On the Same ‘Side

Fifty years ago, a man rose three hours before sunrise and drove alone in his work truck along a two-lane road lined densely by orange trees.

En route to another job site in Orange County, home plasterer Robert Bonds Sr. devoted time during the journey from his Riverside home to the thoughts that inspire most good family men. He wanted his children to have a strong work ethic, be well educated, avoid discrimination and establish a successful life that could only be improved upon by their children.

“My father used to say, ‘If God wanted you to go backward, he’d have turned your feet around,’ ” said Rosie Bonds, one of Robert Sr.’s four children.

On Saturday, Elizabeth Bonds, the feisty, 88-year-old widow of Robert Sr., will retrace her husband’s old early-morning work route when she is driven on the 91 freeway toward Anaheim, where she will watch her famous grandson, Barry, play in his first World Series game. Upon his introduction at Edison Field, Barry Bonds, wearing a cross earring that stands as a symbol of his love for his deceased grandfather, will greet another man whose Riverside roots are unmistakable: San Francisco Giant Manager Dusty Baker.

“This is indescribable to me,” said Dusty’s father, Johnnie Baker Sr., who now lives in the Northern California town of Carmichael. “I’ve been throughout the world, and I’m convinced the only place my son could have accomplished something like this -- this journey from the pits of despair to the very top -- is America.”

To hear the Bondses and Bakers tell it, Riverside, circa 1950-65, was one of the few American cities that could so wildly encourage families to chase such brilliant futures.

“I wish everyone could know what Riverside was like back in the day,” Rosie Bonds said.

Robert Bonds Sr. arrived in Riverside from Texas in 1934. His educational background was minimal, Rosie Bonds said, placing it at a sixth-grade level. But his enthusiasm for work, family, religion and community was infectious.

“He coached us all about the importance of commitment,” Rosie said. “One of the things he was most committed about was getting his contractor’s license. We waited outside by the mailbox for days before it finally came. I was only about 6, but I still remember what he said when he finally got it: ‘We’re going to go places now.’ ”

Johnnie Baker Sr. settled in Riverside in 1945 after Naval duty in the Pacific as a gunner’s mate. Working as a governmental sheet metal technician at Norton Air Force Base, he and wife Christina had their first child on June 15, 1949. Three years later, Johnnie Jr. earned a new first name: “Dusty.”

“He wouldn’t play in anything but dirt, and we had a big backyard with fruit trees, a garden with vegetables, flowers and shrubs,” Baker Sr. said. “He’d take off for that dirt like he was running a race. There were a lot of baths, a lot of changes of clothes. So I called him Dusty, and his mother started calling him it too.”

The Bakers’ neighborhood was diverse -- black, white, Latino, Asian -- as was Dusty’s elementary school, Lowell.

“Dusty was never intimidated by anyone racially as an adult because he never had a reason to feel inferior in talking to and playing with kids of all races,” said Stan Davis, a longtime friend of Baker’s who lives in Riverside.

“In those days, your neighborhood was your family,” said Robert Baker, the Bakers’ second child. “We were raised in modest means, on the poor side of town, but because of that we learned to do more with less, to appreciate what we had, to understand the importance of loyalty to your community. That has been real important in Dusty’s success in dealing with the diversity in the pros.”

So were his dad’s obvious, subtle and hidden lessons. Robert Baker remembered, “Dad never let us be half good at anything,” and that included the occasional assignments he gave them while running a custodial service.

Baker Sr. coached Dusty during most of his youth baseball days. “Dusty was mischievous and active, you had to be stern with him,” said Baker Sr., who once benched his 11-year-old son for a Little League all-star game for being rebellious. “My philosophy was once you decided to do something, you have to completely finish the job. He said he wanted to play baseball, so I hit him hundreds of balls. By the time he was 12, he was a very good player.”

By the time Dusty was 12, the emerging civil rights movement had touched Riverside. Baker Sr. confronted Dusty’s Central Junior High principal for a policy that allowed black children to be dismissed early from school so they could serve as caddies at Victoria golf course, which was behind the Bakers’ backyard wall.

“That was strictly racist,” Baker Sr. said. “I went right in there and said, ‘My boy is not going to be a caddie.’ That was an exclusive course, they limited [access to] blacks and Mexicans, and the school was allowing these kids to miss school to help this course out. I wanted to fight any policy I thought was intended to make my son a mediocre person the rest of his life.”

Baker Sr. said he joined and helped lead other movements in the city. The family adhered to Martin Luther King Jr. and John F. Kennedy’s nonviolent approach, with the children told to avoid walking near a neighborhood mosque that embraced the teachings of Malcolm X. Baker Sr. pushed for progress, bothered that blacks were forced to the balcony for movies at the city’s only theater and that service was either denied or delayed at cafes.

“I’m sure Dusty knew I was in a movement, and I know he had to battle his way through some of his own things, but I think we made out all right,” Baker Sr. said.

Said Robert Baker: “Dusty was given books by my parents. I was given music, African and jazz. No one in our family had ever graduated from college, and that motivated Dusty and I. Our parents raised us with a consciousness.”

Meanwhile, the Baker family had become linked to the Bonds family. Christina Baker asked her good friend Elizabeth Bonds to baby-sit for her frequently, and Dusty deeply admired the athletic prowess of three-years-older Bobby Bonds, a football, baseball and track star at Riverside Poly High.

“Bobby was Riverside’s mega-god,” Robert Baker said.

Bobby went on to play in the major leagues. His older brother, Robert Bonds Jr., played football at San Jose State. Rosie was an 80-meter hurdles finalist in the 1964 Tokyo Olympics.

“Mama has always said it was because of her cooking,” Rosie said. “Nothing made her happier than to see a child happy and nourished.”

What made growing up in Riverside special, Rosie said, was that so many other parents shared similar passionate concerns for their children’s welfare.

“It was extraordinary -- it seemed like there was no crime, I know no one locked their doors,” Rosie said. “You couldn’t say a bad word on the street without three women stopping you to say, ‘Excuse me?’ The boys played baseball at places like Patterson Park just for the hot dogs they got for free after the game. Bands played wonderful music at Lincoln Park.”

The Bonds’ home was an extension of the atmosphere. Mama Bonds hosted entire football teams, including coaches and cheerleaders, for feasts of soul food, Mexican plates, Italian meals or whatever else she decided to whip up. Occasionally, Rosie and her siblings shared their bedrooms with children from broken or financially imperiled homes. Then, into the warmness came a child on July 24, 1964: Barry Bonds, the first son of Bobby and his wife, Pat. Bobby put a baseball bat in his son’s hands and took a picture.

Barry would soon leave Riverside for a life on the baseball road. Rosie Bonds recalled a time when she asked 3-year-old Barry what he planned to do when he became his father’s age. He answered, “I want to be a superstar baseball player.”

Bobby was elevated from the minor leagues to San Francisco in 1968. He spent 14 seasons in the majors, hitting 332 homers, stealing 461 bases and winning three Gold Gloves.

The Bakers moved to Northern California in 1965. Johnnie Sr. landed a promotion in Carmichael. Robert Baker said as he walked to school for the first time there -- the Bakers were told they were the first black students at Del Campo High -- a white student drove by and yelled a racial epithet.

“Sports got us through there,” Robert Baker said. “It made us acceptable, like us or not.”

Ultimately, the brothers concluded they left Riverside at an ideal time.

“A lot of folks we were raised with didn’t make it out in what became the era of drugs, of war, of depression,” Robert Baker said.

One Riverside landmark close to the hearts of the Bakers and Bonds remains depressed. The baseball diamond at Patterson Park, where Dusty and Bobby and major leaguer Tom Hall played, has been essentially deserted since 1995, when the shooting of a youth league coach came a year after a man was shot and killed less than 40 yards beyond the left-field fence.

On Nov. 24, Dusty and Bobby are scheduled to attend a revitalization ceremony for the park. “The gangs took it over,” said Leon Culpepper, a friend of the Bonds and Bakers. “The Rotary Club, the city and the schools want to take it back.”

Not far from Patterson Park is the former site of University Junior High, where Bobby went to school. It’s now known as Bobby Bonds Sports Complex and includes baseball and soccer fields, a basketball venue and an Olympic-sized pool.

Each afternoon, when Mama Bonds musters enough energy to rise from the hospital bed in her bedroom, she has her full-time nurse wheel her past Robert Sr.’s tattered, blue, foam-seated chair on the porch, up the street to her son’s sports complex. Children shout hellos and ask Mama how she’s doing. It’s like old times again. Mama tells the children to live right and say prayers, because that’s what her children did.

Said Rosie: “We were always in the parks, the schools, the churches. Never the streets.”

Meanwhile, Bonds’ and Baker’s World Series involvement in Southern California has provided family members a chance to relish their perspective.

Baker stood before the media throng Thursday, talking like his father when someone asked him about his drive to avoid the satisfaction of just participating in a World Series.

“I like to win,” Baker said. “I’ve beaten my daughter in games we play together, and she asks me, ‘Why don’t you let me win?’ I tell her, ‘They don’t let you win in life.’ ”

Robert Baker, now a Diamond Bar-based insurance executive, said, “Many people today might not know everything about the times we came through. When Dusty and I were born, our birth certificates read ‘colored.’ We’ve said to each other, ‘Not bad for two colored boys.’ ”

Rosie Bonds said she only wishes her father could watch the World Series. He died of a stroke in 1983.

“My father told his family it was good to be proud,” she said. “We know where we came from and we know where we went. Barry has taken what we did and carried it on. I’m sure the next generation of Bonds will continue from there.

“Dad would be proud about how well we have used this life that God gave us.”