Tom Baldwin, Millennium Hall of Fame

Richard Dunn

More than 20 years ago, Tom Baldwin realized what coaching football

meant to him when he stopped doing it.

And, even though Baldwin’s birth certificate indicates an eligibility

for retirement benefits, the Costa Mesa High offensive coordinator isn’t

going anywhere soon.

At least not at this pace.

“I have no intention of retiring,” said Baldwin, who turns 69 on Jan.

31. “Someone said you might actually make more money by retiring than

coaching, but you still have to do something every day or you’ll wilt

away. I want to be doing something all the time and I want to coach

football for as long as I can. Coaching is something you love doing.”

Including three tours of duty at Santa Ana High, two stops at Santa

Ana Valley and two at Costa Mesa, Baldwin has changed hands 11 times in a

career that started at Long Beach State in 1957.

Baldwin, a dedicated economics teacher at Mesa who was able to coach

his grandson (Ronnie Lievanos) three years ago, enjoyed some of his

greatest triumphs as the Santa Ana head coach in the late 1960s, when

nobody could catch Isaac Curtis and Eddie Steward.

In what many Orange Countians call a golden era of high school

football, when Coach Clare Van Hoorebeke’s Anaheim Colonists were still

going strong and most of the county had yet to be developed, Baldwin’s

Saints were a powerful force in the Sunset League.

Autumn games against Mater Dei, Servite and Anaheim at the Santa Ana

Bowl and Anaheim Stadium would outdraw the Angels in those years. “We

really packed them in,” Baldwin said. “We played to a packed house a lot

(at the Santa Ana Bowl).”

In the 1967 CIF Southern Section 4-A championship game at Anaheim

Stadium between Anaheim and Santa Ana, a crowd of 26,383 watched Van

Hoorebeke’s Colonists beat Baldwin’s Saints, 27-6.

At the time, the attendance figure was the second-largest at Anaheim

Stadium for a prep football game. Today, it ranks as the sixth-biggest

crowd.

That ’67 season, Baldwin was missing three key players for the CIF

title game. But, earlier, the Saints knocked off Servite in front of

about 20,000 at Anaheim Stadium, and beat Anaheim, 28-0, in the regular

season when the Colonists were ranked No. 1 and the Saints, at full

strength, were No. 3.

“When Santa Ana played Mater Dei (at the Bowl), people were packed in

by 4:30 in the afternoon,” Baldwin said. “When I die, I want my ashes

sprinkled along the sidelines and in the end zone at the Santa Ana Bowl.”

When Curtis was inducted into the Cincinnati Bengals’ Hall of Fame in

the late ‘80s, he asked Baldwin to present him to the capacity crowd at

Riverfront Stadium during the halftime ceremony.

“Isaac invited me back to Cincinnati for the whole week,” Baldwin said

of his former player, who teamed with Bengals quarterback Ken Anderson in

the 1970s to become one of profootball’s most prolific passing-receiving

combinations with 53 touchdowns in 12 years, the seventh-highest all-time

total for a scoring duo.

Baldwin was Santa Ana’s head man from 1965 to 1974, then worked for

the Southern California Sun of the defunct World Football League as a

secondary coach, Director of Personnel and Vice President of Football

Operations. But the league folded after two years.

“That was a super time,” said Baldwin, who coached with Tom Fears and

later went into the player scouting business with Fears, a Pro Football

Hall of Famer.

Baldwin played football at Santa Ana College and Long Beach State,

then started his coaching career with the 49ers, before landing at Santa

Ana High as an assistant coach in ’58.

The next year, Baldwin helped open a new school, SA Valley, where he

coached for six years, then accepted his first head coaching assignment

at Santa Ana in ’65.

In 1979, after briefly working in the insurance business, Baldwin

returned to Santa Ana for a third stint under Coach Tom Meiss as the

Saints won 10 straight games and the Century League title, while reaching

the CIF Southern Conference semifinals.

Baldwin said leaving football coaching for the insurance business was

“the biggest mistake” he’d ever made, because “it wasn’t what I really

wanted to do.”

After coaching with Meiss, Baldwin returned to Valley as a head coach

(1981-83), then wound up at Costa Mesa in 1984 to take over a sagging

program. Mesa’s junior varsity was 0-10 the previous year and its

freshmen team was 0-9. “And,” Baldwin said, “we had nobody coming back

who started (on varsity). Costa Mesa was pretty much rock bottom when I

came here.”

Baldwin guided the Mustangs back to respectability and the CIF

playoffs in ‘88, Mesa’s first postseason trip in nine years. In 1990,

Mesa made the playoffs again on the heels of Pacific Coast League wins

over Century, Laguna Beach and Estancia, 26-3.

As Mesa’s head coach from 1984 to ‘91, Baldwin was among the most

colorful and quotable coaches of his time, often with humorous

commentary.

Baldwin served as an assistant at Corona del Mar (1992-93) and Chaffey

College (1994-95), before returning to Costa Mesa, where he’s in his

fifth year as an assistant under Coach Jerry Howell.

Baldwin, the latest honoree in the Daily Pilot Sports Hall of Fame,

lives in Santa Ana with his wife of 46 years, Carol. They have two grown

children and six grandchildren.

Baldwin’s son, Danny, was Santa Ana High’s football Player of the Year

in 1977. His grandson, Lievanos, was a star for Mesa in 1996 and ’97.

Another grandson, Shane Baldwin, is playing high school football in

Michigan.