Rose Garden Resident

Sports

Minor league career brings Pereira major joy

By Dick Sparrer

The multitude of frames encasing the pictures of professional baseball players made it difficult to see much of the wood paneling covering the walls underneath.

Rich Aurelia. Shawn Estes. Bill Mueller.

The faces in the pictures were looking down on a collection of autographed baseballs and bats, leaving the impression that this could just as easily be an annex of the Hall of Fame as a baseball executive's office.

George Brett. Johnny Bench. Babe Ruth.

But there was something very much minor league about the room. The overstuffed couch that had long since seen its better days, the copy machine chugging out inserts for that night's game program, the coffee maker with an inch or so of that morning's Folgers still simmering in the bottom of the pot.

The office had the look, the smell and the feel of the nostalgia and tradition that is minor league baseball. And it's the office that Linda Pereira calls home as she wraps up the final few weeks of her 39th season working for the San Jose minor league baseball franchise.

"I started when I was in the sixth grade," she says with a smile. But while others may make a similar claim to belie the years of their employment, Pereira is sincere. Her brother, Bob, was the batboy for the San Jose Bees at the time, and her parents would drop them both off for the day of baseball at San Jose Municipal Stadium.

"They put me to work filing papers," she says. "I came here, and I never left. It's the only job I've ever had."

And Pereira likes it that way.

"It's absolutely a dream," she adds. "A lot of people never get to work doing something they're passionate about."

Pereira does, and what's more, she is one of the few women who has spent a career working in the male-dominated world of professional baseball. She was recognized for her efforts in 1980 when she was selected as the first Minor League Baseball Woman of the Year.

Pereira is the director of player relations for the San Jose Giants, but her role is much more complicated than the title would imply. She handles the team's travel plans, organizes activities for the Giants Booster Club, coordinates the club's host family program and acts as a problem solver for many of the young players.

"When I started I was like their little sister," she says. "But my job has evolved--now I'm more like their big sister."

Pereira is the daughter of Manny and Betty Pereira, who once owned Manny's Cellars, a popular Italian restaurant in downtown San Jose. But it was the baseball bug, not restaurateuring, that bit the Pereira's daughter when she was just a girl.

She began her career in earnest after graduating from James Lick High School in 1967, working for the San Jose Bees while she went on to earn her bachelor's degree at San José State University.

She got her start not long after Bud Urzi and Pete Felice brought minor league baseball back to San Jose with the addition of the San Jose Bees to the California League in 1962. The club's name has changed from Bees, to Missions, to Expos, back to Bees and finally to Giants, and the club has been affiliated with eight different major league teams during her tenure. For two seasons, they played Triple A baseball in San Jose.

"But 'A' ball is more fun," she says. "The guys are more eager."

There was even a time, from 1983 to 1987, when the local minor league club had no major league affiliation at all.

"That was sort of fun," she recalls of the independent years. "We had guys from all different teams. And we had the guys from the Seibu Lions."

General Manager Harry Stavrenos had to do it all during that period--sign the players, sell the billboards, sell the ads. But it was his arrangement with the Seibu Lions of the Japanese Baseball League that helped keep minor league baseball alive in San Jose.

"We never would have survived without the Seibu Lions. Never," says Pereira. "And that was the most incredible experience of my life. I learned more from them--and not just about baseball, but about life."

It was during that period when the Bees were independent that the host families program began. One of the most rewarding parts of the job for Pereira is placing players with host families in the community.

"I try to match the right players with the right families, and I'm proud of my record," she says. "The players become part of the families, and the families come to the games and live and die with their players."

And then there are her endless stories told in the true hot stove tradition.

There's the time Willie Mays took off his shirt and tie to auction them off at a Giants Booster Banquet, the night her family celebrated George Brett's 19th birthday at their home, the evening she spent traveling to the nightspots of San Francisco in a limousine with Shawn Estes and Bill Mueller, the humility of the great Hall of Famer, Lon Simmons, on the night the Booster Banquet was held in his honor.

Then there are the "millions of weddings." It was at one of those weddings when she heard that one of her favorite players, Mueller, had been traded from the Giants to the Boston Red Sox.

And the stories about Duane Espy, Keith Foulke, Steve Boros, Rene Lachemann, Lou Gorman, John Schuerholz ... the stories accumulated in a baseball career that has spanned nearly four decades, and is still going strong.