 of our classmates, that sound not as distant as it once was.

The 1970 SBHS Vikings Baseball Team: Back row, l-r. Kevin Kavanaugh, George Soto, Joe Krier, Pat Hays, Joe Gehley, Randy Billups. Front row l-r: Kevin Lynch, Steve Cressman. Terry Brannigan.