Baseball and His Daughter Keep Myers’ Name Alive

Each year during their Freeway Series with the Los Angeles Dodgers, the California Angels bestow upon two top minor league prospects the Kenny Myers Memorial Award. If you don’t know who Kenny Myers was, there’s a woman in Alhambra who can tell you:

Myers, at age 15, was the youngest ballplayer ever signed to a major league contract: The St. Louis Cardinals gave him a $150 bonus. Myers also holds a minor league record for hitting four home runs in one game--two of them grand slams--in the old Sunset League.

An Army baseball injury during World War II ended his playing career. But he later became a scout and hitting instructor with the Dodgers. He’s best remembered there for discovering track runner Willie Davis, then teaching him how to hit a baseball. Myers used to run the Dodgers’ rookie team, where he coached a very young Marcel Lachemann, now the Angels manager. Myers finished his career with four years as a scout and hitting instructor for the Angels.

Former San Francisco Giant Manager Roger Craig has said of Myers: “He helped me more than anyone with whom I came into contact in baseball.” Former Dodger catcher John Roseboro wrote in his autobiography: “Myers was sensational; he had revolutionary ideas about batting.”

I can relate all this to you because Margie Myers has documented every step of her father’s career. She was his only child, and her life was dealt a dramatic blow when Myers died of cancer in 1972; he was just 51 years old.

“I adored him,” she says. She loyally wears his World Series ring (Dodgers 1959) around her neck.

For years after his death all his clippings and other memorabilia were stacked in boxes in the garage. She’d tackle the piles on occasion but would stop because reviewing them was so painful, knowing all he missed by dying so young. But a few years ago when her mother’s health began to fail, Margie Myers was determined to put her father’s things into a suitable tribute to him.

She’s done an amazing job too. One room at her home is a shrine devoted to her father’s baseball accomplishments. (It was Myers who introduced instructional gadgets like the crazy bat, curved at the handle so hitters would learn to not roll their wrists as they swing.) Under glass on three walls are scores of newspaper clippings and letters and souvenirs related to her father’s career.

Margie Myers has one fear: that baseball fans might forget Kenny Myers. But a couple of things recently reassured her that’s not the case. Because she’s been away from the game so long, she didn’t know that the Angels have continued the Kenny Myers Award all these years. She found out the day of this year’s award, and the Angels rushed her two tickets. She gingerly asked Marcel Lachemann if he remembered her father. Lachemann’s reply: “We all remember Kenny.”

Around the Town: Can you imagine doing something at age 14 so dramatic that it’s now part of history? That’s how old James Fuller was when he co-wrote “Wipe Out.” OK, it’s not brain surgery, but it’s a classic beach song. Fuller is lead guitarist for the Surfaris, who are still playing 34 years after their “Wipe Out” hit. This week Fuller donated his “Wipe Out” guitar to the International Surf Museum in Huntington Beach. . . .

The new Newport Harbor Nautical Museum has come up with a different twist on raising funds it calls “Sea Cents.” It’s got area schools helping to collect pennies. The goal: enough pennies that when laid edge-to-edge, they would span 320 miles. That would be 10 miles for each of the 32 years that its home, the former Reuben E. Lee paddle-wheeler (now the Pride of Newport) has been around. The money would go for the boat’s restoration. If you’re curious how many pennies that would take: 27 million, give or take a penny. . . .

Spy magazine this month lists California as the fourth most annoying state (behind Texas, Florida and Nevada), including two swipes at Orange County. One was on the Sawdust Festival in Laguna Beach, the other at Rep. Robert K. Dornan (R-Garden Grove). Hey, what’s wrong with the Sawdust Festival? Dornan, by the way, also takes a big hit in Al Franken’s bestseller “Rush Limbaugh Is a Big Fat Idiot.” It’s too malicious to reprint here.

Judges on the Loose: If you want to see what some of our local judges are like without their robes, you can catch the annual Law Revue on Friday night at 8 at the Irvine Barclay theater. It’s songs, dance and comedy--and a few cracks at the local legal profession--put on by a cast of 38 made up of judges, lawyers and other legal types. Commissioner Joan Reilly has run the revue for six years. With her retirement this year, the revue wanted someone who could keep it zany. Who else but Cherie Kerr, artistic director of the Orange County Crazies?

Proceeds benefit the Orange County Bar Foundation, which runs education programs and the juvenile diversion program Shortstop. . . .

Winners of Liberty Bell Awards given out by the Orange County Bar Assn. Wednesday: John E. Altstadt, a senior manager at Price Waterhouse, a major force behind raising funds for the Constitutional Rights Foundation of Orange, the bar foundation and the Public Law Center. Also honored: Tim Shaw, executive director of the Orange County Homeless Issues Task Force.

Wrap-Up: Some big names have won the Kenny Myers award: Tim Salmon, Wally Joyner, Frank Tanana. Honored at the Freeway Series this year were Todd Greene (catcher) and Jason Dickson (pitcher), two men the Angels are counting on down the road.

I figure the Angels missed a pretty good public relations opportunity by not having someone from Myers’ family there for the award each year. The Angels see it that way too. It wasn’t until just hours before this year’s award they learned Margie Myers still lives in the area. The Angels have asked her if she would present the award named after her father at next year’s Freeway Series. Kenny Myers’ daughter said she would be honored.

Jerry Hicks’ column appears Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. Readers may reach Hicks by calling the Times Orange County Edition at (714) 966-7823 or sending a fax to (714) 966-7711.