Sad Times in Salinas, CA (The Salad Bowl of America!) 
 
Growing up in Long Beach spoiled me, with our national-best parks system and top-caliber prep sports teams.  But, as a spectator and journalist, I’m hereby pledging, one day into a 35-day road trip, to thank God every time I plop my butt down at a Long Beach sporting event.  Here in Salinas, CA, the city is struggling to keep schools open as the population decreases, and some of the money seems to be coming from the park budget.  We arrived in the afternoon, in Spring: prime baseball hours.

 
Instead, we were greeted by the fenced and padlocked Gene Robertson Park, which boasts back to back national championships from three decades ago, as if trying to remind its citizens of a past that’s slipping away from them.  On the other side of the fence, on the back of a maybe-permanently closed snack shop was the Little League Pledge: “I trust in God.  I love my country and will respect its laws.  I will play fair and strive to win.  But win or lose, I will always do my best.”
 
In the seventies, the Salinas Little League’s best was good enough to bring home national titles, a level of play that occurs with some regularity in Long Beach sports.  But giving 110% or running out your trip to first base when you know you grounded out the second you dinked the softball doesn’t mean anything if the park is locked up.  It may still be open on some weekends, but the state of the field doesn’t make me optimistic.  I just hope I never live to see a warm March day in my hometown where ages-old championship banners are hung over unaccessible park gates, paint peeling in the sun and nobody running on the weed-strangled grass.