The train pulls through a hilly pass. There’s a cabin in the nearby woods, and you can see Steve’s Farm in the distance. A bear stalks an unwitting camper, a farmhand tends his sheep behind the barn. Coming out of the hills, the train shuttles along an elevated track through town. It passes by a church where a wedding has just let out, rolls behind the synagogue and Doc’s Greasy Spoon Diner. The Royal Hudson locomotive steadily puffs steam as it rolls past Mary Jane’s Frosty Bar, past the No-Tell Motel, where a young woman peers through a window, and a dude lounges in the heart-shaped pool. It continues around a bend, bound for the ski mountain. The horn blows, and its strained organ cry can be heard in every corner of Daley Mae Land.
“I love that sound,” Mike Humphries says wistfully. He is wearing river sandals with socks, a ringer t-shirt tucked into khaki shorts, a Boston Red Sox hat and his trademark No. 2 pencil tucked behind his right ear. He stands at the boom-box-shaped model train controls, hands resting on both throttles. He has a simple tattoo of a sea turtle on his left calf. His blue eyes follow the two trains as they wend through the miniature town he built and populated. The display occupies most of the floor space in the two-car garage beside his house, which in turn lies only one block from the Piedmont High School athletic fields—a place Humphries oversees with the same compassion with which he presides over Daley Mae Land.
Since 1969, Humphries has been a central figure in Piedmont schools and sports. He has taught physical education in Piedmont and coached freshman and junior varsity football for nearly 40 years. He has been the high school athletic director for 20 years. Last spring he quietly retired from his role as varsity baseball coach, a position he held for 33 years. In all that time Humphries has displayed a passion for teaching youth that, as he is proud of saying, has shaped young boys and girls into capable men and women.
On the career track
Humphries, 64, was born an only child in Vancouver, British Columbia. When he was four-years-old, his family boarded a train and moved to his uncle’s lemon ranch in Goleta, a town just north of Santa Barbara. Friends and family visited the ranch, but without any brothers or sisters to play with, he developed an “incredible imagination.” The same imagination that inspired him to set up tableaux in Daley Mae Land in his 60’s entertained him as a kid in Goleta.
“I would play whole nine-inning baseball games by myself,” Humphries recalled, with his hands in his pockets, jingling his keys. “I used a wooden slat, and would pick up rocks and hit them to determine how many bases a batter would reach. If you hit a rock over the electricity wire it was a home run. That was my early training for baseball.”
Baseball has always been a part of Humphries’ life, but he never considered himself much of an athlete. Early on, he decided that coaching and teaching physical education would be the next best thing to playing sports professionally. He majored in PE and minored in history at UC Santa Barbara. After graduating, Humphries attended Santa Barbara City College to play baseball and avoid the Vietnam War draft. When his student deferment was revoked in 1964, he joined the Marine Corps and served in a construction battalion until he moved to Piedmont in 1969, where he took a job as a student teacher.
Humphries was soon hired as a full-time PE teacher at Piedmont’s elementary schools and coached the middle school football teams. In the early 1970’s he coached varsity baseball for a few years, went on hiatus, and returned to the position in 1979 at the request of his friend, Mike Roof.
The conductor
It’s a Thursday afternoon, and Humphries is out in the garage, watching his trains go around the track.
“There’s one rule,” he tells me, “and that’s that nothing bad ever happens in Daley Mae Land.”
Daley Mae Land is full of family. The Diner is named for his father, Godfrey Ogden “Doc” Humphries. Steve’s Farm is named for his son, an assistant football coach at Piedmont High and director of football operations. Mary Jane’s Frosty Bar is named for his daughter, who lives in Dublin. The Cobbie Burgers served at Mary Jane’s are named for Humphries’ best friend, Cob Berger, a Piedmont High grad who emigrated to Fort Bragg.
Daley Mae Land is named for Dale, Humphries’s wife of 20 years. Years ago she conceded the garage to his passion for model trains. She echoes the sentiments of Humphries’s friends, students and colleagues when she lists his kindness and congeniality as some of his best traits. She does suspect that dubbing his train-town Daley Mae Land is an attempt to placate her, but if it is, it’s surely in keeping with Humphries’s contagious good humor.
It’s the kids, not the wins
As a coach, Humphries has high expectations for what his teams should do and how they should do it.
Mark Delventhall, who coached varsity baseball alongside Humphries for most of the 1990’s, said that Humphries was committed to coaching as an extension of teaching.
“It wasn't always about winning or losing to him,” said Delventhall. “Mike was passionate about doing things the right way. To him, the game was a matter of integrity. There are certain things you do, and certain things you don't, and that's not only mechanics or strategy or execution, it’s the way one carries oneself, how you enter and exit the field, how you put your uniform on, your appearance. There’s a right way to it and that's how the Piedmont Highlander’s do it, period. I coached with him for nine years, and never, not one time, did I hear him say anything bad to an umpire. He didn’t let kids get away with that either.
“Mike also believed in a practice plan, not unlike a lesson plan in science or history class. He always had a lesson plan, written on a 3x5 card, tucked into his pocket and a No.2 pencil behind his ear.”
Humphries says that he is a disciplined coach, and that he can be demanding, but humor has always been one of his most useful and natural coaching tools.
According to Drew Olson, a Piedmont High School Hall-of-Famer who played catcher for Humphries for four years, his former coach allowed guys to play the game without micromanaging, and he also created a fun but competitive atmosphere.
“He cared, and he was truly passionate and knowledgeable about the game,” said Olson. “He had a lot of funny expressions. He gave out a lot of nicknames to people, and would say some hilarious things.”
Humphries recalls two brothers, the Morgans, whom he coached in PE. On this day, the Morgan brothers’ proper names eluded him, but he had little difficulty remembering their nicknames.
“The older one was called ‘Moondog,’ and when the younger brother ascended into my PE class his name was ready for him: we called him ‘Suncat.’”
Humphries’ friend, Berger, a retired Fort Bragg baseball coach and teacher, recalls a game when his Timberwolves simply had the Highlanders’ number. Looking out from the dilapidated guest dugout in Piedmont, Berger was diligently focused on the game, until he happened to glance over at the home dugout, where he saw Humphries waving a bat with a white t-shirt dangling from it, admitting defeat.
Humphries says though he enjoys sports, his interest is more anthropological than most coaches—he likes kids because he thinks they’re fun and interesting.
“I'm more of a people person,” he says. “I'm not the type to sit around and watch football or baseball all weekend. A lot of coaches are more interested in the sport: I was always more interested in the people than the sport, which helps me be more patient with kids. I have more empathy for kids who aren’t terribly skilled. I wasn’t that skilled.”
As a teenager, Humphries only played when his team was trouncing the competition or being trounced, so he learned to think more about the elements, tactics and systems of the games.
The talents he developed on the bench have served him and his athletes well during a career spanning more than three decades. In recounting his teams’ accomplishments, Humphries eyes wander into the nostalgic space between then and now as he stares at the mesmerizing motion of the trains wending around the track.
In 1985, Humphries coached a highly talented baseball team that included his son, Steve. That year they persevered through a triple-round-robin tournament to reach the Alameda County Athletic League Tournament for the first time. In the late 90’s, with a consistency for which he has become famous, Humphries coached the freshman football team to 36-straight victories, four years of undefeated football.
In 2000, Piedmont’s varsity baseball team made its deepest run to date in the North Coast Section championships. With a talented team including Brett Webster, Matt Shartsis, and Piedmont Sports Hall of Famers Pete Schneider and Olson, the Highlanders reached the NCS semifinals.
But Humphries says his greatest accomplishments as a coach are less tangible than championships. He takes the greatest joy in the number of kids who return to Piedmont and tell him what a positive experience athletics were for them.
His wife Dale says that Humphries receives letters from parents whose children played freshman football for him. “The parents say, ‘You saved my kid’s life.’ And I’m not talking about one or two letters. He has gotten at least a hundred of those during his career,” she said.
Made to roll
But eventually, the demands of coaching a varsity sport began to wear on Humphries. He still takes great joy and pride in coaching freshman football and teaching PE, but in the past few years he found himself less and less excited as the varsity baseball season rolled around.
“I got to the point where I didn’t have the enthusiasm required for the kids or the position any more,” he said. “Varsity sports require more energy, and baseball is real hands-on. Fungo-ing balls all the time starts to wear you down.”
Humphries is still a regular fixture at Piedmont baseball games. He recently followed the Highlanders to Albany to watch them face No. 2-ranked St. Mary’s. He mingled with the team, coaches and umpires, and joked with visiting-team fans. At home games he sets up a folding chair adjacent to the home dugout and grabs hold of the infield fence. He peers intently at every play from behind reflective sunglasses and talks strategy with his old assistant coaches in the dugout.
“I enjoy going to games now and not having to worry about the lineup – when to pull a pitcher, stuff like that,” he admitted.
So, last year, Humphries quietly walked away from coaching baseball. He’s a gregarious guy with a cheerful personality that feeds off of the youth that surrounds him; he’s not loud, and a quiet exit is just his style.
According to his son Steve, Humphries will be honored for his 40 years of service to the school and the community during halftime at a varsity football game next fall.
As a gesture of the town’s gratitude for his decades of service, this evening the school board will approve the naming of the Piedmont High School baseball field after Humphries. In the near future, a sign will hang over the concrete stairway leading down to Coach Humphries Diamond.
For his part, Humphries says he wants to coach and teach in Piedmont for as long as he’s able, or as long as they’ll let him. When he retires, he says he’ll go into construction, both on the house up the hill from the Piedmont athletic fields (his wife says there will be a lengthy “Honey-Do List”), and, of course, on his beloved model train set. But his son doesn’t see that happening any time soon.
“He’s been a teacher for 40 years,” said Steve. “He could retire with full benefits, but why would he? He loves what he does. There’s no better way to put it.”
