After 18 Lean Years, Things Are Looking Up in the Top of the 19th : 49er Baseball Coach Lives, Breathes the Game

In the sparkle of early morning, the baseball field at California State University, Long Beach, looks lush. The dirt is chocolate colored and footprint-free. Center field, where the grass holds dew, belongs to sea gulls.

For John (Cisco) Gonsalves, in his 19th season as 49er baseball coach, this is paradise--especially now that the university has given baseball a boost.

Gonsalves was on the field and dressed in his No. 25 white uniform and brown “LB” cap, though the afternoon game last Saturday with Chapman College was hours away. “I love this uniform,” he said. “I could stay on the field 24 hours a day.”

He is on it most mornings, thinking of strategies for the day’s game . . . and working. “I line the field, drag it, water it, paint the bases, paint the mound, all that beautification,” Gonsalves said.

He has been a one-man show almost since he took over--coaching, recruiting, raising funds and taking care of the field he all but built. Now, however, he realizes that he needs help if he is to win. “I’m 44 years old, I can’t do it all anymore,” he said.

It was always assumed by most of his athletic directors that he could.

But Gonsalves, who has a 441-592-16 career record, always lacked manpower and money. He never had a full-time assistant until six years ago. He had only two scholarships each of his first 15 seasons.

So he raised money, even spent $2,000 or $3,000 of his own each year on the program, but the total never approached what was available at baseball-prominent schools such as Cal State Fullerton, Pepperdine, USC, UCLA and Loyola Marymount. As a result, the 49ers could not compete with them.

The team was 16-41-1 last season and Gonsalves was on the verge of quitting after a 19-5 loss to UC Santa Barbara in April.

A few days after that defeat, Gonsalves’ spirit was restored when Athletic Director Corey Johnson gave him a commitment to build a strong Division I program.

“I’ll tell you what, we’re playing great baseball,” Gonsalves said last Saturday morning, although the 49ers were 0-3. “If we play like this for 60 games, we might be able to turn this thing around this year.”

Gonsalves has a master’s degree, but he is the epitome of a lifetime baseball man, to whom the off-color vocabulary of the dugout comes naturally.

The years of frustration have not manifested themselves on his face, which is smooth and deep brown, the result of a Hawaiian and Portuguese heritage and the California sun.

“I’m happy,” he said.

The reason was on the outfield walls, on which hung the gold advertising signs Gonsalves had tried in vain to get for 10 years.

Johnson got permission for Gonsalves to sell the signs, which will bring in $30,000. Money is also being raised by the Dugout Club, the team’s booster group. Gonsalves now has the equivalent of five full scholarships, and Johnson said the maximum of 13 is targeted for the fifth year of a five-year plan.

Gonsalves, who earns $38,000 a year as a teacher of weight training, softball analysis and baseball theory, hopes to eventually be free from teaching, add to his staff and get a new clubhouse.

But for now, he still has to cope.

“How can you be Division I when the head coach has to wash equipment on Saturday and Sunday?” he asked.

Gonsalves was 12 when his family moved from Hawaii to Long Beach. The youngsters he played with called him Cisco because they thought he was Latino. After starring in baseball at St. Anthony High School, he declined a contract offer from the Minnesota Twins and decided to play at Long Beach City College and then at CSULB.

“I could run and I had good hands,” said Gonsalves, who was an infielder. “And I had desire and heart--I was a hustler.”

He signed with the New York Mets and played in the minor leagues from 1966 to 1968 before becoming the 49er assistant coach in 1969. Shortly thereafter, he was stricken with tuberculosis and spent three months in a hospital. After recovering, he became head coach the following year and at age 25 led the 49ers to the Pacific Coast Athletic Assn. championship. “Haven’t smelled it since,” he said.

TB is not the only misfortune from which Gonsalves, who lives in Seal Beach, has bounced back. When he was 27, he was in a car crash and presumed by firemen to be dead until they saw his hand twitch. Last season he crashed into the bullpen bench and broke six ribs when he lost control of the three-wheel vehicle he uses to drag the infield.

Bull-necked Paul Deese, a volunteer assistant coach, stood in front of the 49er dugout as game time neared.

“The whole game is an attitude, men, nothing else,” Deese said. He sprayed obscene adjectives as liberally as he did tobacco juice.

From behind his glasses, Gonsalves watched with amusement and said, “I used to do all that.”

Assistants Added

Gonsalves now sees himself as a manager. The addition of Deese to a staff that includes full-time assistant Rick Hayes and volunteer batting coach Dave Torres has relieved Gonsalves of his former burdens. “If I can get a field maintenance guy and a guy in the locker room (to wash equipment), I’ll be like Tommy Lasorda, just pumping the signs,” he said.

“I’ve been waiting to be a pure manager. My wife has gone through a lot. I’d come home tired and frustrated, and we’d squabble. I also took it out on my players. I was a jerk.”

Catcher Eric Shirley, who prefers the new Gonsalves, said: “We listen to him a lot more this year because we know he’s more relaxed and a lot more objective.”

Gonsalves’ philosophy is simple. “If they play hard and hit line drives,” he said, “they’ll be in the lineup.”

Outfielder Sid Herrera, who hit .323 last year, said Gonsalves “takes control of a game and is a player’s coach who’s behind the players 100%.”

Before the game could start, Gonsalves had to hop on his “tri-mobile” and drag the infield. Pitchers Steve Corey and Chad Holmes watered it and infielder Craig Dill raked.

The Chapman leadoff batter walked to start the game. “You people are going to drive (Deese) to death if you keep walking people,” Gonsalves said to his players. He sat in the sun on a small bench next to the dugout. “Isn’t this great?” he said. I don’t do anything.”

He did coach third base, though, and once had a fiery argument with an umpire.

“I just sit here and have a chew . . . I mean gum,” he said.

Gonsalves chewed five bags of tobacco a day for 15 years. But he gave it up three years ago when a dentist told him that if he kept chewing he would be a likely candidate for mouth cancer. He does not want that to happen to his players, so he does not allow them to chew. Besides, professors were complaining to him that players were leaving cups of expectorated tobacco juice in classrooms. The final straw was when Gonsalves saw them spitting on the locker room floor.

The 49ers gave up a run in the first but came back with two. Then they scored six runs in the second inning. Their spikes scratched on the concrete floor of the dugout as they congratulated one another.

“Hey guys,” Gonsalves advised. “If you hit it to the second baseman, run like hell, he’ll throw it away. He’s an ex-catcher. I saw him make four errors in a game.”

After a Chapman batter beat out a bunt that sophomore third baseman Scott Lewis failed to charge, Gonsalves said, “You’ve got to come in and get it, son.”

He became irritated when an infielder lost a high-bouncing ball in the sun.

“Nobody’s using sunglasses,” he said. “What the hell’s wrong with them?”

Sandy Gonsalves sat in the shade and cheered the 49ers.

Of her husband of 18 years, she said, “He lives and dies the sport. He’s an out-and-out fanatic. I roll over in bed this morning and see a “25” staring at me; he’s sleeping in his uniform.”

“He lives for the game,” she went on. “When the kids (Johnnie, now 24, and Jayson, 16) were little, if we wanted to see him we had to come over here. I kid him that when he dies we’ll spread his ashes here.”

She talked of last season.

“I’d never seen him as down,” she said. “I saw him sitting in the bullpen after a game and I went down there. He was pretty broken up. He said, ‘I love this so much but I don’t know why things don’t go our way just once.’ ”

Out on the field they were. Herrera had just hit a three-run homer.

“If only he’d have a winning year,” Sandy said of John. “No one deserves it more.”

The 49ers won, 19-5, their first big victory in a long time. Gonsalves gathered his happy players and harped again about not wearing sunglasses. But he was happy, too. He knew he had a future.