‘Grandfather of East L.A.’ : Coach Has Worked With 4 Generations of Youths

His former players call Joe Sotero Amaya the “grandfather of East L.A.” and he is widely known wherever he travels in the barrios of the Eastside.

Recognized by his trademark green Windbreaker and cap, Amaya returns people’s greetings gruffly but no one takes it as rudeness. It’s simply his manner.

Amaya, 72, has spent more than 50 years providing barrio youngsters and young adults with the opportunity to “stay away from gangs,” as he puts it, and to be part of athletic programs that he helped design.

“I started coaching when I was young and I just got used to it,” the retired construction worker said at the City Terrace home he shares with his wife, Carmen. “It’s in my blood.”

Amaya has worked with four generations of ballplayers since he began coaching in 1935. He has been less active, however, since suffering a heart attack and undergoing open-heart surgery two years ago. Although he has trouble walking, he still travels to East L.A. parks to oversee the adult baseball players in the Maravilla League he organized.

Through the years, Amaya has been a stern taskmaster who did not allow anyone to “lip off,” former player Ray Garcia said. And though he rarely raised his voice to any of his players, he was always obeyed by even the “hard-core gangbangers,” Garcia said.

Garcia, 59, recalls playing for Amaya’s football team in 1946, called the Mari-Knighters. It was part of a tackle football league that predated Pop Warner football.

“I was a young punk when I started playing for his team,” Garcia said. “All of us kids who hung out at the neighborhood center were gangbangers, but we were sports-minded.”

Garcia, who owns a record store in Santa Fe Springs, said it was the first time any of the youths in that barrio had ever put on a uniform and played organized sports.

Manuel Gonzales, who is in his early 40s, said Amaya was first called el abuelito, the grandfather, by a player in Mexico who had known him for years. From there, the nickname “Grandfather of East L.A.” developed.

He’s called that “out of affection for what he has done for everyone here in East L.A.,” said Jim Rogers, an athletic coordinator of the Whittier-Narrows recreational facility near South El Monte. “He’s like a grandfather,” added Rogers, who has worked with Amaya on recreational programs since 1967.

Amaya’s first encounter with coaching occurred because he wanted to play softball for his company team, a laundry.

“Nobody wanted to coach our Morgan’s Laundry team,” said Amaya, then one of the firm’s youngest employees. “I was 15 years old then and I told each of them, if they didn’t quit on me, I would coach . . . and I did.”

It was difficult for East Los Angeles youths to find recreational leagues to join because there were few coaches or organized leagues. Amaya did his best to offer his services as a volunteer coach until he entered the military during World War II. When he returned home with a Bronze Star, Amaya immediately resumed coaching youth sports in the East Los Angeles barrio of City Terrace.

Amaya found hundreds of youngsters waiting to play on his teams but he did not have the room to accommodate them. After more than 15 years of coaching, he finally gained enough knowledge and friends to start youth leagues so more players could be involved.

“There were some good people in East L.A. who owned businesses and were willing to give money and time,” Amaya said. “We formed a group called the East L.A Sports Assn., which lasted for over 20 years.”

In 1960, Amaya met with some of the park directors in East Los Angeles and with the aid of the East Los Angeles Sports Assn. helped them organize Little League baseball at City Terrace Park. In 1967, he began organizing leagues at Laguna, Obregon, Belvedere and other parks.

Amaya realized that many of the players in his leagues were talented enough to play at the college or professional level but were being ignored, Rogers said. So Amaya devised high-caliber baseball leagues at the high school and college level to play college teams such as UCLA.

Amaya said a well-known baseball scout once contended in a conversation with him that people didn’t want Mexican-American youths playing in college and that they were not good enough for the major league level.

Angry over the remark, he put together a showcase team of college age players and called them the “East L.A. Monarks.” He also formed a Connie Mack team (14- and 15-year-olds) and a Joe DiMaggio (16- to 18-year-olds) team.

His Joe DiMaggio league team won the state championship against more highly touted teams in 1971, 1972 and 1973.

Many of the players soon were taken by Mexican professional baseball teams, Amaya said, and major league scouts began scouring the Mexican leagues for some of the players they had overlooked.

Richard (Sopa) Campbell, 42, a former Monark and current major league scout for the Kansas City Royals, was one of the players who advanced from the scout team to the Mexican leagues and then the major leagues.

“Joe Amaya was like a father to me,” Campbell said. “Hundreds of kids have gone on to the professional level or college level because of him.”

Alfredo Esparza, 38, who played professionally in Mexico, said: “Amaya was the kind of guy who always had your best interest at heart.”

“You know,” Campbell said, “he’s done so much for people out of the goodness of his heart. He’s put money out of his own pocket for kids and never received a penny back from it. No one has a better heart than Joe Amaya.”