FAMILY TIES : Bret’s Connections May Turn Out as a Boone to His Career

Bret Boone, El Dorado High School second baseman and son of Angel catcher Bob Boone, appreciates the attention, but he could do without the questions.

Do you know Reggie? Is he cool? Do you drive a Porsche? What are the rest of the players like?

Sure, it was fun to talk about when he was in grade school. Stuff such as that really makes a little guy big on campus. But Sunday he turned 17. He’s a junior in high school now and frankly, the questions bore him.

“I almost prefer they not know who my dad is,” he said. “That way they wouldn’t ask.”

His answers usually have all the enthusiasm of a dirge.

Yeah, I know Reggie. Yeah, he’s cool. No, I drive a truck. The other players are cool, too.

He answers because he realizes good must be taken with the not-so-good. Guest shots on the Mike Douglas show and doing TV commercials must be tempered with inquisitive classmates.

Gifts from Rod Carew and tennis instructions from Frank Robinson are weighed against seeing your father off in spring, knowing you won’t see him on a regular basis until fall.

For Bret and the Boones, baseball isn’t a job, and it isn’t an adventure.

For better or worse, it’s their life.

For Bret, it’s the one life he wants.

Susan Boone, Bret’s mother, keeps voluminous photo albums.

Each child--Bret, Aaron, 13, and Matthew, 6--has his own.

Each book shows the child walking for the first time, taking a bath, playing on his first ballteam--the regular stuff.

Each book also has family friends such as the Greg Luzinskis and the Mike Schmidts.

What the books don’t contain are shots of Luzinski, Bob Boone or Schmidt playing baseball. That’s for the newspapers. These are family albums.

The closest you’ll come to professional baseball action in these albums are some shots of one of the kids performing batboy duties.

It’s professional baseball beyond the ballpark. And to hear Bob tell it, aside from the fact that thousands of people watch him at work, his job and family life are the same as anyone else’s.

“I can’t think of a better way to spend my life but to play baseball,” he said. “But it doesn’t change me or my family as people. We have the same ups and downs. My sons are the same as any other. They don’t listen to their father.”

Which isn’t entirely true. Bret does listen to his father, it’s just that he probably listens to Bob’s father Ray, more.

Ray was a major league player with six teams from 1948 to 1960. Now a scout for the Boston Red Sox, he attends Bret’s games whenever he can and loves to talk about the game.

“He’ll tell me if there’s something wrong with my swing or that none of the players today could compare to Ted Williams,” Bret said. “He’s really big on the old players. He thinks they were a lot better back then.”

Being around so much baseball, so much professional baseball, has created some pressure around the Boone household. But it’s not on Bret.

He’s pretty well convinced one day he’ll be in the major leagues. That puts the pressure on his parents.

They worry that he is so consumed with his desire to play in the major leagues--”I can’t think of anything else I want to do,”--that other important matters are treated without importance.

“My dad keeps telling me I have to think about other things, things outside of baseball,” Bret said, “But that’s really hard for me. It’s really all I want to do right now. Maybe that will change someday.”

It’s that maybe that Bob wants Bret to prepare for.

“You not only have to be talented to be a pro, you have to have some good fortune,” Bob said. “I try to get across to him that not every talented player can make it. That you have to have something to fall back on.”

Bret has outstanding statistics. He’s batting .423 (22 for 52) to lead the Golden Hawks (11-4), ranked third in Orange County. He has five doubles, 16 runs batted in and has scored 18 runs.

“Things have always come so easy for Bret,” Susan said. “Sometimes it’s hard to motivate him because.j he lives around baseball and it all seems so close. In that way he’s different than Bob. In that way he’s a lot like me.”

Bret recognizes the differences between him and his father.

“He was a lot more into school than I was,” Bret said. “He got straight A’s and went to Stanford. Stanford is a little out of my grade range.”

Grade range or no, kids will dream.

“I’d like to get to the pros after a year in the minors and play for 18 years at a million dollars a year,” he said.

At which point Aaron, a born negotiator, jumps in.

“Only a million? Hey it’s your dream. Ask for more.”

Not distracted, Bret continued: “I’d invest all my money, and by the time I get out of baseball I’ll just go fishing.”

What a life.