Cheviot Hills, California-the JV-Honkball team of Palisades Charter High School crawled at the All-Dirt Infield of their temporary home, an improvised location for a displaced team. The play area and the outfield grass were fragmentary and uneven. Without a hill it was primary use for softball.
But it was what they had to work with. And the tragic circumstances – a fire that destroyed their school and city – that led them to this place did not matter much at that time. What was important? The Varsity captain, Ryan Hirschberg, was dissatisfied with the efforts and focus of the Junior Varsity group during their joint practice.
“The only reason, JV, that you had to run today is that you didn’t pay attention,” Hirschberg told the team after the training ended.
“It’s not because we want you to run. If we mess it up, we will also run. “
Hirschberg only manages players’ practices until coaches can participate in early February, and so he did his work. Screamed in front and then watched while they all walked mandatory sprints along the outfield and on an adjacent field.
At that moment this practice felt very serious. The consequences of failure felt legitimate. And there would be real penalties for not holding their presence in the Cheviot Hills recreation center, a public park that the city had allowed the team to prepare for their season.
But in many ways, baseball didn’t matter. How was it for Ian Sullivan? A Lefty Werper whose house has burned down, with the fire taking on all its tangible childhood memories. How could Jett Tegardin? A Junior Infielder who visited his burnt -in neighborhood a day later, before returning to the hotel that has become a temporary house.
But at the moment baseball mattered more than anything because they wanted It is important. The Palisades Fire Upeded Life for all 38 baseball players who populate the JV and Varsity schedules. They met to support each other through a traumatic experience. They do not know where they will play this year, or with which uniforms or equipment, but they are determined to use a team, to have their season, and now, with extra meaning, compete for a championship. Baseball is a short escape from tragedy for them. But it is also an opportunity to do something for a community that urgently needs something to collect.
“Situations such as this building character, and they show people you are,” said Hirschberg, who donated clothing, organized exercise, a Gofundme started that $ 13,000 and has just been a friend for teammates who need one.
‘People don’t get to see the best of you in the best times. These are the worst times in which you have to show people who you are. “
On Tuesday, January 7, a now notorious fire caught up with the Palisades and other neighborhoods in Los Angeles. It killed dozens and destroyed thousands of houses, linking the lives and worldly possessions of everyone in his wake.
High school – which was used as a set for films such as “Freaky Friday” and shows such as “Modern Family” – was considerably damaged. And although much of the baseball field remains intact, the environment was strongly influenced. The facility is inaccessible. The uniforms and equipment in it are probably unusable.
Head coach Mike Feelkel does not know where they will play home games this season – De Hoop is a mix of Loyola Marymount University, UCLA and other local colleges – but it doesn’t matter. His team will play every game on the road, if it goes.
“I told the children, I said,” We play. I don’t care how, “Veelkel remembers. “We’re going to get T-shirts if you have to. For recovery, for wellness. For the promotion of the development of a young child. It is important that you come back there.
“Some people tend to think about it or play the victim. Those are the kind of people that stays there, sometimes the rest of their lives. I would do everything I could to get our children back on the field. “
Feelkel, who lives south of the Palisades, remembers that it woke up from a nap in the afternoon that the fires started. He had already received an e -mail that morning to instruct staff not to come.
His TV was tailored to Spectrum News, where he saw Californian governor Gavin Newsom in the Palisades on his screen. Then he realized how the situation could be.
He started to contact players and their families, many of whom evacuated. A coach of 18 years, Feelkel had put so much emotional and physical work in that team and facility. He did not spend that day knowing if it would all be over.
The lessons at Pali High, as it is popularly known, have since shifted to being completely online. But the physical divorce does not prevent his team from immediately jumping into action to help each other. Feelkel’s wife, Norma, who works in real estate, started working to ensure that everyone had a place to stay.
Players provided stocks to their teammates. One player drove to the house of another who was out of the city to collect Essentials, in case the fire eventually came to them. Large prominent companies and people started to contact us to offer supplies. Los Angeles Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said that he and some players are planning to attend a practice in the near future. The team also gave baseballs. Cincinnati Reds Pitcher and La Native Hunter Greene donated shoes. The Pali High Basketball Team received tickets for Los Angeles Lakers-Golden State Warriors from Steve Kerr, who is an alum.
The support is appreciated; It did not know the trauma of having their season and life upside down, the tragedy is still taking place while this baseball team works immediately to rebuild. When they take the field again, their new sweaters have sewed a “Pali Strong” course on them.
Feelkel was asked what will mean this season, but cut off the question before it could be completed.
“A victory,” he said flat, so insured in the answer.
“To take all these things. To merge it. To have our families taken care of. There are so many things. I would like to win games, I am very competitive. But in this situation you have to look at the whole. There are other things that far, out of winning a lot. “
The practice uniform on the back of Jett Tegardin was delivered to him days earlier by Hirschberg. It is one of the few clothes he has.
He packed to leave for two days, convincing that he and his mother would have a house to return soon. That night they looked at their ring doorbell camera and saw Sintels fly through the neighborhood.
The next day he returned to a house that no longer existed. Even the content of their fire -resistant safe was destroyed. The neighbors from whom he grew have now disappeared displaced with their community.
“It’s very difficult. You introduce yourself in your house, your room, everything that is gone, “Tegardin said. “I was a sperm donor baby. So I didn’t really have a father figure. I just try to be there for my mother, especially. In every situation I have always tried to be there for her.
‘I talk to her to make sure that she is doing well, makes me okay. Knowing that she’s fine, makes me 10 times better. “
When Ian Sullivan thinks about what he has lost, his spirit goes to his game balls. The one he earned when he was 8 years old. The yearbooks, trophies, pins of his journey to Cooperstown, NY – all the remains of his youth.
On the day he was ordered to evacuate, Sullivan thought that the winds would blow the fire in the opposite direction. His parents worked, so he grabbed family photos, their cat and dog and then left, thinking that it would be a short departure.
Instead, Sullivan and 12 of his friends from the fifth grade met a week after the fire in a friend’s house in Calabasas. Almost all their houses were destroyed. The meeting served as an opportunity to be together.
“It’s a dark time now, but light will always shine through the dark,” he said. “The Palisades are coming back. I feel that I not only play for myself and my teammates, but I play for my city and my house. “
After the fire, Sullivan and Tegardin sent an SMS message to everyone in the team. They knew that teammates might be careful around them, given their circumstances. They hoped that the text would break that wall.
“If this fire is not something to illuminate your ass to get you motivated to win this year, then I don’t know what is,” they wrote.
The reactions began to flow in. “Hell Yeah,” sent one. People who have never contributed before sign the messages together with encouragement.
“I think everyone is more motivated than ever,” Tegardin said. “That was everyone’s spark to do their best. … we have to win now. We have to do this for us and for our coach.
“This fire, it brought us much closer.”
It was a picturesque Wednesday afternoon, the sun that just started to go under the practice, while a park visitor approached the practice, curious about what happened.
This was a regular event, according to the players. People were curious about more information about what they had to deal with.
This man, with his dog, approached the gate that separated the field and sidewalk. He asked Sullivan, who rehabiled his wounded arm, with which team they were. A conversation followed – talk about the fire, lost houses and the coming season. The Chit-Chat was so relaxed and friendly, almost non-reflective for the subject.
“Good luck,” he told Sullivan. “It’s so terrible.”
A father, Joe Stanley, had driven three of the players to practice. He sat and looked carefully from the top row of the stands and attracted a cap from the team.
“I think it’s certainly resilience and proud. These children are like a family, “said Stanley. “They spend a lot of time together and are a close group. This is great. They need this. “
There is a sense of normality on all this. But even in the midst of that silence, these children are well aware of their reality. Jude de Pastino, a junior, said that everyone in his team is experiencing trauma, even if they don’t feel it yet. Exercise, he said, brings a normality.
In the first four days after the fire he was ‘in a shock’. He traveled into the Palisades with a group of friends who have all lost their houses. Logan Bailey, a senior captain who did the same, said he saw live threads zapping on the street, burning down telephone poles. He said it seemed almost surrealistic.
“It goes beyond what you can imagine, photos really don’t do justice,” said the pastino. “Our entire life as we know it, are quite literally flattened.”
The group crawls again, just before the sun underwent completely, after almost three hours of practice. Parents’ cars started filling the parking lot and waiting to pick up their sons. This delay was special. It was necessary and it will continue almost daily until the season starts at the end of February.
But for now that delay ended. And real life, narrower and insecure now that it has ever been, waited for them again.
“This is one of those stories that you tell on your deathbed,” said Bailey. “You can be as old as it gets, and it still never leaves. It will stay here with everyone, for the rest of their lives. “
(Illustration: Demetrius Robinson, Athletics; Photos: Josh Edelson / AF via Getty Images, Sam Blum)