Many Millard stories

 Editor’s note: A memorial service for Ken Millard will take place Friday at noon at the Mesa Verde United Methodist Church in Costa Mesa, 1701 West Baker Street.

Those who knew Ken Millard, the former Estancia High baseball coach and physical education teacher who died Monday at age 76, said he had a story for everything.

He also generated more than a few, some of which those who knew him will remember him by.

Here is a sampling:

 Bob Flint, who coached against Millard’s Estancia teams and coached with him at Irvine and Woodbridge high schools, said his introduction to Millard when his Irvine team played Estancia in the 1980s, was memorable and less than benevolent.

“The first time we played, we beat them, 1-0,” Flint said. “I started to move toward the plate to shake hands with their team and I got to the end of the line and I could see Ken was still grousing around in the dugout at TeWinkle Park. So I went into the dugout and stuck my hand out. He kind of slapped at it and said yeah, yeah, that’s [baloney].

“I thought, ‘What a jerk.’

“But I kind of always felt the same way about not wanting to shake hands after a game. So, every time we played after that, we’d just walk past each other and just say ‘[Forget] you.’ Then, two hours later, we were having a beer together.”

 Millard had many sayings about the game, known as Millard-isms. One of his favorites was “The ball knows,” a reference to the game exposing any discretion by those who played it, whether personal or athletic.

“He was absolutely right, because the ball knows,” Flint said. “A kid would strike out and would come back in the dugout and Ken would say ‘You talked to a girl today, didn’t you?’ The ball knew.”

 Another Millard-ism was “Rub dirt on it,” which he used whenever anyone ever was hit by the ball on the diamond.

“One day,” Flint said, “he was coaching first base and got absolutely drilled in the chest by a line drive. He went down on one knee and the park got silent. He leaned down and grabbed some infield dirt and rubbed it on his chest.”

Dan Hankin, a fellow assistant coach at Woodbridge, remembered after Millard’s first stroke three or four years ago, Millard was in a hospital in La Palma and didn’t want to see visitors.

“We wanted to figure out a way to cheer him up, so I put some dirt from Windrow Park [Woodbridge’s home field] and put it in a jar,” Hankin said. “And we took over a new cap and the dirt and got an administrator to deliver it to him. They told us he rubbed some of that dirt on his head every day he was there.”

 Rich Amaral, a former Estancia standout who went on to play 10 seasons in the Major Leagues, remembers Millard attending a three-game series to watch him in Seattle, when he was with the Mariners.

“I cleared it with the club to get Coach down on the field for batting practice,” Amaral said. “He was hanging out around the batting cage with Lou Pinella and I talked with him for a while in our dugout, before I had to go into the clubhouse and get ready for the game. I showed him how he could get to the elevator that would take him back up to his seat. When I finished running my pregame sprints in the outfield, I was coming back to the dugout and I saw his red Estancia hat in one of the photographer wells next to our dugout.

He had introduced himself to the photographers and they told him he could stay there for the whole game.

Only Coach would do something like that. I went to the end of the dugout to get a drink of water a couple times and popped my head around the corner to say hi to Coach a couple times and I told some of my teammates to do the same. After the game, I went over to say goodbye to Coach. He was so excited that he had watched the whole game from the camera well, but he was noticeably upset because we had lost. I said, ‘Coach, it’s OK. We play a game every day.’ ”

 Flint said he went to see Millard at the Costa Mesa Golf & Country Club and didn’t notice him behind the bar where he worked.

“I asked if Ken Millard was going to be there that night and I got blank stares,” Flint said. “Finally, some guy said ‘You mean Coach?’ And everyone said, ‘Oh Coach. Yeah, he’ll be here later.’ Everybody knew him as Coach.”

 Joe Ronquillo, a former Estancia player and assistant coach to whom Millard became a father figure, said he revealed a softer side to students and players who later approached him as an adult.

“He had a gruff exterior and he scowled a lot,” Ronquillo said. “But he welcomed everybody back. We’d be with him at a ballgame or having a beer and someone would come up out of the blue and say ‘Coach, you were my P.E. teacher 15 years ago.’ He didn’t remember them right away, but in a few minutes, they’d be talking about all kinds of stuff and that person would walk away thinking ‘Man, that guy really remembers me.’ ”

Now, Millard is the one remembered.