One for the Ages

Late in the summer of 1962, 14 boys from Campbell surprised the world when they won the Little League World Series in Williamsport, Pa. They are one of only six baseball teams from the Silicon Valley to have gone to the tournament and remain the only Northern California team to have taken home the title.

The players, who ranged between 11 and 12 years old, belonged to Moreland Little League, which encompasses both San Jose and Campbell. The league is celebrating the 50th anniversary of the ’62 team's win by bringing back several of the players for its opening day ceremonies this Saturday.

Moreland is also hosting a reunion dinner that’s open to the public at that night. The evening will double as a fundraiser for the league.

“We wanted to celebrate the teamwork and the hard work that was required to get to the World Series,” Ken Pyle, the president of the league, said. “The memories of being with friends and parents—we wanted to focus on that more than just the win.”

Campbell was a fledgling community in the early 1960s, home to more orchards than houses. While it was growing, few outside the region had heard of Campbell before. The ’62 team put the city, and the southern Bay Area, on the map.

“Nothing like that had ever happened like this in this area before,” Chuck Hildebrand, author of the book, The Last Baseball Town: How Campbell, California achieved the unprecedented, and still unduplicated, in American youth baseball, said. “When Moreland won in ‘62, it was the first time that people could say that this was something distinct from this valley and of this valley that was at a world class level.”

The team was a ragtag bunch, Hildebrand, who was five when the team won yet still remembers the news splashed across headlines, explained. Most came from working class families. The parents of the team’s three Japanese players had been interned during World War II. When the team traveled to Vancouver for the West Coast regionals, it was the first time many of the players, and their manager, had ever been on an airplane.

“We didn’t have the money for All-Star uniforms, so all we had were our regular season uniforms,” Mike Ganson, the catcher in the World Series game, said. “We played against all these wealthier teams and kids.”

That final nine innings was one pitch away from being a perfect game, Ganson said. He called the aftermath of the victory “surreal." He even got to see Jacqueline Kennedy when the team went to the White House after their win. The president was sick but Ganson wandered away from the group and caught a glimpse of the First Lady giving directions for dinner to a chef.

“She was just dressed to the nines,” he recalled. “She stopped and looked at me. It was Camelot right before my eyes.”

While none of the players went on to play baseball professionally, and only one played in college, the world got to know Campbell thanks to the scrappy team from Moreland.

“That particular group of 14 kids,” Hildrebrand said, “Where they came from and what they were captured people’s imaginations.”

The city of Campbell wil be celebrating Campbell's 60th anniversary on March 28, 10:30 a.m. with a small reception at City Hall in front of the glass cabinets outside of council chambers.

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