It was located about one mile from Sampo Field in Tecolote Canyon.” Layton, decided that we would construct our own practice field and proceeded to do just that. Giants Win! Our team rushes onto the field, picks up twin brother Bob and carry him off the field.”īob laughed and added, “I do have a distant memory as a 12-year-old in 1961 of having problems trying to find a practice field. Three runs score as I slide into third base. “I swung late, but hit the ball over the first baseman’s head slicing just inside the right field foul line. my identical twin brother Bob was coaching third base. We loaded the bases, two outs… I came to bat…. “We were behind 8 to 6… in the bottom of the last inning. “We faced the Yankees, who were in first place,” explained Tom. Bob and Tom Mulvaney proudly wear their 1961 Giants Little League uniforms (photo courtesy of Tom Mulvaney) Tom and Bob Mulvaney, twin sons of PCL Padres president Jim Mulvaney, have a favorite Little League story from 1961 that was picked up by the Associated Press and New York Times.

Real ballplayers never forget something as important as their first home run.īruce Kleege also remembers hitting a home run at Sampo, but can’t recall who served his gopher ball. He hit it off Steve Moore, a neighborhood stud. Just like a major league ballplayer, Dave still remembers his only home run from the early 1960s. I used to love doing that stuff and thought the field looks so cool when it was freshly chalked and watered before a game,” Merchant said. Then either one of the coaches or sometimes one of the kids would water down the infield and run the chalk lines down the first and third baselines. “There was no grass on any of these fields – pretty tough stuff – and before games and practices, we would go around the infield and pick up glove-fulls of rocks. Some of the Dads would drag the infields before games with a section of chain link fence towed behind a truck. More than 50 years later, long forgotten Sampo Little League Field on Knoxville Street in Bay Park still maintains a firm grip on Dave Merchant. “You spend a good piece of your life gripping a baseball and in the end it turns out that it was the other way around all the time.” John Thorn, the official historian for Major League Baseball, selected the closing line of Ball Four as “the most famous in baseball literature.” Mark Nickell's 1960s North Clairemont Little Leage team picture (photo courtesy of Mark Nickell)Īlthough Jim Bouton won 21 games for the 1963 New York Yankees, he is better known as the controversial author of the tell-all baseball classic, Ball Four.

Imdb long forgotten fields