“Right Place, Write Time: A Lifetime Of Memories With Sports Legends”

Tiger Woods “won nine times in 2000,” Chico State grad Mark Soltau writes, “a year many consider the best stretch in golf history. He won three majors and returned to Pebble Beach in June to capture the U.S. Open by a record 15 strokes.” 

A longtime sportswriter for the San Francisco Examiner, who worked for Tigerwoods.com from 1997 through 2018, Soltau says that “at most tournaments, I would spend time with Tiger … and wish him well. The first time I said, ‘Good luck,’ he glared at me. ‘It’s not luck,’ he said. From then on, I have always said, ‘Play well.’” 

Tiger “did a surprise video when I was inducted into the Chico State Athletics Hall of Fame in 2007.”

Soltau covers his five decades in sports writing with an exuberant memoir, “Right Place, Write Time: A Lifetime Of Memories With Sports Legends” ($19.95 in paperback, independently published; also for Amazon Kindle). No stranger to football (“I covered the NFL for almost 25 years”), Soltau “spent much of my childhood attending games with my mother at Kezar Stadium…. My father, Gordy, was an all-pro end and place kicker for the San Francisco 49ers (1950-58) and led the NFL in scoring in 1952 and 1953.”

Soltau’s book, loaded with photographs, includes chapters on Bill Walsh, Steve Young, John McEnroe, Barry Bonds, Walter Payton (at Laguna Seca Raceway), and Joe Montana (who used the sideline phone, meant to connect with coaches, to call his wife: “I’m just sitting here on the sideline and thought I’d call and tell you I Love You”).

In 1977, as a Chico State senior, Soltau’s father gifted him two tickets to Super Bowl XI, pitting the Oakland Raiders against the Minnesota Vikings at Pasadena’s Rose Bowl. He and a buddy managed to get there and found their seats “were on the 50-yard line on the press box side in the middle of American Football Conference owner’s section.” The Raiders won, 32-14. The two made it back to Chico the next day, “tired and euphoric.”

The book is not a tell-all, but a “let me tell you about my friends.” Well played, Mark.

“Distant Finish”

Commander David D. Bruhn, U.S. Navy (Retired) is the consummate naval historian, publishing more than two dozen books on the topic. But the Chico resident, and Chico State grad, also has running in mind—as in “road racing,” road, trail, and relay racing.

He’s now completed a trilogy “devoted to competitive running in northern California in the 1970s.” “Toe The Mark” focuses on Chico’s high school running programs; “Stride Out” turns its attention to Chico State; and the final book in the series, “Distant Finish” ($29 in paperback from Heritage Books, Inc.) covers “road racing” from the Bay Area northward.

“Distant Finish” is co-authored by Jack Leydig, who not only served as the president of the West Valley Track Club but published 81 issues of the Northern California Running Review from November 1969 to Spring 1981; the story of running in the 1970s draws heavily on this “bible of the sport.” 

Each chapter presents stats and stories for a single year. There’s an appendix and index, and 176 historical photographs. The cover shows “Mad Dog” Bill Scobey of Humboldt State College, who in 1970 told a reporter he averaged running 125 miles a week on “dedicated” weeks;  and Luanne Park, “a 1978 Chico High graduate” who ran for Butte College in 1980, achieving a time of 2:11.07 in the 800 meters, “number one … on the college’s all-time Top 10 List.”

“Bob Darling was the San Francisco Olympic Club’s second runner in the 1969 Bay to Breakers with a 28th place finish…. In autumn 1969, Darling became Chico State College’s second-ever All-American in the sport of cross country with his 14th place finish at the national championships.” The book closes with how Darling got the bittersweet nickname “the Rocket.”

“Readers who ran road races in northern California in the 70s,” the authors note, “may well find their names in this book.” The decade began “just before the ‘running boom’ spurred by Frank Shorter winning the gold medal in the 1972 Olympic Marathon…. The so-called running fad that developed during this period never slowed down once it laced up its shoes.” As Darling writes in a foreword, these “distance runners blazed the trail for future generations!”

"Through The Red Door"

Chico State University's Men's Division II Basketball is helmed by coach Greg Clink. The coach, in his mid-forties, came to Chico in 2008, taking the 8-19 Wildcats in the 2008-2009 season to an 22-8 record in 2014-2015, winning the California Collegiate Athletics Association conference title.

Could the Wildcats repeat in the 2015-2016 season? Writer Carson Medley spent that year with coach Clink and the team, chronicling the games and exploring Clink's life and leadership that shaped an extraordinary basketball program. The Clink ethos is symbolized by a painted door to Acker Gym. "Take as much time as you need," Clink will tell a player, "but when you walk through that Red Door, you better be ready to get after it."

The story reads like a novel. "Through The Red Door" ($22.99 in paperback from CreateSpace; also for Amazon Kindle) tracks the season in masterful prose and page-turning energy.

Clink wants his players to have the right mental set: “We talk about walking the line that borders on being composed and doing something crazy. I like it when our guys teeter on that line. I never want them to cross it and do something stupid, but I want them foaming at the mouth." Yet Clink's focus is not just on winning, but winning right. "Clink’s mission," Medley notes, "is for his young men to transcend basketball."

Defining leadership, "Clink doesn’t have to think more than three seconds. … 'It’s the consistent example of the behavior you want, you expect, you demand your people to follow.' He points out that he must always practice what he preaches."

Many contributed to Medley's project, including Sports Information Director Luke Reid (who took the cover photograph), Athletic Director Anita Barker, and broadcaster Mike Baca.

And the season? "Pace and stillness. A blood moon. Unscripted drama despite the relentless practice and preparation and choreography. Agony and ecstasy and the thrill of victory and the desolation of defeat. Miracles. Fortune. Misfortune. Laughter and tears. Shoves and hugs. Jazz, rap, and country music. Organic. Unedited. Pure spur of the moment-dang-good-old fashioned fun." And three words at the end, from a player's grandmother, that changed everything.

Three other words: Read the book.

A Paradise Olympian

The Wikipedia article on Jack Yerman notes that the retired high school teacher, who lives in Paradise, "played football for Berkeley in the Rose Bowl." An extraordinary achievement, considering his origins. "When Jack was born on February 5, 1939, his father ... sat behind the bars of the Butte County Jail--the family guesses it was a fight, or maybe he was drunk, or maybe he owed someone money, or maybe it was everything. The hospital clerk in Oroville wrote 'Common Laborer' on the birth certificate."

His mother, Irene, divorced him soon after. Jack grew up in Woodland. "Mom and Gram had pooled their resources to purchase a small, one bedroom home for $500" and that was home to Irene, Jack and his sister. "Jack never heard the words I love you in his home. He did not know that other mothers cradled their children and read to them before bed." Yet Jack wanted something more, and the dream became clear. He wanted to run. "Something inside said, Your time will come."

Just what happened is told by one of his sons, Bruce Hamilton Yerman, in "Your Time Will Come: Jack Yerman And His Incredible Journey to The 1960 Olympics" ($11.99 in paperback from Lulu.com; also available in ePub digital format--for details, visit bhyerman.wix.com/books).

Bruce Yerman has done readers a great favor in setting his father's story (including his courtship of Margo) into historical context. The book contains an extensive bibliography and a selection of photographs. Jack Yerman made news not just as a football player but as a runner. The story of the preparation for the 1960 Olympics in Rome comes from interviews with Jack, and it was clear that the U.S., locked in heated rivalry with the Soviet Union, did not do well by the American athletes.

Nevertheless, in spite of having to fly to Rome in a prop plane (officials took jets) and attacks of dysentery because of the water, a weakened Jack Yerman pulled it off. He and teammates took home the gold medal in the 1600-meter relay. During his running career Jack set world records in the mile and two-mile relays, indoor 400-meter short track, and more.

For those high schoolers who wanted to know whether the stories Jack told were true, they are.