12th of May | Story

Just like old times, 56 years later

BY MATT LaWELL

STOCKTON, California | Sam Hitcher has already spent more than 20 minutes in the home dugout, surrounded by other men who used to play baseball. He has talked and patted backs and stood out on the field in front of a growing crowd on a Saturday night. He has cast aside his cane and walked toward the mound and fired one of a dozen ceremonial first pitches. He has received more cheers than a modest man of 77 normally hears in a year.

And now here he is, tucked behind a table off the main concourse at Banner Island Ballpark, home of the Stockton Ports, a pen in his right hand, ready to sign autographs for an hour for kids who never bother to read his name on the sheet of paper taped in front of him. He sits two chairs down from an old teammate and a good friend he never forgot during the decades after baseball.

“You want to hear the craziest part of this?” he asks. He turns his head toward that teammate and friend, Tom Munoz. “This guy introduced me to my wife. Forty-nine years we’ve been married. Our wives worked together.”

“My wife and his wife,” Munoz says.

“We weren’t married then,” Hitcher says.

“They used to work together at General Motors,” Munoz says. “Marty always liked sports, so Shirley said, ‘Hey, I have a friend you might like.’ And after the season, we all went out.”

“Fifty years this September,” Hitcher says. “You’ve got to trust ’em. If you’re going to marry ’em, you’ve got to believe in ’em and trust ’em. Everybody’s going to have their fights and arguments — hey, Tom! Have you ever had a fight with your wife?”

“Me?” Munoz asks. “No! She’s Portuguese!”

“Anyway,” Hitcher says, “we went out on a blind date together. Shirley, his wife, introduced me to Marty, my wife —”

“And he hasn’t forgiven me since!” Munoz shouts with delight.

 

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The Ports have played 71 years and 63 seasons in Stockton — first as the Flyers, then as the Ports, then as the Mudville Nine, now as the Ports again — and they have one of the longer and more storied histories in the High-A California League. There are the 11 league championships, the 26 straight wins back in 1947, the 242 Major Leaguers.

Hitcher and Munoz are not among that last number. They played together on the team for two seasons, 1955 and ’56 and never won a championship together. They never played at Banner Island Ballpark, either, which opened right on the water seven years ago, but they follow the team and they come back every spring, guests of team president Pat Filippone for Stockton Ports alumni night. 

The whole annual celebration started some time in the late 1980s as a party in Munoz’s back yard.

“We all got along so good when we played together, my wife and I said, ‘Let’s get all the ball players together and just see what happens,’” Hitcher says. “Everybody I called thought it was a heck of an idea and it just went from there. One year, I had the Stockton Record, the paper here in town, they contacted me, and they came out and interviewed us, took photos. Pat saw it in the Sunday paper and he called me Monday morning.” 

“Fifty years this September,” Sam Hitcher says. “You’ve got to trust ’em. If you’re going to marry ’em, you’ve got to believe in ’em and trust ’em. Everybody’s going to have their fights and arguments — hey, Tom! Have you ever had a fight with your wife?”

“Me?” Tom Munoz asks. “No! She’s Portuguese!”

“Anyway,” Hitcher says, “we went out on a blind date together. Shirley, his wife, introduced me to Marty, my wife —”

“And he hasn’t forgiven me since!” Munoz shouts with delight.

“Been about 23 years now,” Hitcher says. “A long time. We were having them every two or three years, and we said, ‘We’ve got to start having them every year. We’re all getting too old.’ We’re all 70, 75 years old.” 

“We have at least 15, 18 ball players,” Munoz says. “Some guys, we never played with, but we know from being in baseball and we invite them. We have a big potluck. The party starts around noon, everybody goes home around 5:30, 6.”

“Sometimes, I’m there until 11,” Hitcher says. 

“It’s a great time to B.S. and reminisce,” Munoz says.

“And lie,” Hitcher says. 

What are his favorite lies? 

“Too many of them,” he says. He smiles, an old ball player with stories still remembered and developed more over the years.

One truth, at the least, is that Hitcher and Munoz are old friends. They played on the same field for the first time back in the early 1950s, when Hitcher played for Santa Angelo High and Munoz played over at Alameda High. The schools never played each other regularly, but they “might have played each other once or twice,” Hitcher says.

Hitcher played his first professional game in 1955, with the Ports the year they won 94 games and finished 10 games back. Just out of his teens, Hitcher batted .239, the lowest average of his career. 

Munoz was the same age and already an old veteran in his fourth minor league season. At 17, Munoz signed with the old Oakland Oaks of the Pacific Coast League, then an open league and a third Major League, of sorts, a three-year contract worth $29,700. The day after he signed, he says, the Cleveland Indians placed a bid offering him $80,000. “He was an absolute phenom,” Hitcher says. “The best I ever saw.” At 20, he hit 21 home runs in 143 games for the Ports. The next season, at 21, still nowhere close to his prime, hit 27 more in 120 games. 

The next season, 1957, both Hitcher and Munoz traveled to Vero Beach, Florida, for spring training with the Brooklyn Dodgers, who had recently picked them up. Just prior to the first day, Munoz needed to have his appendix removed. He rested three weeks afterward, then played one week and wound up back in the minors rather than Brooklyn.

“I went to Macon, Georgia, which is hotter than hell, and in three weeks, I went from about 185 pounds down to 160,” Munoz says. “Heat exhaustion. They sent me home.”

Both Hitcher and Munoz were out of professional baseball by the time they were 28.

“Even though we never made it to the Majors, I’m glad it worked out the way it did,” Hitcher says. “I can imagine what it’s like in the Majors.”

 

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Hitcher and Munoz returned to California. They worked. They lived their lives.

Both are retired now. Munoz wears an immaculate white beard. Hitcher has that cane but walks well even without it. 

They tell stories now, about old photographers, old managers, old friends. Hitcher tells one about a manager in Macon who told his players they needed to drink milk but, to quench their thirst in the Southern heat, they really needed to drink beer. Munoz tells one about his remarkable collection of memorabilia — full uniforms, autographed balls, stuff he never purchased, just accumulated — that he lost when his house burned down 20 years ago.

They say they have no regrets.

“Baseball is a great life,” Munoz says. “It’s a great education. You grow up. You live.”

Hitcher looks at him and smiles again. He smiles a lot. “I wouldn’t trade it for anything, Tom,” he says.

Matt@AMinorLeagueSeason.com  @MattLaWell  @AMinorLgSeason

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