Baseball is living history. Each pitch, each at bat, each moment shared on the field creates memories. For those who lived it, they may not remember what they had for breakfast yesterday, but they can tell you an exact pitch sequence in one particular time at the plate from 40 years ago.
There’s magic in baseball moments, and they’re not all just on the field.
For Rich Domich, this inadvertent baseball historian, the memories he’s lived among baseball immortals have been his field of dreams.
It all began in San Francisco, where, as a young teenager he’d found his way into working as a vendor at Candlestick Park back in the 1960’s. Back then, all he wanted was a Willie Mays model glove, one that retailed for about $80, an unapproachable sum for him at the time. He’d asked his boss if there was a way to get one at wholesale price – pretty novel thinking for a 14-year-old.
The next day, his boss brought him a package. Inside, there it was – a genuine MacGregor Willie Mays glove, made of kangaroo skin. “Oh my gosh,” he responded, dumbfounded. “How much do I owe you for this?”
“Nothing. Don’t worry about it,” he was told. The boss had asked the Giants’ equipment manager what could be done. Turns out, it was an actual Willie Mays glove, straight from the legend’s locker, where he kept many to give to teammates and others.
This wasn’t just a replica. This might’ve been one where an actual triple had gone to die.
And now it was Rich’s. Magic.
Rich soon followed his dreams to Stanford where he began covering sports, chasing that dream all the way to NY for a spot with Major League Baseball Productions. It was there that he and a friend were given an opportunity for an unpaid internship as a production assistant for a kid’s baseball show they were planning in Arizona – all they do was to get themselves there. They found themselves the cheapest reliable car they could find and took a “Route 66”-type road trip to Tucson and never looked back.
This show would become the Emmy-winning Baseball Bunch, hosted by Johnny Bench. Rich eventually became a Senior Producer, and lifelong friends with people like Bench, Dusty Baker, and many others. He’d thrown batting practice to the likes of Willie Stargell, Mike Schmidt, and – “Good Lord”, says Domich – Ted Williams.
“Ted kept telling me to ‘throw harder’,” Rich recalls. “I’m throwing as hard as I can, and all I can think is ‘Please God, don’t let me hit Ted Williams.” Schmidt hit a line drive over his head that might’ve just killed him. Stargell hit the longest home run he’d ever seen.
Just another day at the office for a guy like Rich. And he never, ever stopped appreciating it.
“Dusty Baker is just a wonderful guy,” explains Rich. “After he won the World Series with the Astros, he must’ve gotten about 1,500 texts from people congratulating him. And because of who he is, he responded to every last one. That’s just who he is.”
It wasn’t just the players that became part of Rich’s circle. They had one segment that that involved Bob Costas getting into a proposed Yankee Doodle Dandy mascot costume, ripping off the head to say “Hey George (Steinbrenner) – play me or trade me!” Steinbrenner was not interested in any mascot for his team. Years later, Rich wondered if that was all just a ragged memory of a fever dream. Then he ran into Costas at an event recently. “Domo!,” Costas said, using his familiar nickname. Within 30 seconds, Costas pulled up the video from his phone of him in the costume. It’s 42 years later, and Costas still cherishes the memory.
The memories that Rich has about these days are legion. Why Bench learned lessons about autograph hunting, how Pete Rose approached scouting, and even a random encounter Dusty Baker had with Jimi Hendrix on a street once. The practical joke that Johnny Bench and Gary Carter pulled on him that he has framed, given to him by Bench.
Nowadays, this baseball lifer isn’t spending his days being pranked by Hall of Fame catchers, but that doesn’t mean his life has been any less charmed. He ended up in North Jersey, having bought his home from Kelly Ripa. One of the first people he encountered walking around his new neighborhood? None other than Phil Simms, who was working out with his son on a local high school field. Naturally, Phil came over and struck up a conversation with him.
Not bad for a kid from San Francisco who once had the good fortune of being in the right place, at the right time, with the right question for the right person. “Hey, can I get a Willie Mays glove at wholesale?”
“I’ll tell you one thing about that glove,” Rich boasts. “I don’t think I ever made an error with it.”
Baseball is magic.
Imagine the impact it would have on a 14-year-old to get a baseball glove straight from your idol.
"Throw harder," he kept saying. And all I thought was "please God, don't let me hit Ted Williams."