I’ve Got Those Coronavirus Dodger Blues – College Edition

As hysteria about Covid-19 spreads across our land (faster than the disease and possibly more dangerous than the disease) we have found ourselves entered into uncharted territory with the suspension of all professional sports activities, as well as college sports and activities.   I have previously shared on here my love for college baseball.   I am an avid college baseball fan.   Well, this week the reaction to the Covid-19 virus affected something very near and dear to my heart.   I had planned a trip to Anacortes, Washington to spend some time with my sons and their families.  While there, my sons, grandsons and I had planned to drive down to Seattle to take in a University of Arizona vs University of Washington baseball game (or two).   My elder son, Eric played his first season of college baseball with Jay Johnson, who is now the head coach at Arizona.  He is one of the finest young coaches in college baseball, I might add.   Eric and Jay were real good friends in college.  Jay also roomed with my nephew Ryan for a couple of years and they are very close friends.  I take in a U of A-game every year with my nephew whenever they come to So. California to play USC or UCLA.   It’s always a special time for us.   This year it was going to be particularly special, especially as I was going to be able to spend time with my sons and grandsons.   But alas, all college games were canceled for the time being and with the uncertainty around flights, it was decided that I would stay home and we’d see about getting together after this situation all settled down.   Needless to say, I was bummed.  

Therefore, with apologies to the late, great Hank Williams and anyone who is in charge of his musical library, I have altered his lyrics to his song “Lowdown Blues” to share my feelings:

“Lord, I went to the doctor, he took one look

He said, the trouble with you ain’t in my book

I’ll tell you what it is but it ain’t good news

You’ve got an awful bad case of them coronavirus no Dodger game blues

I’ve got the mean old miseries in my soul

I went to the stadium but no tickets to be sold

I’ve walked the floor till I’ve worn out my shoes

Lord, it’s killin’ me, I mean them coronavirus no Dodger game blues

Lord, I never knew a man could feel so bad

I never knew livin’ could be so sad

All I do is sit and cry

Lord, the Dodgers have to play before I die

I’ve got the mean old miseries in my soul

I went to the stadium but no tickets to be sold

I’ve walked the floor till I’ve worn out my shoes

Cause I got a real bad case of them coronavirus no Dodger game blues!!”

As I said before, I have a love for college baseball.   Here in Southern California we are blessed with so many great programs, Cal. State Fullerton, Long Beach State, UCLA, USC, University of Irvine,  Pepperdine, UCSD, San Diego State, Cal. Baptist, UC Santa Barbara, Cal. Poly Pomona, Cal. Poly San Luis Obispo, Riverside Community College, Cerritos College, Santa Ana Community College, Orange Coast, and the list goes on and on.   One of the sporting highlights is to take in a Long Beach State vs Cal. State Fullerton game.   That rivalry is as intense as any I have ever seen.   High School baseball is equally competitive and Southern California is blessed with many great programs as well.  With great programs come great coaches.   Today I want to introduce you to, arguably, one of the greatest baseball coaches to walk the Southern California college landscape: Wally Kincaid. Many of you may not have heard of him.  But in Southern California, he is a legend of John Wooden proportions!!  He was the longtime coach at Cerritos College in Norwalk. 

I have several connections to Cerritos College.   First, the property on which the college sits was sold to the college by my mom’s uncle, Adrian Bulk, whose diary was operated on that property for many years before it became the college.   Also, my best friend in high school, Bruce Sims, lived in College Estates two houses from the fence that separated the Cerritos College football stadium from the houses in College Estates.   Many a day, we would make our way to the college grounds to make mischief on the football field, or watch a baseball practice, dreaming of the day we might be on that field participating in one of the practices.  I lived on a dairy at the intersection of Studebaker and 183^rd Street, in Cerritos(Dairy Valley back then) which was 2 miles from Cerritos College.   One of my first jobs (other than my paper route and working on the dairy) was at Varsity Billiards located on Alondra Boulevard right across the street from Cerritos College.  I got to interact with many Cerritos’ athletes at the billiards parlor when I was 13-15 working at Varsity Billiards.   It was a great experience.   Back then Cerritos was a little known junior college.  One thing it was known for, however, was Wally Kincaid.

Wally Kincaid attended Downey High School and Whittier College.  He was named head coach of the baseball program at Cerritos, upon its inception in 1958.    He continued as its coach until1980.  His teams won six state titles, and he finished with a 678‑163 career record (.806 winning percentage), 15 conference championships, and six state titles.   His .806 winning percentage is the best in state history and he ranks 10th on the victories list.  In 1966, his team went 40‑0, part of a state‑record 65‑game win streak that spanned three seasons.   Even John Wooden would have to tip his cap to that.    In 1970, the Falcons were 40‑1.    He retired as the winningest coach in junior college history.  Along the way, he turned Cerritos College into a hotbed for some of the greatest baseball minds in Southern California baseball.   He trained successful coaches, including George Horton, Dave Serrano, Don Sneddon(who later replaced Kincaid as the winningest coach, though he needed 10 more years of coaching to do that), Dave Snow, Mike Weathers, Ken Gaylord, and Bob Apodaca.   His “coaching tree” has roots that make their way all across the college baseball landscape from one coast t the other.   In addition to those who played for him, there were countless high school and college coaches that were greatly influenced by his methods, including Augie Garrido and John Herbold, among many others.  Kincaid also coached more than 150 players who went on to pro ball during his 22 seasons as head coach at Cerritos.   George Horton took over as coach at Cerritos in 1980.  Kincaid stayed as an assistant until 1989.   All Southern California college programs were greatly influenced by Wally Kincaid.   Either they hired coaches who played or coached under Kincaid, or they stood in line to recruit Kincaid thought players.  

Kincaid, whose teams never had a losing season, was elected to the ABCA Hall of Fame, Kincaid was previously inducted into the Cerritos College Hall of Fame, the Community College Coaches Hall of Fame and the College Baseball Hall of Fame.  He was inducted in the National College Baseball Hall of Fame in 2010.  Baseball America, a baseball magazine, named Kincaid the National Community College Baseball Coach of the Century.  Cerritos renamed their baseball field after Kincaid upon his retirement in 1980.   Before coaching at Cerritos, Kincaid coached baseball and basketball for seven years at his alma mater, Downey High School in Downey, California. He was a 1943 graduate of Downey High and was inducted to the school’s Hall of Fame in 1999.  Upon graduation from high school, he attended Whittier College.   “I look at it as if he is the John Wooden of Southern California baseball,” Horton said. “He was light years ahead of anyone else in the game.”

Kincaid continually shrugged off such accolades.  He said what he did was nothing revolutionary and that his techniques were based on simple fundamentals.   “You throw the ball, you catch the ball and you hit the ball,” Kincaid said. “Baseball is not a real complicated game.”  

But Dave Weathers begs to differ.   He says “Kincaid was teaching the hit and run, slash hitting and drag bunting when others looked at those things as gimmicks.”  Weathers also said, “Kincaid also brought the ideals of discipline and drilling the fundamentals into a culture that was without both.”   “He changed the way teams practice,” Weathers said. “He brought things to the game that weren’t there before. He greatly influenced and molded the way we teach the game today.”   “Obviously he’s a big influence, everybody I played for was influenced by him,” Sneddon, who now holds the record of most career victories at the community college level with 1,072, said of Kincaid. “He taught me my foundation,” Horton said. “Almost everything I know about the game of baseball, I learned from Wally.”   “He was at the peak of his level of excellence when I had the opportunity to play for him. He started the program from scratch,” Horton recalled. “The impact he had on my life and my teammates’ lives was indescribable.”

While Kincaid’s numbers speak for themselves, it was the intangibles and the style with which he taught the game that rendered him so effective.  Herbold said that Kincaid had 4 basic rules:  “No. 1 was to play catch. Any fool can say that, but his teams simply did not make many errors because of the quality time they had in practice working on throwing. They were amazing to watch. No. 2 was throwing strikes by the pitchers. No. 3 was put the ball in play when batting. And No. 4 was have good team spirit.”   Aggressive base running and fundamental pitching and defense were the trademarks of Kincaid’s teams.   Lots of coaches understand that.  But what separated Kincaid from the rest, as Don Sneddon put it “Kincaid possessed a unique ability to make the game easy to understand despite the fact that he could overpower anyone with his knowledge of the game.”   “He directed us and taught us the importance of the basics of the game, but expected us to master them,” Sneddon said. “He brought it down to our level so we could understand it. His practices, his talks were never about something that we couldn’t comprehend.”   “He was so ahead of his time,” Dave Snow said. “He was stressing on‑base percentage long before statistical analysis made it famous. He always wanted his hitters to have as a goal to have their on‑base 100 points higher than their batting average.”  George Horton added, “My respect for that wonderful man is immeasurable. When he was coaching, he had the model program to study if you were a coach. Everyone wanted to know what his secret was to coaching just as basketball coaches wanted to know what Coach John Wooden was doing at UCLA when they were winning all those championships.”   Horton also said, “The life skills and baseball foundation and the friendship [¼] I consider coach Kincaid like a second father to me. He was a great mentor, great educator, a great teacher and his impact on George Horton’s life is immeasurable.”

As Horton put it, “Coach Kincaid had a simple approach to his offense, defense, infield and outfield practices, as well as pitching.  “While there was a simplicity involved, he would demand quality. But he also coached his players in having a complete offense which meant the short game (bunt, push bunt, fake bunt and hit, etc.) was essential to learn and execute.”   Horton added,  “His organizational skills were off the charts, and he created an atmosphere of excellence which required repetition every day.  But prior to practice, he would spend hours and hours to make his practices efficient.  Early in his career, he would spend two hours organizing every hour of practice.  He adhered to that through the years.”   Horton said that “Kincaid’s practices were much tougher than games.”   “They were a lot tougher because of the demands put on us. I suspect Vince Lombardi of the Green Bay Packers was like this. I understand he had a small number of plays on offense, but everyone knew them extremely well, and the execution was superb. So nobody could stop them. Coach Kincaid didn’t believe in any shortcuts to making his teams perform well. We spent many long days with quality practices designed to make our players the best they could be.”  “When we got into the state playoffs or a championship game, we were not overwhelmed at all. We had been there thousands of times on a daily basis with the precision needed to perform for Coach Kincaid.”  Horton added, “Our practices were extremely long and lasted 4 ½ to 5 hours.   At the time, we had unlimited fall games and practiced six days a week. It should be noted that quality work was being done during these long practices.   They were not necessarily innovative, but the same things were done pretty much every day which allowed the players to build great fundamentals in fielding, throwing, stealing and pitching.”

Former college baseball player Bob Vaughn said, “As a player, he taught me one to respect the game second he taught me the game and what I mean by that all of us as players learned the fundamentals of baseball and use the fundamentals to win games,”

One of Vaughn’s favorite stories is a day where, in his mind, Kincaid was not being a good coach. Vaughn was the starting pitcher against Pasadena City College.   In the first inning, the first batter hit a home run.   The second doubled and the third hit a homerun.    Vaughn looked at the dugout wondering if Kincaid was going to go talk to him or pull him out of the game.   But, Kincaid was seated at the end of the dugout and it was obvious that he was not going to talk to Vaughn.  Vaughn then proceeded to walk the bases loaded and looked at the dugout again to see what Kincaid’s reaction might be.   No reaction and Vaughn realized that Kincaid was allowing him to work his way out of this situation.   By letting Vaughn stay on the mound, Kincaid was giving him the confidence to work out of the situation.   Vaughn was able to get the next 3 hitters out and not give up another run.   This was followed by the second inning when Vaughn proceeded to walk the first 3 hitters without an out.  Vaughn was wondering why Kincaid could not recognize that he did not have his best stuff, all the while, Kincaid was teaching Vaughn to work out of situations and become a better pitcher.   Vaughn got the three outs in the second inning without giving up a run and the team eventually won the game 4‑3.    From that day forward, Vaughn believed that he could get three outs with the bases loaded and not give up a run thanks to Kincaid believing in him.   Vaughn left Cerritos as the most successful pitcher in Cerritos College baseball history.   He was the ace of the 1966 baseball team that went 40‑0 and won the state championship.   He went 16‑0 with 119 strikeouts in 127 1/3 innings and concluded his two‑year career at Cerritos with a school-record 29 wins with just one loss.  This story is an illustration of how he built confidence in his players.  Kincaid showed confidence and believed and he knew Vaughn could get the opposition out and Kincaid allowed him to do it.

One of the hallmarks of Coach Kincaid’s tenure was the pre-game infield practice.  One of my pleasures as a kid was to go watch a Cerritos game, primarily just to take in the pre-game warm-up.  It was all done in silence.  No words were spoken and occasionally no ball was used.   It was dead silent as the outfielders would be hit balls and threw them into the proper bases as well as infielders.  When you watched the pre‑game infield, it was like a well-oiled machine that was as smooth as Olympic synchronized swimming.   Rarely would you see a player make a mistake because Coach Kincaid demanded good fundamentals in practice on a daily basis with good execution.   Opposing teams would be as intimidated as could be before the first pitch was ever thrown just watching Cerritos take infield.  

Wally Kincaid died November 16, 2015, at the age of 89.   His legacy continues on throughout college baseball to this day.   As I mentioned above watching a Cal. State Fullerton vs LB Dirtbag game is about as good as it gets in Southern California college baseball.  “We believe in the same things. Pitching, defense, playing hard and intelligently, manufacturing runs. To win a game in this series you’re just going to have to outlast the other guy” said Dan Ricabal, former CSF pitcher, and later a Dirtbags’ pitching coach.  “It’s a heavyweight fight between guys who weigh exactly the same, the similarities are immeasurable.”   That brand of exciting and exacting baseball came from the brow of Wally Kincaid.   Catch it, throw strikes and make contact.   So simple yet so hard to teach.   Cal. State Fullerton and Long Beach State make that the foundation of their programs.   Wally Kincaid was a master of making those principles a reality. 

In addition to having a “6 degree of separation” connection with Cerritos College, I have the same with Wally Kincaid.   From 1995 through 2000, I was an assistant baseball coach at Woodcrest Christian High School in Riverside.   WCS is the school that produced Trevor Oaks among others.  The head coach is Glenn Prater.  Coach Prater graduated from my alma mater, Richard Gahr High School in Cerritos and is probably one of the finest pitchers to graduate from there, going 16-0 in his senior year.   Prater went on to play for Wally Kincaid at Cerritos College for 2 years, in 1978 and 1979, winning the state championship in 1979.  He then moved to Cal-Berkeley where he played on a team that went to the College World Series.   He blew out his knee in his senior year at Cal otherwise he would have been drafted by the major leagues.  He threw in the mid-’90s and followed Kincaid’s advice, throw strikes.   Prater’s practices were much like those conducted by Kincaid (albeit not as long).  There was very little to no wasted time.   In my five years coaching with him, we made it to the CIF playoffs each year, making it to the finals twice, and winning our division title in 2000.   I thoroughly enjoyed my time coaching with him.  Like with the players that played for Wally Kincaid, each of the players that came to our small little school in Riverside left a much better player than they came.   One of the hallmarks of Prater’s coaching was how much he relied on what he had been taught by Kincaid, and how frequently those that were in Kincaid’s “coaching tree” communicated with each other.   He could pick up his phone and talk to Horton or any of the other coaches at any time.   They were a band of brothers like none other that I had ever experienced in baseball.     

Please forgive me for the non-Dodger post, but I thought you might enjoy the introduction to a truly great coach!!

RANDOM MUSIC THOUGHTS:

Last week Evan made a baseball comparison to Steely Dan which produced some comments about musical tastes, etc.   Over the years, my musical tastes have morphed more into listening to singer-songwriters like Gordon Lightfoot, Don McLean, James Taylor, Guy Clark, Richard Thompson, and others.   Mary Chapin Carpenter is high on that list of music that I love to listen to.   Probably the song I’ve played the most on my way home from work, over the past year or two is Carpenter’s “I Have a Need for Solitude”   That song resonates with me on so many different levels.   Given the mandate that we start practicing social distancing, I’m hoping Mark can add this song to this post.   It has absolutely nothing to do with “social distancing” but it is the closest I could find, and besides, I love the song! 

Be well and safe everyone.