The Value of a Quarter

"You're not worth the quarter it takes to buy a Coke."

Remember those words, folks. Because while it might sound like the lyrics to a country song, that phrase became the driving, motivational force in my life and just might be the key reason for many of the successes I've had. However, you might be a little surprised to find out that the source of those words came from a most unlikely place — my dad.

Before you judge, you have to know a little about my dad, one Amaro Louis (Al) Pereira.

I doubt that there has ever been a father that has had more influence on a son than my dad. Why? Maybe it was because he was never afforded the opportunities that he was able to provide me with when I was growing up. He came to America on a boat from the Azores Islands off the coast of Portugal at the age of two. He grew up on a real dairy farm, where he would milk cows both in the morning before school and in the evening when he got home.

But my dad was quite an athlete, too. He could really play, but because of his daily chores, he never really had time to pursue playing high school sports.

He and his family went through the Great Depression, and they lost everything. I mean everything. All they ended up with was their car, their belongings, and $10,000 in debt. It was interesting in those days; my dad's father had to work off all the debt. There was no way this immigrant from Portugal was going to declare bankruptcy, so he learned valuable lessons from his father when he was young.

I truly believe that he wanted to give me the chances that he'd never had. But my dad did get to go away to college, to California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo, better known as Cal Poly SLO. There, he played baseball, and I remember people saying he was a very good player. He continued playing baseball and softball afterward in Stockton, California. That's where I grew up as a child, and I recall watching his every move as a third baseman in fast-pitch softball. To this day, he might have been the biggest jock I've ever seen.

Not only was he a big fan of mine, he was a big fan of just about anything to do with sports. We always used to laugh and say if there wasn't a baseball game, a basketball game, or a football game to watch, my dad would find out where the nearest tiddlywinks match was just so he could watch somebody playing something. I'm joking, but it gives you an idea of how big a sports fan he was.

* * *

He relished watching me get into sports, but my entry into the sports world was not all that spectacular. Ironically, my athletic career had nothing to do with football, though I did give it a shot.

As a high school sophomore, I was a lanky 140 pounds — and that was with weights in both hands. Lanky was one of those unflattering words they used back in the '70s for tall and skinny. The first day of football tryouts, some kid who was about 30 pounds heavier than I was gave me a vicious shot — at least in my mind it was vicious — to the hip. I think I was trying out as a wide receiver, and after catching a pass, the hit was one of those bone-crushing kind of hits that you see in those car commercials where they use crash dummies. I was one and done, as in one day and I'm finished with football and ready to move on.

Hello, basketball.

The next day I was in the gym shooting free throws. While I never played football, which makes where I ended up rather amazing, I did play basketball and baseball, and that piqued much of my dad's interest in me. He was always in the stands when I played, whether it was in Little League in the Hoover Tyler Youth Baseball program in Stockton or my games at Amos Alonzo Stagg High School.

Then in 1968, it was off to college at the University of Santa Clara. Believe it or not, I actually received a scholarship to play both basketball and baseball there. I'm still not sure what my dad had to do with it exactly, but I suspect it was something, because the basketball coach, Dick Garibaldi, and he were good friends. Of course, it could have been that Santa Clara sent a football coach, Bill McPherson, to scout me to play baseball.

Or maybe it was really Dusty Baker who was responsible for me getting that scholarship. Yes, that Dusty Baker, the very successful 19-year major leaguer and 20-year manager Dusty Baker who is now managing the Washington Nationals.

Baker was a great high school baseball player at Del Campo High School in Sacramento and he was highly recruited by a lot of schools, including Santa Clara. Baker even signed a letter of intent to attend Santa Clara on a full scholarship. Fortunately for me, Baker also happened to be drafted by the Atlanta Braves and he eventually chose professional baseball over college.

As the saying goes ... when one door closes, another one opens. Who cares if it was the back door I was walking through now that Santa Clara had one last scholarship available? I think they divided up Baker's scholarship eight ways and I got one-eighth. All I cared about was that I was in.

I took a shot at basketball first. But I was still a runt, the skinniest guy on the team, and I quickly saw that my future in basketball was going to be very limited. Let me put it in perspective for you: Larry Bird and Magic Johnson would not have been threatened by my basketball prowess. At the time, Santa Clara had a pretty good freshman team. We had a 15-man team, and my toughest job each game was finding where the 15 chair was going to be located on the floor because that's where I'd be sitting.

That was a pretty good indication that my future was not in basketball, either. I was such a perceptive young man. So I turned to baseball and actually did pretty well. So much so that I thought I might have a shot at a career in professional baseball.

* * *

Before I continue, I must tell you the "quarter story."

In any relationship between a father and son, certain things are said or done that shape you as an individual. Before going to Santa Clara, I played American Legion baseball. I was 15 years old and played for the Karl Ross team in Stockton. I remember one game against a team from Lodi, California, like it was yesterday.

Picture this: Lawrence Stadium in Lodi, in June, just the beginning of summer. Yet it was unbelievably hot: 104 degrees in the...