Baseball was.
For Albie Pearson, it’s past tense. The game — his 14 major and minor league seasons a half century ago — is that dusty box buried under everything in the storage unit off the side of the garage.
That’s where Pearson, one of the original 1961 Angels and the first to score a run for the franchise, believes he stashed the items from former career: the photos, trading cards, caps and his 1963 All-Star Game bat he had signed by Mickey Mantle and Brooks Robinson.
“Baseball was so long ago that if I tried to run from third to home, I’d pull every muscle in my body” said laughing Pearson, 76, who will only be asked to deliver the ceremonial first pitch tonight at Angel Stadium.
“Baseball was my passion for 14 years, and I loved it. But when you see a life changed, it’s worth everything compared to getting a base hit or winning a game.”
When chronic back problems forced Pearson to retire in 1966, the 5-foot-5 outfielder, popular for being the most diminutive player of his era, turned to fulfilling a calling he has wanted to answer since he was a child. He was ordained as a minister in 1972, set up churches and orphanages in Ecuador and Zambia and founded the Father’s Heart Ranch in Desert Hot Springs and Father’s Heart International.
Few knew he had been in the major leagues, that he was the 1958 AL Rookie of the Year while with the Washington Senators, hit a grand slam while with Baltimore in 1960 and won the start in center field over a slow-starting Mantle in the 1963 All-Star Game. Baseball doesn’t matter to a boy who’s hungry, hurt or hopeless.
While still a player, Pearson and his wife of 57 years, Helen, had started a foundation to help troubled youth. In 1997 they decided to sell their home, buy an 11-acre parcel in Desert Hot Springs and build a home they opened as generously as their hearts to abused, abandoned and neglected boys, ages 6-12. They called it Father’s Heart Ranch.
“I knew this was the direction my life had to take when I was 6,” recalled Pearson by phone from his home in La Quinta. “I’ll never forget it.”
It was seven decades ago when 6-year-old Pearson stole his mother’s blue satin decorative pillows and made the bases for his makeshift baseball diamond in the backyard of his El Monte home. Alone, he pretended he hammered a winning homer to beat the New York Yankees to capture the World Series.
Rounding the bases, he imagined hearing the crowd’s roar. He crossed the plate, which was a piece of cardboard he cut to exact dimensions and nailed into the dirt. It was then he heard a voice. “‘Join my team,’ is what He said to me,” Pearson recalled.
Pearson believed in God. Divine intervention in the only way he could explain how a player of his size — 5-foot-4 and 120 pounds when he turned pro — could get to The Show. He was such a longshot from the beginning that he signed his pro contract for nothing except two pairs of baseball cleats, a new suitcase and a promise of making $225 a month if he went to spring training with the San Jose Red Sox and made the team.
“Someone was looking out for me,” said the Angels two-time comeback player of the year.
Pearson found it all too fitting when he was the 30th and final selection by a team named the Angels in the 1960 expansion draft. He knew his baseball career had come full circle when during one of his Angels season, he smacked a Whitey Ford curveball over the right-field wall for a home run against the Yankees.
“At that moment, I remembered being in the backyard as a kid and I knew that there was more for me to do than baseball,” recalled Pearson. “I was ready for the next step in my life.”
Albie and Helen Pearson raised five children — all girls — and have 17 grandchildren and a 16th great-grandchild on the way. They have poured their energies into Father’s Heart International, which every week feeds about 4,000 Zambian children who have lost their parents to AIDS, and Father’s Heart Ranch, which has 24 boys, ages 6 to 12, who have been placed their by social services in Riverside, San Bernardino and Imperial Counties.
The Pearsons and a dedicated staff work with the boys, show them love and patience. The Ranch started a Pop Warner football team and a Little League team that, Albie Pearson proudly said, went 18-1 two years ago, lost only to the Dodgers and came back to beat them for the championship.
“They need to see that they have a purpose,” he said. “That takes time and trust.”
Some boys are angry, having been abandoned by parents who needed drugs more than their children, had been imprisoned or been abusive. Scarred inside and out, they are the hardest to unlock. Some have lost hope.
It’s then that Pearson stands in front of them, tells them he used to play for the Angels, that he was an All-Star “who spent his entire big league career looking at belly buttons.” He was in 988 games, batted .270 and had 214 RBIs and 28 home runs.
“Look at this,” he tells them, standing, waving his arms at his sides. “Nothing is impossible.”
He’s proof.
“It’s interesting and amazing how they respond to love. We found that to be a key,” said Pearson. “When they find out that they are not just something to kick and hit, but that they have a purpose, a God who really loves them, they begin to respond in a dramatic way. They are little miracles.”
Pearson’s voiced slowed as he spoke about a 7-year-old boy who arrived at the ranch. He had been beaten by his mother’s boyfriend with a rowboat oar and then locked in a closet. He hadn’t gone to school. He didn’t know how to read or write.
“We started working with him every day, talking to him, building trust,” said Pearson of the boy, now 12. “We started teaching him. He’s a genius.”
About 35 staff members and children from Father’s Ranch will be at Angel Stadium tonight to see Pearson throw out the first pitch. He will be reconnecting with a pastime that was past time for this Guardian Angel.
— Reporting from Anaheim.
Contact the writer: masmith@ocregister.com
For more Angels news, check out the more columns by Marcia C. Smith, the Angels blog, and ocregister.com/angels
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