I'm From Portola. Period! by Bob Kaufman

On June 2, 2010 at Comerica Park in Detroit, Michigan, Tigers pitcher Armando Galarraga became the 21st pitcher in Major League history to throw a perfect game...almost.   Galarraga retired the first 26 Cleveland Indians batters he faced and needed only one more out to achieve perfection. The Indians’ 27th batter was Jason Donald. With the count at 1-1, Donald hit a routine ground ball to second base. It looked like an easy out. Galarraga circled toward first base to take the throw, but his bid for baseball immortality failed when first base umpire Jim Joyce, arms flying out to each side as if he had just attacked two invisible assailants with sideways karate chops, signaled that Donald was safe at first base.  I was watching the game live on TV and could see clearly that Donald was out by half a stride.  Everybody in the world knew it.  I wasn't a Tigers fan but who wouldn't cheer for someone who had just thrown a perfect game?  I started to cheer and stopped midway when Joyce signaled "safe", almost straining some critical muscles in the aborted effort.  Galarraga did everything necessary to earn the glory but instead finished with a one-hit shutout in a 3–0 victory.  He faced 28 batters and threw just 88 pitches, 67 strikes and 21 balls, striking out three batters.  That game is sometimes referred to as the "Imperfect Game."

Amando Galarraga's Imperfect Game
The Imperfect Game - Longer Version

Rather than achieving every pitcher's dream, Gallaraga's otherwise perfect achievement is just a footnote in baseball history.  If ever he tells his grandchildren about it, he can't just say "I pitched a perfect game." He is forever consigned to adding a footnote to explain what really happened.  Invariably that will open a lengthy conversation that will interest absolutely nobody.

I HATE FOONOTES!

The intersection of Gulling Street and Highway 40A, 1952.
Photo by Alice Olinghouse (Walker), PHS Class of 1967

When I left home in September 1966 to begin my first year of college, I quickly learned that "Portola, California" as an answer to "where are you from" is an incomplete statement without a footnote.  Sometimes I wished I had grown up in San Francisco, or better yet, Los Angeles.  I envied those who could simply answer: "L.A." It is so compact, efficient and complete! You don't have to say another word after that.  On the other hand, "I'm from Portola" must always be followed by "It's about 50 miles northwest of Reno.” … "No.  You're thinking of Portola Valley.  That's in the Bay Area on the peninsula near San Francisco where there's fog, smog, congestion and lots of weird people.  My hometown is in the mountains on the east side of the state where the air and water are clean and pure, everybody knows everybody else and we don't even have a stop light in town.  In fact we could leave home, forget to lock the doors and return to find everything just as we left it...except if we left the water running on the lawn, a neighbor surely would have turned it off before it started running down the street."

But who would be interested in that?

Portola's Traffic Light
Portola Reporter Photo, 2004

Somebody did “borrow” my sister’s car one night when she left it running in front of the Portola Theater for a minute or two, and went in to help Jolene, who was taken ill.  When Carol went back out of the theater, her car was nowhere in sight. An hour or so later, it mysteriously showed up half a block down the street from our house, with a little less gas than when it disappeared.  Even car thieves in my hometown could be trusted not to do any real harm!

Beyond that one-car-theft incident, any attempt to compare Portola with a big city is complete balderdash at best, and at worst, an insult to the proud country folk who lived and grew up there.

In 2004, thirty-eight years after I left home for the city, they ruined everything and finally put a stop light at the intersection of Gulling Street and the highway, right smack dab in the middle of the north side of town…but that’s another story.

A few years ago, I learned that my grandfather - dad's natural father who I never met, who last contacted the family in the mid 40's some twenty or so years after he first disappeared - died near Los Angeles in 1953 when I was barely five years old.  If life had turned out differently, I might have lived near him and could have realized my dream of being able to say, "I'm from L.A." Period!

With my luck, the next question would have been "Which part?"