GARY GREEN

Stored safely at home, Gary Green still has his Dodger rookie team

baseball uniform from the summer of 1958, when he played for the

traveling squad after his freshman year at Orange Coast College.

“I wish I could still get into that uniform,” Green quipped.

A basketball and baseball star at Newport Harbor High and OCC,

Green grew up sort of like a minor leaguer, bouncing around from town

to town and station to station.

“I never went to the same school two years in a row, until my last

two years at Newport Harbor, from kindergarten on,” said Green (Class

of 1957), the son of a salesman “who changed jobs like we change our

sheets.”

A 6-foot, 185-pound right-handed pitcher, Green had the stuff that

earned him a baseball scholarship to USC, after meriting Eastern

Conference Player of the Year honors for Coach Wendell Pickens’

Pirates in ’59.

In ‘59, Green was given the team’s Most Valuable Player Award, the

first time the Orange Coast baseball program featured such a tribute.

Green was also named OCC’s Athlete of the Year in ’59.

Green was also Newport Harbor’s Athlete of the Year in 1957, when

he led Coach Jules Gage’s basketball team to the Sunset League

championship and a 19-6 mark. It was Newport Harbor’s second straight

Sunset title in hoops. On the diamond, Green posted a 9-3 record on

the mound and earned All-Sunset League honors for the second

consecutive season.

But it wasn’t always cushy for Green at Newport Harbor, the new

kid on the block at a beach school in an affluent area as a

sophomore, after coming from rather humble settings.

“It was tough to come in as the new kid,” said Green, born in

Ogden, Utah, and raised mostly in Nebraska, before his family moved

to California, where he attended Van Nuys Birmingham High his

freshman year.

“The smog was so bad in those days (in the San Fernando Valley),

they wouldn’t let us practice basketball, because you couldn’t

breathe. Your lungs would just be on fire,” Green said. “So going

from there to Newport Beach was like going to heaven.”

Meeting new friends in the middle of his sophomore year was a lot

tougher than making bounce passes on the hardwood or spinning

curveballs in the spring.

“The hardest thing to get used to was the fact that it’s such a

rich area,” Green said. “The kids drove better cars than my

(parents). The whole thing was totally new to me. I’d never been in

that kind of atmosphere. It was kind of hard to fit in, but it was

not too hard once sports started. That was a great introduction to

meeting people. It wasn’t that bad. We lived in Costa Mesa off Harbor

Boulevard in an old house with a dirt street.”

A two-time All-Sunset League basketball and baseball player, Green

was reportedly once named to Gage’s all-time Newport Harbor hoops

team (1953-62 era) -- along with Paul Neumann, Denny Fitzpatrick, Ed

Pope and Bob Wetzel.

Green said he “couldn’t jump,” but could shoot from outside and

play tenacious defense. “My hands were my biggest asset,” said Green,

who always guarded the opponent’s best, and sometimes tallest,

player.

When Green’s basketball career continued at OCC, he helped

first-year cage coach Alan Sawyer’s Pirates win the Eastern

Conference championship in 1957-58, finishing with a 20-8 record, and

was the team captain the following season when they ended 24-7. He

was an all-conference selection both campaigns.

In baseball at Orange Coast, Green was a highly sought-after

pitcher, but also played third base and batted .411 his sophomore year in ’59.

At USC, Green’s baseball career came to an end, after he “screwed

up” and “didn’t stick it out.”

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

lives in the Bay area with his wife, Vicky, and two stepchildren.

Green has worked in the janitorial business for over 30 years.