Former Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan will throw out the ceremonial first pitch to open the 2009 Palisades Pony Baseball Association season Saturday at 9 a.m. at the Palisades Recreation Center’s Field of Dreams. At 78 years young, Riordan has been enjoying himself on the ski slopes in Sun Valley, Idaho, but will return in time to test the strike zone for one of the town’s longest-running traditions. Riordan credits his childhood passion for keeping him mentally and physically strong despite the stress of his career. “I’ve been skiing since my kids were young,” he said. “I race and used to say I was the oldest racer until some guy who was 86 beat me by a hundred yards.” Riordan, who served as mayor from 1993 to 2001, grew up in Queens and then in New Rochelle, New York, but he has plenty of ties to Pacific Palisades. His family owns Village Pantry (and the Oak Room) and Gladstone’s and his daughter Trish Torrey lives here with her husband Dana and their two children. “As kids all we did was play sports, but it wasn’t organized sports,” he said, recalling how he and his friends played stickball in the streets because they couldn’t afford bats and then, in the fall, switching to tackle football on the cement. They would also crawl under or climb over high fences to get onto a field to play. “There isn’t a sport we didn’t play as a child,” Riordan added. One of his fondest childhood memories is playing hockey in the winter and going home with red, cold hands that he put under the cold-water faucet because it made the hands feel warmer. The youngest of nine children, he said he was lucky that his mother let him have freedom after school to play. “Or maybe she just lost all interest,” Riordan joked. He has never thrown out the first pitch at a major league stadium, but Riordan would rather do the honors here. He distinctly remembers a Little League game when his son’s team was behind 15-1 with one inning left. “The other team walked 16 batters in a row and my son’s team won.” Riordan also remembers a baseball story that President Ronald Reagan told about when he was working as a sports announcer. This was before modern technology, when games were described via a tape that would have baseball terminology on it (like “K” for a strikeout, “5-3” (the third baseman throws to the first baseman for an out) and Reagan would translate the shorthand into his play-by-play commentary. Once, in the middle of a game, the tape broke and Reagan had no idea what was happening, so he started improvising: the batter got a foul tip, then a foul ball behind first base, then a foul ball down the third base line. “Before the tape was fixed, the batter had 18 foul balls,” Riordan said. Currently reading Philip Howard’s new book, “Life Without Lawyers: Liberating Americans From Too Much Law,” Riordan bemoans the fact that, because the fear of injury lawsuits is so high, today’s kids are not free to have the carefree childhood he enjoyed. “You have to let kids go out there, if they get hurt, they get hurt,” he said. In high school, Riordan was a jack of all sports trades, playing football, hockey, baseball and basketball. When it came to baseball, he preferred either catcher or third base because, as he said “You don’t have time to choke. Second base is the worst.” Riordan went to Santa Clara University on a football scholarship, but wasn’t good enough and soon transferred to Princeton University, where he played rugby. “It’s a fun sport and less dangerous than football because you don’t get blocked,” Riordan said. During his army years in Korea, Riordan played in organized touch football leagues and while in law school at the University of Michigan, he participated in intramural sports. A spirited hockey game, in fact, led to the completion of Walt Disney Concert Hall in downtown Los Angeles in 2003. “When I was playing with [architect] Frank Gehry, we both ended up on the ice, each claiming we had illegally checked the other,” Riordan recalled. “It was then that Gehry looked at me and said “Riordan, you and I are going to make Disney Hall happen.'” When he’s in town, Riordan still takes two 40-minute bike rides a week, from his home in Brentwood to Playa del Rey. “I have breakfast, then I come back,” he said. “We, as adults, have to be leaders to get more kids interested in sports.” The pancake breakfast begins at 7:30 a.m. Tickets can be purchased now from Pinto (ages 7-9), Mustang (9-10), Bronco (11-12) or Pony (13-14) players. All proceeds go to the Field of Dreams Fund to help pay for maintenance.
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