Scholarship Fund For Special Coach
by Bob Keisser, Long Beach Press-Telegram
April 17, 2006 Here's the pitch for Bob Wuesthoff.
If every young man who played baseball for the former 49ers head coach between 1964 and 1969 …
And every youngster who attended the 49er summer youth camps under his stewardship from its beginnings in the mid-60s to 2005 …
And every person who smiled in his presence because of his genuine personality and maybe even had a practical joke played on him in the process …
If all these people were to reach into their wallet and pull out anywhere from a few Washingtons, five Jacksons, to ten Franklins and donate it to the Bob Wuesthoff scholarship fund, his memory will properly live on around Long Beach State well into the 22nd Century.
Of course, the people who know Wuesthoff the closest would be the first to acknowledge that they don't need any kind of memorial scholarship to remember the man who played such a significant role in his life. They have the memories, smiles, mementos and maybe even one of the goof awards Wuesthoff used to give out.
John McConnell, John Gonsalves, Rick Hayes, Jack Hoffman, Barry Wallace, Rod Gaspar and Rick Bryson are all close to Wuesthoff, but they wanted to do something else on a broader scale now.
So they created the scholarship fund. They're seeking to raise $150,000 over the next four-plus years, which will be enough to endow a baseball scholarship at Long Beach State in perpetuity. They have pledges of $97,750 at the moment $34,320 cash on hand and they're preparing to send out their second massive mailing to possible donors.
Bob Wuesthoff is still with us and as bright and mischievous as ever. The 79-year-old remained active in the 49er summer camps through the 2005 camp, a run of 41 years, but Parkinson's Disease has now cost him the use of his legs, so he doesn't get around as much.
His former players wanted to do something for him now rather than wait.
The idea came from Jack Hoffman, who pitched for Wuesthoff in 1964 and 1965, that '64 team being the first 49ers team to ever win a league title.
"Jack had a 40th wedding anniversary dinner last year and Bob wasn't able to make it," McConnell, the 49ers' first baseball coach, said. "On the way home, my wife and I discussed his absence and we both thought we should do something for him while he's around to appreciate it.
"I called Jack the next say and he thought it was a great idea to. We knew guys who were staunch Wuesthoff buddies who played and coached with him, and we figured we could get this idea rolling."
In his six years as the 49ers baseball coach, Wuesthoff posted the best winning percentage (.615) of any coach until the Dirtbag era began in 1989 with the arrival of Dave Snow. In his first season (1964), Wuesthoff went 31-13 and win the school's first-ever title, this coming off a 1963 season where the 49ers went 6-25-1.
In his last season, 1969, the 49ers won another league title. The program would win another title in 1970 but not another until 1989. It took until 1979 for the program to break the record 31 wins of 1964.
Dick Nen was the first 49er to make it to professional baseball, but his career on campus lasted one year (1960). Wuesthoff's reign sent Gaspar to the Mets, where he won a 1969 World Series ring, and Randy Moffitt, Billie Jean King's brother, to the Giants, where he was an effective closer for a decade.
"Bob was very organized, very skilled, and had outstanding strategy as a head coach," said John Gonsalves, who played for Wuesthoff and then succeeded him as head coach in 1970. "He was old school. Don't be late.
"But everything was in the teaching, because when we played, we were all pretty much on a P.E. (physical education) coaching track. He was inducted into the San Jose State Hall of Fame for baseball and basketball and knew how to coach any sport. So everything we learned from him was helping us realize what we could do someday as coaches."
McConnell was Long Beach State's first baseball coach and was the chairman of the P.E. department for years before becoming a dean, and he forged a close friendship with the baseball coach.
"Back then, San Diego and Fresno were the scourge of the conference but Bob's teams were able to beat them even though he didn't have any scholarships," McConnell said.
"They were just very well coached. He played the game right. The kids who played for him loved him. He just had that knack to get his kids to play their hardest."
Maybe because he kept everyone loose. Wuesthoff's reputation as a practical joker is as steep as his reputation as a coach.
"I've got a file I've keep on things he did," McConnell said. "I used to emcee the baseball banquet. So one year, he says he's going to give me an award for all I did, and he wheeled out this toilet seat. On the back, in brown, black and gold glitter was the words 'The John Award." And when I lifted the seat up, there was a picture of Bob smiling at me."
"One year we had a kid who hit a home run but missed first base," Gonsalves said. "So he made the kid a trophy, taking one of the kids' size 10 shoes, cutting it up and making it a 12, his way of saying he would have hit first base if he wore bigger shoes.
"Let's see, he also re-keyed my office without telling me. Then there was the year I was helping him run the 49er summer youth program. I had all of the cash from the tuition payments in a briefcase. I put it down in my office and it disappeared.
"When I finally found it, I was so relieved. Then when I opened it, Bob had written his jersey number (24) on every thing in the briefcase my folders, books, everything except the money."
Wuesthoff's association with the youth camp lasted much longer than his coaching career. It became a source of pride to him that he could bring in hundreds of kids ages 5-to-12 to campus over six weeks time and teach them a variety of sports and other recreational activities.
The camps became a generational thing, too. So many times, he'd meet new kids enrolled whose parents had been campers in the '60s and '70s.
"He directed that camp long after his retirement, and the guy he recruited to help him and be his assistant, Rick Hayes, is now its director," McConnell said.
"His greatest quality was teaching people to do the right thing," Gonsalves said, "and every quality you need to be an effective teacher depended on responsibility, loyalty and trust. He's truly a beautiful human being."
To the degree that Gonsalves says everything he has in life today can be traced to his first meeting with Wuesthoff, when the 49er coach went to Long Beach City College to recruit Gonsalves and talk him into continuing college rather than sign a professional baseball contract.
"I was going to sign, but Bob thought I could help him win and I would be able to get a degree if pro baseball didn't work," Gonsalves said. "Then when I graduated, he talked me into staying as an assistant coach while going for my masters, and how that would enable me to coach in Long Beach the rest of my life.
"I don't know how far I would have gone in baseball and I didn't know what I wanted as far as coaching and teaching. What I didn't realize was that Bob was working on my future. I had no idea at all that he was looking at my life so many years beyond playing baseball."
"He did that for a lot of young men who can look back on their lives and see how much Bob influenced their lives. That's why so many of us want to say thank you now while he's still here to hear it." |
