For Palisades high players, baseball offers normalcy amid a charred LA landscape
CHEVIOT HILLS, Calif. — The players on the Palisades Charter High School junior varsity baseball team huddled on the all-dirt infield of their temporary home. There was no mound. The outfield grass was patchy and uneven. But it was what they had to work with.
The captain of the varsity, Ryan Hirschberg, was running a players-only practice, and so he did his job. Displeased with the players’ effort, he scolded them, then watched as they ran mandatory sprints past the outfield and onto an adjacent field.
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The practice felt very serious. And there would be real punishments for not focusing on the purpose of their presence at Cheviot Hills Recreation Center, a public park the city had permitted the team to use to prepare for its season.
In many ways, baseball did not matter. How could it for pitcher Ian Sullivan, whose family’s home had burned down? How could it for infielder Jett Teegardin, who visited his burned-down neighborhood a day later, before returning to the hotel that has become his temporary home? Yet baseball did matter; these players wanted it to matter.
The Palisades fire upended the lives of all 38 baseball players on the school’s junior varsity and varsity rosters. They do not know where they will play this year or what uniforms or equipment they will have, but they are determined to have their season. Baseball is their escape — and a chance to do something for a community that needs something to rally around.
“People don’t get to see the best of you in the best of times,” said Hirschberg, who has donated clothes, organized practices and helped raise $13,000 in donations. “It’s the worst of times where you have to show people who you are.”
On Jan. 7, the fire overtook Pacific Palisades and other neighborhoods in Los Angeles. It killed dozens and destroyed thousands of homes, charring the lives and possessions of everyone in its wake.
The high school, which has been used as a set for films like “Freaky Friday” and shows like “Modern Family,” was significantly damaged. And while much of the baseball field remains intact, the surrounding area was heavily affected. The facility is inaccessible. The uniforms and equipment within it are likely unusable.
Mike Voelkel, the baseball team’s head coach, does not know where it will play home games this season. The hope is a mix of local colleges, but it does not matter. His team will play every game on the road, if it comes to that.
“I told the kids, I said, ‘We’re playing. I don’t care how,’” Voelkel recalled. “We’ll go get T-shirts if we have to. For recovery, for wellness. For the promotion of a young kid’s development. It’s important that you get back out there.”
A coach for 18 years, Voelkel, who lives south of the Palisades, remembers waking from a nap on the afternoon the fires began. He had received an email that morning instructing staff not to go to work. He saw Gov. Gavin Newsom in the Palisades on his television and realized how concerning the situation could become. He began contacting players and their families, many of whom were evacuating.
Classes at Pali High, as the school is known, have shifted online. But the physical separation did not stop his team members from reaching out to help one another. Voelkel’s wife, Norma, who works in real estate, started working to make sure everyone had a place to stay.
Players delivered supplies to teammates. Companies and people started reaching out to offer help. Los Angeles Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said he and some players were planning to attend a practice. The team also donated baseballs. Cincinnati Reds pitcher Hunter Greene, a Los Angeles native, donated cleats. The Pali High basketball team received tickets to a Lakers-Warriors game from Golden State coach Steve Kerr, who is an alumnus.
The support is appreciated; it does not erase the trauma. When the players do take the field again, their new jerseys will have a “Pali Strong” patch stitched on them.
Voelkel was asked what this season would mean, but he interrupted before the question could be completed.
“A victory,” he said. “To take all of this stuff. To piece it together. To get our families taken care of. There’s so many things. I like to win games; I’m very competitive. But in this situation, you have to look at the whole. There are other things that far, far outweigh the winning.”
The practice uniform on Teegardin’s back was delivered to him days before by Hirschberg. It is one of a few sets of clothes that he has. He packed for two days, believing he and his mother would have a home to return to. That night, they looked at their doorbell camera and saw embers flying around the neighborhood.
The next day, he returned to a home that no longer existed. Even the contents of their fireproof safe were destroyed. The neighbors he grew to love are also displaced, their community gone.
“It’s very hard,” Teegardin said. “You picture yourself in your house, your room, everything that’s gone. I was a sperm donor baby. So I didn’t really have a father figure. I’m just trying to be there for my mom, mainly. Throughout every situation, I’ve always tried to be there for her.
“Me talking to her to make sure she’s OK makes me OK. Knowing she’s OK makes me 10 times better.”
When Sullivan, the pitcher, thinks about what he has lost, his mind goes to his collection of game balls, his trophies and pins from a trip to Cooperstown, New York. On the day he was ordered to evacuate, he thought the winds would blow the fire in the opposite direction. His parents were working, so he packed family photos and their cat and dog and left, thinking it would be a short departure.
Instead, a week after the fire, he and 12 of his friends met up at a friend’s house in Calabasas. Nearly all of their homes had been destroyed.
“It’s a dark time right now, but light will always shine through the dark,” he said. “The Palisades is going to be back. I feel like I’m not just playing for myself and my teammates, but I’m playing for my town and my home.”
After the fire, Sullivan and Teegardin sent a group text message to everyone on the team. They knew their teammates might be cautious around them, given their circumstances. Sending the text, they hoped, would break down that wall.
“If this fire isn’t something to light your ass, to get you motivated to win this year, then I don’t know what is,” they wrote.
The responses started flooding in. “Hell yeah,” one sent. People who had never contributed to the chat were sending messages with encouragements of their own.
“I think everyone’s more motivated than ever,” Teegardin said, adding, “This fire, it’s brought us a lot closer.”
On a recent Wednesday afternoon, with the sun setting over practice, a parkgoer approached, curious about what was happening. The man, who was with his dog, asked Sullivan, who was there rehabbing his injured arm, what team the players were with. A conversation ensued: talk of the fire, the lost homes and the coming season. The conversation was so relaxed and friendly, it did not really reflect the subject matter.
“Good luck,” he said to Sullivan. “It’s so horrible.”
A father, Joe Stanley, had driven three of the players to practice that day. He watched intently from the top row of the bleachers.
“I think it’s resilience and pride, definitely,” he said. “These kids are like a family. They spend a lot of time together and are a tight-knit group. This is great. They need this.”
There is a feeling of normalcy to it all. But these players are keenly aware of their reality. Jude De Pastino, a junior, said all the players on his team were experiencing trauma, even if they did not feel it yet. Practice, he said, brings some normalcy.
In the first four days after the fire, he was in a state of shock, he said. He traveled into the Palisades with a group of friends who had all lost homes. Logan Bailey, a senior captain who did the same, said he saw live wires zapping in the street and telephone poles burning down. He said it was surreal, cinematic.
“It’s beyond what you can imagine,” De Pastino said. “Pictures really don’t do it justice. Our whole lives as we know it have quite literally been flattened.”
The players huddled, just before the sun fully set, after nearly three hours of practice. Parents in cars started filling the parking lot, waiting to pick up their sons. The reprieve was special. It was needed, and it will continue almost daily until the season starts in late February.
But for now, that reprieve was ending. And real life, scarier and more uncertain now than it has ever been, was once again awaiting them.
“This is one of those stories you tell on your deathbed,” Bailey said. “You can be as old as it gets, and it still never leaves your mind. It’s going to stick with everyone here for the rest of their lives.”
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