Coaching for Pizza: A Spring Feast and a San Marino Titans Baseball Game

Thursday, April 27, 2023

A day for nostalgia . . .

As a youngster I grew up in San Marino, California and, from Kindergarten through Fifth Grade, attended K.L. Carver Elementary school, a fine public institution.

During most of those years much of my youth was spent at sporting events and sports related Summer camps at San Marino H.S., Home of the Titans.

Since the visit to my Mother today was centered around a Spring dinner put on by her skilled nursing facility starting at 5:15 p.m., I opted to drop by SMHS for a look at my old stomping grounds.

A sign of the times

I took a walk through San Marino's downtown shopping area on Huntington Drive. Unfortunately, this San Marino landmark was permanently closed and open to anybody who might want to lease the building.

Today, most of this area is devoid of shops and eateries but chock full of banks and other financial institutions. As a result, there were not many people on the Huntington Drive sidewalks.

This mural is found next to the San Marino

City Hall, Police Department and

Fire Station complex

It got me to reminiscing . . .

Huntington Drive has always been a huge, six lane street that bisects the entire city of San Marino from East to West. There is also a now grassed in median strip that is about 20 yards wide.

When I was growing up, that median strip was where Pacific Electric tram cars, like the one in the mural, ran transporting people from the far reaches of the San Gabriel Valley into downtown Los Angeles and vice versa. By the 1960s, the tram line was closed down and grass and trees were added to that big median strip as we said good bye to a clean, reliable mass transit system that we could use all these decades later.

Now as a child, our home in the east end of San Marino was about a one mile bike ride across all the car and tram traffic before arriving at San Marino H.S. As a nine and ten year old I made that trip solo several times a week to see the Titans in action or to go swimming in the beautiful SMHS Titan pool.

I wonder if parents today would allow their nine year old children to make such a journey by themselves.

By the way, the leap off of the high dive of that SMHS pool was a summertime rite of passage to be sure.

I always wanted to be a Titan but when the time came in 1958, at the age of 11, our family moved to our new home on the west end of San Marino. This move coincided with with my parents' decision to have their three children attend Catholic schools for the rest of their K-12 years.

So much for the dream of someday playing for the blue and white Titans.

I saw lots of great Titan basketball

teams and players in this gym

What are all of those little blue banners hanging all over the gym?

They are C.I.F. Championship Banners

The SMHS 1964 football team won the C.I.F. "AA" Championship.

That would have been the team I'd hopefully play with my Senior year if I had been allowed to attend SMHS.

Fortunately on the athletic front, the St. Francis H.S. Golden Knights football team that I did play with my Senior year won the 1964 C.I.F. "AAA" Championship.

SMHS established in 1952

The view of the Home Stands

This pool and that gym behind it,

were my Summer homes

in 1956 and 1957

I even got to meet my all-time

favorite L.A. Ram and Hall of Famer,

WR Elroy "Crazylegs" Hirsch, at an

SMHS Summer Camp

As it turned out today there was a big baseball game about to start on the SMHS field.

The Titans (16-6, 7-4 Rio Hondo League) were hosting the Monrovia Wildcats (12-12, 6-5 RHL). This was the last game of the regular season with the C.I.F. playoffs scheduled to begin next week.

This was a big game for both clubs as the Titans were tied for first place in the Rio Hondo League with arch rival South Pasadena H.S. Tigers and needed a win to earn at least a co-championship. With a win, the Wildcats would tie the Titans in the final league standings and could wind up in a three way tie for the league crown if South Pasadena was upset by the Temple City H.S. Rams (5-15, 3-8 RHL) today.

The Titans had split their two previous games with the Wildcats, winning 6-5 at Monrovia and losing 4-3 at home.

Great, full-sized photo of the 2023

Titan baseball team on the back of

the home team dugout

The field looked pristine

The Titans starting pitcher

had some pop on his throws

This Wildcat batter had no chance

against The Heater!

Now this spot REALLY brought

back a memory

I was standing at about this exact same spot next to the Titans' dugout during the Summer of 1956 at the age of nine after a day in the SMHS pool, located about 30 feet behind me, watching two baseball teams in action.

Their was a play at second base where the runner slid into second base and flipped the shortstop. A fight broke out between the two players that resulted in both players being ejected by the umpires.

As our runner returned to the dugout about five feet from me, his coach asked what happened out there to start the fight. His answer opened my eyes to all sorts of possibilities, "He called me a sack of shit!"

Now, to an impressionable nine year old like I was, that was an exchange that I still remember to this day 67 years later.

The English language can do that to you.

I only stayed for the first inning where the Titans took a 1-0 lead. SMHS would go on to earn a 3-1 victory over the Wildcats.

Meanwhile, the South Pasadena Tigers beat the Temple City Rams 4-1 thus creating a Co-Championship atop the final Rio Hondo League standings.

The tie-breaker to determine which Co-Champion will go to the C.I.F. playoffs next week as the Rio Hondo League's #1 entry belong to South Pasadena based on sweeping the three game season series between the two schools. The Tigers beat the Titans 2-1, 7-2 and 4-0 in those three contests.

Final 2023 Rio Hondo League

Baseball Standings

1t. South Pasadena Tigers 8-4, 15-12

1t. San Marino Titans 8-4, 17-6

3. Monrovia Wildcats 6-6, 12-13

4. La Cañada Spartans 5-7, 8-14

5. Temple City Rams 3-9, 5-15

The SMHS Class of 1965

commemorated on Senior Walk

In 1956, San Marino H.S. graduated its first ever class. There is a similar set up like this one for each and every class that has graduated since then.

I saw a lot of familiar names on this display of the class that I would have been a part of if I had been allowed to attend SMHS back in the day.

On to the Spring family dinner at Mom's skilled nursing facility . . .

My sister Marilyn joined us for dinner

The food was DELICIOUS!

Mexican Coke, oh my!

The facility puts on these family meals once a month and I've been able to attend the last two. My Mother has really perked up at both of these meals that we attended together.

Tonight, there were three family's, each with three people, dining at a shared, long table.

Mom, Marilyn and I were seated at one end of the table and as we dined I overheard the trio of people at the far end talking. At one point the man at that end said that he had a good English teacher when he attended St. Francis H.S.

Hmmm . . .

He looked somewhat familiar, like a young guy about my age. I wondered.

Later in the meal, a nurse asked how this family, "How is Miss Wickham enjoying her meal?"

Then it hit me that this must be the brother of Steve Wickham who was in my SFHS Graduating Class of 1965. Unfortunately, Steve passed away in a car accident in 1966.

I waited until after the meal was over as I did not want to disrupt the Wickham's family meal before introducing myself.

Sure enough, it was Patrick Wickham, Steve's brother, who graduated from SFHS in 1964. He was there with his wife visiting his sister who is also a patient in our Mom's skilled nursing facility.