WALNUT CREEK — They were the then-politically OK Aztecs and Apaches, and the Creeks from walnut land — teams of aged-out Little Leaguers and high school baseball players from around the Diablo Valley who wanted to keep their gloves limber and bats hot.
So the boys prolonged their dusty summers and dreams of drawing a scout’s interest by joining teams organized in the 1970s and ’80s by coach Bill Piona to play around the Bay Area.
“It was just a friendly, family-type program. We played very hard, and very well,” said Piona, now 84, retired from PG&E and living in Benicia with his wife, Jackie. She was by all accounts — his, too — as much a part of the teams as him.
Right off the bat, “We played an El Cerrito team that had just won the American Legion world championship,” Piona said. “Lo and behold, my kids came out there, and we beat them. That was our baptism.”
The bonds Piona forged among his players held together over the years as many of them went on to coach their own teams. Their memories will overflow Saturday when his “kids,” some now grandfathers, reunite at Heather Farm Park to honor him.
Piona came to Walnut Creek with his family in 1937, and he played football and baseball at Acalanes High School, graduating in 1948.
He went on to play baseball at Modesto Junior College, where he got a tryout with a Boston Red Sox farm team in San Jose. He ended his budding career after unsuccessfully trying to negotiate a $225-a-month offer up to $250.
When Piona turned to coaching, his teams played so well that he began to draw young players.
Greg Thys had just turned 16 and was a Las Lomas High School player when Piona recruited him for the Aztecs in 1973.
“I was pretty shy and naive … and intimidated by the fact Mr. Piona wanted to speak with me,” he said in an email this week. “Mr. Piona asked if I wanted to play on the team.
“I could not hold back the beaming smile … I was going to get a chance to play on THE American Legion Aztec Team!!,” Thys wrote.
Piona started out carrying the ball, and for two decades he and Jackie kept at it with a lot of help from people who gave goods and support.
He needed a better field than the one across the bridge in Civic Park, so he got the city to let him use part of then-new Heather Farm Park.
He could not get the city to take out the remnants of a walnut orchard blocking his left field. Homes were under construction past the right field, and a worker there readily agreed to knock down the trees.
“We put a fence in left field so they would have something to shoot at, about 300 feet down the line,” Piona said. “We did that one morning before the season opened and built the pitcher’s mound ourselves.”
It was a rough start, he said. “We kind of made up a club; we had no money, no uniforms. Mr. Gomes — his grandson is a basketball coach — he had some old uniforms and said, ‘Here, use these.’ They didn’t fit very well.”
But the uniforms weren’t as important as the name the young men from area high schools carried on their shirts, Piona said.
“We tried to teach them you belong to Walnut Creek, you represent it, yourself and your parents and to play accordingly, and they did,” he recalled.
Thys remembers his coach that way.
“Mr. Piona didn’t just open up a playing career for me; he helped guide my life during some difficult, personal times, especially when Dad lost his battle to cancer in 1980,” Thys said.
Aztec first baseman Jerry Mahler, 53, remembers the deep respect the teammates had — and still have — for their coach.
“When he talked to us, he wouldn’t use many words, but you would stop on a dime and listen to what he had to say,” Mahler said in a phone interview.
Piona’s teams put players in front of scouts who came with scholarships and tickets to major league farm teams. His most famous recruit was former A’s player Lance Blankenship. “He was 16 or 17 when I picked him up out of Ygnacio Valley (High School),” Piona said.
Retired major leaguer Jackie Jensen was a UC Berkeley coach who came out to see a pitching prospect. Piona’s wife talked him into looking at two other players and, Piona said, by the third inning, he offered Thys and another player scholarships.
“She is my foot; everywhere I go, she goes. Everything I did with baseball, she did,” he said.
“We did that for about 22 years, and one day I said it was time for the younger kids to take over, and we bowed out,” Piona said. The teams played a few more seasons, but without the Pionas’ dedication, they faded away.
But he’s still in the hearts of the young men who learned lessons they are passing on.
“When I went on to coach, I tried to always recall your demeanor and remember the influence a coach can have on their young players,” Mahler said. “I was blessed to be able to apply that while coaching my son and his teammates for many years.”
Contact Andrew McGall at 925-945-4703. Follow him at Twitter.com/AndrewMcGall.
