By John Murphy
So on Saturday I hit the bank and scanned the goodies. They included about 100 baseball cards of one Hall of Fame player I won’t mention by name and some other memorabilia, most of it sports related.
I took a photo of some of it – my orange, 1992 San Francisco Giants season media pass, a rookie trading card of ex-big league player Gregg Jefferies and a commemorative ticket for the first game played at San Bernardino’s San Manuel Stadium, among other items.
The Giants’ items are sentimental as I’m a third-generation San Franciscan and grew up in San Bruno, not that far from the wind-blown ballpark. My late father, an educator, would bundle up my older brother and I and we’d go out there on a Friday night. We’d scale an incline fans referred to as “Heart Attack Hill” and my dad plunked down the $2.50 apiece for reserved tickets. The memories of Willie Mays’ basket catches, the smell of the hot dogs and the sweet taste of Ghirardelli’s Flicks and Giants’ victories are still vivid.
San Manuel Stadium? In August of 1996 when the new San Bernardino ballpark opened it was known as “The Ranch” – a nod to the team’s name at the time, the San Bernardino Stampede.
The first game played there was on Aug. 26, 1996 against the Lake Elsinore Storm. I attended as a fan. As a bonus, major leaguer Mark Eichhorn of the Angels was on a rehab assignment with the Storm. I knew Eichhorn, a Watsonville High graduate, from having been the Watsonville Register-Pajaronian sports editor back in the 1980s. Ironically, Eichhorn pitched that night and took the loss.
The Gregg Jefferies trading card? The card was a hot item in the late 1980s when the can’t miss phenom made it to the big club with the New York Mets. He’s from my old high school in San Mateo and he was much-ballyhooed as a two-time minor league player of the year. Jefferies had a unique training regimen designed by his father Rich that included swinging a baseball bat in a swimming pool.
But the late 1980s Mets were a veteran group of players that included Keith Hernandez, Doc Gooden, Darryl Strawberry, Kevin McReynolds and David Cone. The media hype surrounding Jefferies and his relative immaturity (he was 19 when he first came up) alienated some of the veterans.
“He was 21 and he acted as if he had won three batting championships,” Hernandez once said.
Jefferies never became the next Pete Rose as some predicted he might, but he did hit .289 for his career spent with six big-league teams. He was a National League All-Star in 1993 and 1994 with the St. Louis Cardinals and hit for the cycle as a Philadelphia Phillie in 1995. He also, not incidentally, made it into my box full of memories.
Main Street Dog 