Interview #18: Bert Verrall - Palmer, AK
and how he fell in love with baseball living in Alaska in the 1960's
Background: Bert was born in Alaska in 1958. He lived in Anchorage and Palmer (about 45 miles from Anchorage) for most of his life, except for a quick detour to Northern California from 8 to 9th grade. Now back in Palmer, he plays lots of golf and still travels around the country to golf, visit his children and grandchildren and enjoy retirement.
Getting right into it
“So I was reading some of your baseball stories. And I thought, I have a couple stories that I don't know if you want to use, but I'll tell them to you anyway.
So growing up, being born in Alaska, we didn't have any geographical teams at the time, because we're talking the 60’s. (The Seattle Mariners didn’t enter the league until 1977). In fact, my first true baseball memory is the ‘68 World Series. Everybody in the class loved the Cardinals and I secretly loved the Tigers, but I couldn't tell anybody because everybody loved the Cardinals. But I was a fan of Denny McLain and Mickey Lolich and all those guys on that great Tigers team. So in Alaska, we didn't have live TV. So what we would get on Saturday, we'd get the NBC Game of the Week from the week before.”
In Alaska, we didn't have live TV. So on Saturday, we'd get the NBC Game of the Week from the week before. The first live event we got up here was the moon landing.
“I loved every sport that came along basically, but we were just watching it tape-delayed on TV. I think they pulled some strings one time, and the first live event we got up here was the moon landing.
There was no Internet, so you didn't have to really worry about it, but you watched it anyway cause it's all we had. The closest geographical team was the Giants. On Saturday, we’d get one game a week on the radio and I remember it was Lon Simmons, the great Giant announcer, and he would just, we were a little earlier, so it wasn't night time, but you could just hear how he would describe the game in his long, quiet tone. He was just great. And so I listened to Lon Simmons every Saturday.
When I was, you know, in that 12 year old age, I started checking the box scores. We had newspapers back then and the box scores were always in the paper. And every day I would find the best hitter and the best pitcher in both leagues and figure out for myself who was the player of the day. And I did that until I was probably 45 years old. I probably only stopped because newspapers started dropping the box scores, you know? Then they dropped the sports department and now you can't find the newspaper. But those are my baseball memories from being an Alaskan.
Well, lo and behold, we get to move down to California in 1971. So now I've got the the Giants, which had become my team, but even better, I had the Oakland A's at the beginning of their dynasty. So we listened to Monte Moore on the radio. But the thrill of my life, up to then, was my school, Woodland, California, which is up by Sacramento, would take you to the Oakland ballgame on Saturday in a school bus. It was 3 bucks for the bus ride, 80 miles from Woodland and my parents would usually give me $5 or whatever. I remember going to the Coliseum and and seeing Luis Tiant against Catfish Hunter. Reggie (Jackson) was my favorite player and I got to see Reggie hit home runs and got to see Harmon Killebrew hit a home run, and it was just a great… and I got to go by myself. That was 8th to 9th grade, I was with a bunch of people, not really chaperoned, but it was a different time. You could do stuff like that without your parents getting thrown in jail.”
“And so in 2019, I had the opportunity for some training in Oakland, and I went to a ballgame and I'm walking in there and I'm going, wow, how long has it been since I've been here? So I started looking up on my phone, I think I found it in The Sporting News. I remember Harmon Killebrew hit a home run and the Twins won 8 to 1. And I found that the Boston-A's game that Reggie hit two homers, and they lost 4 to 2 and Luis Tiant won, and it was 47 years between trips in and out of the Coliseum. And I thought, that's not a record, but that's amazing. It's been 47 years since I've been here, so. That's my first story.”
Did the Coliseum feel familiar 47 years later?
“Yeah, they have added on to the Coliseum, probably football seats or something. It had the nickname, the Mausoleum, and it definitely has that feeling. It's gray and it's cold and it's dark.”
What was it like going back? Did it remind you of anything back when you were a kid going?
“When a kid walks out for the first time, out of the shadows and the corridors, into the baseball field, it's like, (proceeds to do an opera solo noise, I don’t know how to write it, something like AHHHHHHH!!!)… that feeling, I still had that feeling. And I've had it every time I walked out of an exit to where the fields are. I've been to Dodger Stadium and Wrigley and the White Sox and Atlanta. I've been to a bunch of different places since then, so I get that feeling every time. It's still awe inspiring to walk into a Major League field.
Second story is in 1979, the Mariners had the 50th All Star game at the Kingdome. That was the Dave Parker game where he threw out two baserunners, National League won. I saw an opportunity to enter a lottery on a Wheaties box to get tickets for the All-Star game, and I was probably 19, 20 years old. And so I asked my best friend and said hey, because he was also a baseball fan, ‘Do you want to go to the All-Star game?’ Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, I sent in the check for $24.50 for two tickets. And if you won the lottery, they sent you the tickets. I don't know if you didn't win the lottery, if they kept the money, but that was probably part of it. Lo and behold, I get two tickets, second deck right field.
I go, ‘Dennis, I got the tickets. Let’s go!’ He goes, ‘I can’t go.’ So I ended up going by myself, fly down there on the the day before the game and I don't remember doing too much except finding a hotel. Day of the game, I got nothing to do, game doesn't start ‘til 7, but I'm going to go down and catch batting practice. I go down there 3:00, I'm like the only person walking around the Kingdome at 3:00. Well, I found the players entrance and I just staked it out there. And the first player to arrive about 3:30 was Pete Rose and he walked up by himself, carrying all his bags. And this was the end of the Disco Era and the era of the leisure suit. So everybody was dressed in polyester with open neck shirts and chains around their neck.
And I'm standing there, he's like 2 feet away from me. He was like, hey, how you doing? Oh yeah. Great. An hour later, all the rest of the ballplayers got there. So Charlie Hustle also hustled early into the game. He was there an hour before all the other players. So they start getting off the bus and I've got a little Instamatic camera and I'm taking their picture. Every one of them that comes off, you know, Mike Schmidt, Nolan Ryan, Joe Morgan, everybody. You know, everybody, I think I checked today. There was 15 Hall of farmers in that game. Yastrzemski’s last All Star game. So I got to take pictures of all of them and they were all dressed in polyester and and flowered shirts with open lapels. Nolan Ryan started the game. It was fantastic. That was the game that the Great Imposter got into the team photo for the American League dressed as a Yankee. And Morganna, The Kissing Bandit, ran out on the field.”
Giants Games
“Another memory from when we moved to California. I lived with my mom and my stepdad. My dad was stationed in the Army in California and he was a recruiter, so he got a lot of time off and that's when he decided… I didn't grow up with my dad. That's when he decided it’d be a good time to reacquaint each other and I was like, 14. And he liked to go to Giants games. I remember he was all charged up to go to the end of the season’s Fan Appreciation Day because the Giants were giving away 6 brand new cars. He bought tickets for me and my brother and all his friends. But he kept them because basically he was just playing the lottery. He just knew he was going to win a car on Fan Appreciation Day. They draw 18,000 and have 6 brand new cars. My dad is just convinced that he's going to win one of these cars. But it was a great game. Willie McCovey hit a ball in Candlestick Park 20 rows short going out of the last deck. It was incredible. I remember that like it was yesterday. And the echo of an emptier ballpark, too. I remember the echo.
And one other Giants story, 1972 and Willie Mays is now on the Mets, and they're making their last trip to the West Coast. So the radio is pumping, ‘Come see Willie Mays on his last visit to San Francisco!’ So Dad took us to the game. And the crowd starts chanting, ‘cause Willie wasn't starting. ‘We want Willie! We want Willie!’ And when it became obvious that the manager wasn't going to put him in, in the 8th inning, they started chanting ‘Down with Yogi! Down with Yogi!’”
Growing up a baseball fan in Alaska in the 1960’s
How were you able to become such a fan living in a rural environment back then like Alaska?
“I mean Anchorage had two daily newspapers. So it was something to look forward to every day. You could open the paper and there would be a whole page of box scores, every batter, every pitcher. That was our Internet, that one page. And I could sit and go over that page and fold it in half and then folded in quarter and I'd take my pencil and I'd circle this guy. Oh, he went three for five. He scored three times. He drove in six. And I'd just make my comparisons. Not quite like Rain Man or anything, but I loved doing it and picking out what I thought was the player of the day. And I would look forward to the next day and always on Sunday we would get the baseball stats. You know, here's the leading hitters. Here's the leading home run hitters. Here's the leading RBI guy. And so I would look forward to that every Sunday, all summer long.”
Was there a big baseball scene where you grew up? Like you said, you didn't play, but were there even a lot of games?
“Yeah, it started early and got done early. Our season’s done by the end of July up here. And my grandmother, who I spent summers with, lived literally 50 yards from the Little League field, so I was behind the behind the grandstand, behind the umpire, every game, at Little League, you know? And I was visiting because I lived in Anchorage at that time, but these kids that I watched played Little League in Palmer, I ended up meeting when I went to high school there. I played softball with them, we played ‘til we were fifty. And it's the same guys that I used to watch play Little League and play Adult Legion Baseball.”
Why didn't you play?
“You know, I don't know. I stayed with my family until school got out and then went out to hang out with my grandma because she lived by herself in Palmer. It might have just been that I wasn't there when Little League started, and by the time I got there, there's only a month left. That's probably the only reason. I mean, I played catch and all that kind of stuff. I just didn't play organized baseball until I was 18 years old.”
Did you ever go to the Alaskan summer league games?
“If you read about it, I mean some of the great names have played here, Winfield, Seaver, Mark McGwire. They all played up here as well. There was always great baseball in the summer. You could go watch the Anchorage Glacier Pilots or the Fairbanks Goldpanners. The Alaska League might be down a bit, but we would get great coaches up here and they would bring great players and it was awesome. Another reason I loved baseball, is all through the late 60s and early 70s, the Anchorage Glacier Pilots were dominating the National Baseball Congress, and guys that went on to be in the majors.”
Being a fan today
Is it easier to be a fan now that it’s easier to access it on TV and the Internet?
“Sure. Yeah. We lived outside for a while, in America for a while, and I got a chance to go to all these locations and a baseball trip would be a destination, you know? Planning my trip around going to see this series at this time. But at the same time, it's weird. As I've gotten older, I don't check box scores anymore. I've dedicated more of my time to golf. But it did fade out probably once I hit mid 40s, 50 years old.”
I’m sorry, did you just call leaving Alaska “Going outside”?
“Going outside of the lower 48. Yeah, you're outside. Or even call it going to the Big Island. You know, any sort of derogatory term.”
I would’ve imagined now there’s so much more to consume even living in Alaska.
“It happened when we started getting cable TV. We got all the Braves games, cause we had TBS. And then we got WGN, so the Cubs became really big. Then you got Major League pass. You can watch just about anybody you want to. I can't watch the Mariners home games, you know, they're blacked out but. And I think they made a lot of baseball fans for the Braves, and the Cubs, probably around the world, not just Alaska, because some people do want to watch the game every single night.”
Do you take your grandkids to games then?
“We took two grandkids to Dodger Stadium. My wife and I went down there for a week and took the kids to Legoland and Disneyland and SeaWorld and we went to a Dodger game. And so I'm standing there, getting ready to buy the tickets and, well, what's this ticket cost? What's this ticket cost? And my wife said, ‘How often do we go to a game? Just get the best seats you can get.’ I said, ‘OK, we'll take four of those.’ And he says, oh, well, this is up near the managers, near the Owner’s Box. You might see Magic Johnson. We take an elevator up to our floor and it opens and there's these giant stained glass doors and my wife's like, whoa. I said, I don't think we're sitting here. When we walked through our little nice section, it was just like a section of six seats and right next to a snack bar. My 7 year old, he couldn't see over the counter. All he could see was one sign and he said, ‘Grandpa, can I have a Bud Light? And then the lady looks over and she says, ‘I'm gonna have to see some ID.’”
Takeaways
First, it was pretty awesome that Bert reached out to me for this. I know him from back when I was writing about golf courses like 10 years ago, he messaged me about wanting to play sometime. I was supposed to go to Alaska one summer but my dad got me All-Star game tickets that same week. I did finally play with him in New Mexico and it was a blast. But out of everyone I’ve asked to talk to at the beginning of this baseball project, I had no idea he was a baseball fan. Then he messaged me one morning, told me had some stories, we talked that night and he came right out of the gate with some good ones.
The second is, it really is becoming apparent that people from all over still have so many similarities in their histories with baseball. Lon Simmons has been mentioned multiple times already, Willie Mays of course. But also just the box scores in the newspaper, I’d never have thought someone living in Anchorage back then, when they had to move heaven and earth just to show the Moon Landing live, would be so into baseball. That is what is so fun about the sport, just the names and numbers alone can paint a picture.
Lastly, they refer to us Stateside folk as “Outsiders”. With our fancy summers that last more than 6 weeks and everything, we do have it all.
Also can we get the blackout lifted!? Anchorage is a 3.5 hour flight to Seattle and they can’t watch their team?
