In a corner of the former Fort Ord, on an old field once used by the US Army, the most recent and potentially most important chapter of Monterey’s baseball history is being scratched out.

With a rake.

New CSU Monterey Bay head baseball coach, former minor leaguer, and Monterey native Rich Aldrete smiles as he watches the piles of freshly cut two-foot weeds grow in center field. He speaks at length about the task in front of him and about the local experience that forged the qualities that will guide him as coach.

On February 4, 2006, the first ever CSUMB Otter baseball team travels to the home field of Sonoma State, a powerful team in arguably the most powerful division in Division II baseball (and the fifth winningest club in DII since 2000). CSUMB will be the first team in over 20 years to add baseball at the Division II level.

“We’ll be old school. Six to eight inches of sock. No facial hair. No MTV hats. Playing baseball the way it should be played, well-disciplined, well-coached.” —Rich Aldrete, CSUMB baseball head coach

“We’ll be old school,” says the 40-year-old Aldrete. “Six to eight inches of sock. No facial hair. No MTV hats. Playing baseball the way it should be played, well-disciplined, well-coached.”

As much as Aldrete is waiting for that moment, he is focused on the myriad steps that must be made to get there, one 14-hour, 40-phone call day at a time. Like completing the field, painting the locker room, covering the bleachers, gathering equipment, and drumming up financial support for each endeavor. Like recruiting a roster of academically qualified players without the benefit of scholarships (Sonoma has nine) or an established athletic program and seeing them through the enrollment process. Only then will he get to school his players on good team baseball and begin to rally the community around them.

• • • •

Naturally, this baseball story began locally, and, according to Aldrete, will end that way. As he says with an alpha athlete’s confidence, “I coulda had any number of jobs. I’m not out here for me. I do it for Monterey, the kids and the community. And I’m not out here to get another job. This is my home and I’m stayin’ here. I’m here to graduate kids. I’m here for the duration.”

Aldrete cut his competitive teeth as a kid at Via Paraiso Park in Monterey, one of the many parks where his late father Peter oversaw activities as director of the city’s Parks and Recreations Department, a position he held for 32 years (and where the baseball field is now named after Peter).

“All I wanted to do was compete,” Rich says. “That’s what kids are missing these days—they want to know who sponsors you, who you play.

“We’d play with whatever was there, as long as we could, me against you. Our neighborhood: the Incaviglias, the Brunos, the Cummins—that’s where we got the competitive edge. That’s what’s lacking.”

It was some edge. Of the eight or so siblings in the four families he mentions, each earned four-year athletic scholarships to college, among them his brother Mike, who went on to play for the Giants, A’s and Yankees, and Pete Incaviglia, who set the NCAA career and season records for home runs before an extended run with the Texas Rangers and Philadelphia Phillies.

Evidence of Aldrete’s competitiveness goes beyond baseball. As a high school freshman, Aldrete wasn’t medically cleared to play football because he had only one kidney. Unwilling to sit out, he and his father implored the principal to allow them to sign a waiver so Rich could play. He went right to varsity. He also lettered in hoops.

As a baseball player, he and Incaviglia took a neophyte Monterey High coach named Michael Groves to the playoffs for the first two times in his career in 1982 and 1983. Since then, Groves’ ‘Dores have been to the playoffs 20 of the last 23 seasons.

“He was a gamer,” says Groves, who unofficially calls the .400 club he started in ’83 after Rich hit over .400 three years straight the “Aldrete Club.” “When it got to be game time he stepped up and was 150 percent.”

However, to Groves’ gratification, Aldrete has had a far greater influence on Monterey baseball as a coach and mentor, after his career at MHS, his standout stint at Cal Berkeley (1984-87) and decade-long minor league career (1987-94) were over. He began as a one-on-one coach at Winners, a batting cage-baseball equipment hub in Monterey he co-owned with Tony Incaviglia, and later worked as summer league coach with the Aldrete Baseball Academy, a nonprofit he founded in 1997 to help local players succeed.

“Every year he and [Aldrete-appointed CSUMB pitching coach] Vince Herring work really hard for players to get places to play,” says Groves, “To get a college education and play the game they love.”

Aldrete, Herring and company have already sent 42 players to college through baseball and another 12 to the pro ranks.

“I’d seen too many kids ruined by coaches and parents,” Aldrete says. “I was a star, but my brother taught me not to be a star. At the academy, my coaches and I teach the ‘whole team’ approach—fundamentals, no hierarchy.”

Former students like his first, 5’6” Jack Santora, a high school junior when he started working with Aldrete in 1993, know what Rich’s philosophy can do for a young player.

“He has an uncanny ability to somehow make a kid believe in himself to the highest level possible,” says Santora, who went on to star at UCLA, play AAA with the Arizona Diamondbacks, and now plays pro ball with the independent Newark Bears. “He makes you feel like you can accomplish anything.

“But it’s team first. A kid comes into the batting cages a step ahead of his friends with his chest out after a big game and Rich’ll let ‘em know about it, [saying,] ‘You’re not that good. Don’t walk around like you think you’re something,’ and deflate him back where he needs to be: trying to get to the next level.”

Aldrete says he’s influenced by his brother Mike, now hitting coach for the Arizona Diamondbacks.

“[Mike] helped me find something positive in everything you do,” he says. “That way I create an atmosphere where no one is afraid to fail.”

Says Mike, “That’s always been one of [Rich’s] strengths: ‘We’re gonna keep trying. All we can keep doing is try to be the best we can.”

• • • •

Aldrete and the CSUMB Director of Athletics Bill Trumbo know that the team will need all the positive thinking and patience they can get. Aldrete calls the California Collegiate Athletic Association they are entering (replacing UC Davis) “the toughest Division II baseball conference in the country.”

“It’s not a sprint, it’s a marathon,” says Trumbo. “We’ll have a great need for development of fundamentals. We’ll need energy and patience.”

In the two-month window since he was hired, Aldrete’s already swung friends and community members behind him. When power went out for months, he turned to childhood pal Mike Bruno, who donated a generator, carpenters and electricians. Spiering Swartz & Kennedy and Fresh Express have helped cover many expenses. And friends have engaged in tasks like raking the outfield, helping Aldrete provide what Trumbo calls “the sweat equity” to complete the tedious renovation.

Meanwhile, through this collaboration and his contacts in the local coaching ranks, Aldrete says he has already signed and processed over 20 student athletes, while another 40 are showing interest.

They include a few local kids, something that, unsurprisingly, is important to Aldrete.

“Basically what it comes down to is you want to be able to keep the local kids here,” says Aldrete. “This could create huge community involvement for a huge baseball community and really help kids get an education.

“It’s gonna take a while,” he continues. “And the community is knowledgeable, so you’ve got to come up with a good product.”

Fortunately, as Trumbo says—and Aldrete demonstrates—“We have fertile territory for baseball here.”