User:Vince Klock

Vincent Klock, son of James D. and Rosemary Willits Klock. Born November 13th, 1956 in Oakland,CA. Born to a United States Navy man the family moved to Hawaii in 1959. All that's left of that are faded out pictures of Hawaii, and the one that stands out is a parade through downtown celebrating the Military. Can't be certain what the parade represented. Pictures of missiles, tanks, other explosive devices and you can see people cheering like they were cheering a celebrity.

After Hawaii they spent many years traveling the USA from base to base, school to school and friends to friends. That was probably the toughest of all was making good friends and having to say goodbye 3 years later. Looking back that's probably why I never had a long term relationship that seemed to last. I was used to be alone, but never lonely.

Moving on to Japan in 1966 I started my Little League "career" in Yokohama with my father as one of the coaches. The manager's name was Dusty Rhodes...swear :) No relation of course to 'the' Dusty Rhodes but fun all the same. Little League was great fun as I recall. Had some really goofy kids on the team. One that my dad remembers to this day. Joe Darling. Great kid as I remember, just not into sports. He would play right field for us maybe 2 innings a game. He was either looking for a 4 leaf clover, or running from a bee, or just looking into the clouds. Remember the movie Bad News Bears? That was us one year. I played 2nd base and often had to run out to right field and either catch the ball or chase it because I knew Joe wanted nothing to do with it. The highlight of it all was having my dad there. We were never very close, not out of spite or anything but just the fact he was in the service. He was or seemed to be at sea most of my young life. So when we had that time, it was more than special to me.

I'm going to make this part quick as some know, some things are better left in the past. My Little League ended on probably the worst case scenario possible. I had made the all-star team and hit lead off. I still had the scorebook from the season and was amazed to see I hit over .700 for the entire season. Anyway that wasn't important to me back then...yes, I look back and smile now...why not eh? So, anyways, we're playing a Japanese team to advance in the all-start series. We were up first and I led off with a triple. My best friend from then was (hopefully still is) Steve Huntsinger, my 1st baseman. He hit a double to knock me in. We ended up scoring 11 runs in the first inning. Problem? Not if you don't give up 13 in the bottom of the inning. Yes, that's what happened. Those guys were smoking the ball wherever it lookeed like they were aiming. Unreal. We managed to get out of that mess and the game actually went back to "normal". We ended up tying them only to be a run down in the last inning. All they needed was 3 outs to advance. All we needed was a run to tie and 2 to take the lead. Here we go. . .bases loaded. . .two outs. . .I'm up. If it's possible for a Little Leaguer to "work" the count I did the best I could to stay alive. 3 balls, 2 strikes, 2 outs, bases loaded, one run down. Here's the pitch - it's a high hard pitch, eye level....all I have to do is watch it go by, but nooooo, I swing and miss it by 6 inches. Game Over! /cry