Gold cruises at high altitude over Black clouds

Photo: Lincoln Chung (hands raised) was on Ohdahorra's Culver City championship team last season.

     By Bill Tarrant

     Carlos Arias was fuming after Gold soared past his Black team 23-14 on Sunday.

     “It’s illegal,” the shortstop told Gold Manager Bill Tarrant about the high arc pitches he was delivering to a frustrated Black team. “It was like the ball was being dropped from a plane. It was way over 12 feet. You controlled the whole game, even with (giving up) the walks. “

     Before the contest, Tarrant confirmed with Rules Commissioner Bob Richardson that the Southern California Municipal Athletic Federation (SCMAF) rules, which the Culver City league has long adopted, has height limits of 6-16 feet. He also confirmed with Johnny the Ump that was his understanding as well. And Tarrant and Black pitcher Walt Shubin even tried estimating what the 16-foot mark might be against the backstop before the game.

     Tarrant said he decided to reach for the sky when Robertson casually mentioned the 16-foot height limit at the preseason managers’ meeting.

     We can expect to hear more about this controversy when the managers convene for their quarterly meeting this Sunday.

     Pitching was just one part of the Gold flight plan.

     The team again smacked the ball all over the field, taking advantage of Shubin’s wildness – he issued 7 walks. For the second straight game, Lincoln Chung was one hit short of a cycle, going 4 for 4 with a single, triple and home run, for which he was awarded the game ball. Jim Devico had three doubles and a homer; Thom Hutchinson, who had a couple of spectacular catches in left, homered and was on base four times with 3 runs scored and 3 RBIs; and Steve Shertzer was 4 for 4, also with 3 runs scored and 3 RBIs. The bottom four in the Gold order glittered, with a collective on-base percentage of .550.

     And all this against a team that had been tied for first in the standings.

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     Hardly anybody was playing baseball in Hong Kong in the 1960s and ‘70s when Lincoln was a kid in the former British colony. Soccer. Rugby. Badminton, big time. But when Lincoln arrived in Santa Monica in 1974 at age 11, baseball was the game on offer.

     “I learned the game days before Little League tryouts. My dad bought me and my brothers the cheapest, worst gloves at Thrifty’s (before it became Rite Aid). The manager told us to go get some real gloves at Big 5.”

     “We just fell in love with the game right away. Baseball was an absolutely new and unique thing for us.”

     Suburban American life in Santa Monica must have been a jolt, as well. Hong Kong in the 1970s was where East met West. Aberdeen harbor was crammed with sampans and junks servicing the cargo ships that made the city-state one of the world’s great ports. Streets seethed with exotic activity: bicycle rickshaws plying the alleyways between tall tenements, balconies draped with laundry; folks in conical hats tending barrows and hand-pulled carts, plying street food and sundry goods.

     Lincoln’s family was one of Hong Kong's notable property tycoons (derived from the Japanese ti-kun, “lord” or “princely wealth”), whose holdings included luxury hotels, factories and commercial buildings at a time when the city was in super-charged development. “We were the original crazy, rich Asians,” Lincoln says.

     Lincoln’s father lost much of his money in the early 1970s in a dispute with his business partner brothers, prompting the move to California – he was a Berkeley graduate. Lincoln has not been back since then.

     He received a BA in architecture at Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo before getting an MA in the field at Columbia University. He spent the next 35 years designing luxury homes and interior designs in the Santa Monica area at his own firm.

     When he wasn’t designing homes, he was a top player for many years in an all-ages, highly competitive Santa Monica league (with Gold teammate Jim Devico) until the Covid shutdown and subsequent knee surgery. “I still wanted to play, but I was nowhere near as important, just filling out the roster.”

     He joined the Culver City League two seasons ago, where the 8-rated Chung is once again an important player. “Jim and I, we’re just at the age (turning 62), where we can still play at a high level” in the senior softball circuit.

     Lincoln has much more time for that, now that he’s winding down his award-winning architecture business.

     “I’m practicing how to be retired,” said the divorced father of a son and daughter. “It’s kind of a rebirth for me.”