Dad-son team hits one out of the park

SAN FRANCISCO — At age 12, Michael Camel Jr. lives for baseball — for hitting home runs, playing center field and pitching whenever his coach needs him on the mound.

But it’s been more than just a game for this sturdily built resident of East Palo Alto.

When he and his working-class father found themselves homeless for six months — moving from motels to the couches of relatives to shelters — baseball became Michael’s emotional safe haven.

“We hit rock bottom, but we both worked hard to make sure that Michael held on to his childhood,” said Michael Camel Sr. “We’d leave the shelter and drive him over to practice. It was like setting him free. He’s a proud kid. I think baseball helped him keep his sanity through some pretty rough times.”

On Monday, baseball provided him a passport to the world. He joined his San Mateo County All-Star teammates on a trip to compete in Japan.

It was a trip the soon-to-be seventh-grader almost didn’t get the chance to take — even though he’d earned his place by beating more than 250 other youths for one of 19 spots on the roster. Most of his expenses were paid, but Michael’s father couldn’t afford some incidental costs — for clothes and equipment and gifts for his son’s Japanese host family.

That’s where Shelter Network came in. When Camel described the situation to workers at the Bay Area nonprofit that helped get him and his son off the streets last summer, they spread the word to their volunteers and benefactors. Within days, Michael had everything he would need, including a new glove, bat and cleats, clothes and luggage.

As he stood at the airport with his new duffel bag and international ticket in hand, everything he carried was donated, even the plastic bag he used to carry his toothbrush.

The dreams were all his.

“No matter what happened to us, I always looked on the bright side,” he said, looking about the airport in wonderment. “But, man, who ever thought this would ever happen!”

Camel said it wasn’t drugs or alcohol that led to his family’s problems two years ago but the high cost of Bay Area life. When he and the mother of his four children split up, neither could afford to keep their apartment. So the mother took young Michael and the three girls, now ages 9 to 17, to Sacramento to live with relatives.

Michael Jr. missed his old sandlot mates and soon came back to live with his father and play ball.

Camel made ends meet coaching high school football and baseball. Then those jobs fell through and he found work driving a shuttle bus for a car dealer.

By then, father and son were living in a community shelter half an hour south of San Francisco.

“One day, leaving the shelter, I told him, ‘Michael, things are going to get better,’ ” said Camel, 42. “I said I was a motivated dad and that neither one of us was raised to live like this.”

Camel persuaded officials in the after-school league to waive fees so his son could play. And play he did: His father says he resembles a young Tony Gwynn, a Hall of Fame inductee who played 20 years for the San Diego Padres — stocky but strong. This year Michael Jr. hit seven home runs and has a .393 batting average.

He’s a happy-go-lucky kid who likes to sing, something he did even at the homeless shelter. In June 2006, activists helped Camel and his son find housing -- nothing special, with just a little furniture and a TV set on a milk crate. But for Michael Jr. it was home.

“My son let me know that it was OK to make mistakes. He told me I wasn’t a bad person,” Camel recalled. “That’s when we bonded as father and son.”

Young Michael recently watched the movie “The Pursuit of Happyness” starring Will Smith and his real son Jaden as a father-son team living on the streets. He told his father that the movie reminded him of their life, how they had battled bad luck.

Camel wasn’t about to let his son’s opportunity to visit Japan go to waste just because money was tight. Neither were those who responded to Shelter Network’s plea, some of whom had themselves endured hard times.

“I have three boys of my own and I’m a single mom,” said Pat Mach, who donated a pair of shoes, pants and underclothes.

“I understand the issues here: seizing opportunities that are presented to you regardless of your own cashless situation.”

For weeks, Michael has eaten with chopsticks and slept on a cotton bed on the floor to be ready. At the airport, his 11-year-old sister, Makaila, tried to give him a kiss as he stood by the other players. “At least give me a hug,” she pleaded.

“No,” he said. “Go away.”

She ran to her father, saying, “Daddy, he won’t give me a hug.” Moments later, she returned to her dad in tears: “Michael’s going to Japan and I’m stuck here in America.”

Michael Jr. says he has other baseball dreams in mind. Next, he says, he’d like to visit Cooperstown, N.Y., and the baseball Hall of Fame.

At the airport, his oldest sister, Angel, 17, asked him to bring her back some gold or jade. She said she was proud of her baby brother.

“Baseball’s his passion,” she said. “If you want him to act right, you take away his baseball and he has a fit. He doesn’t care anything about video games. He cares about baseball, and that’s it. I don’t get it.”

john.glionna@latimes.com