Sidelines: Smalley and Yardley, quite the characters

Don Cantrell

The recent earthquake up in the Seattle area brought back a big

laugh from Mel Smalley when he recalled one past visit to the Space

Needle in Seattle.

For many, the Space Needle can prompt many folks to back off and find

other tourist events. And that almost included Smalley, a former fleet

Newport Harbor High halfback who scored 104 points in the 1949 season.

Most friends would assume he feared nothing from his football days.

But, he was quite uneasy about the Seattle Space Needle.

However, someone in his party leaned forward and asked him if he was

going to venture to the top and eat at the restaurant. Smalley was quick

to respond with a negative word or two.

The other party confronted him to issue what some would term “the big

dare.”

Smalley acknowledged the dare, moved toward the Space Needle door,

entered and disappeared. He caught the elevator, sped right to the top,

then quickly sped down and moved directly to the friend and exclaimed,

“Well, there you go!” He laughed later in relating his adventure to this

corner.

One hilarious event we recall about Smalley and Al Muniz, a ’48 guard,

was one day in high school when Les Miller was handling the mile event

under Athletic Director Ralph Reed’s decathlon program.

The track around Davidson Field was circled by tall eucalyptus trees,

which didn’t block the view on the track. But if there was a heavy

blanket of fog, those trees could have been a problem.

Many fellows did not like the mile run and would do most anything to

get out of it. The tricks rarely worked.

But one day, Smalley and Muniz, a 250-pound varsity gridder, chose to

take advantage of a surprising fog that had covered the area that

morning.

They ran a half lap that put them on the other side of the field.

While the others kept running laps, Smalley and Muniz slowly walked a

long stretch in the opposite direction and behind the trees. Near the end

of the last lap, the pair burst out of the fog and ran to the finish line

in good shape.

Others knew what they were doing, but said nothing. After Miller read

off their times from his stopwatch, they relaxed with broad grins.

What memories remain strongly about growing up around George Yardley,

the Harbor High grad who advanced out of the 1940s to become one of the

all-time stars of pro ball with the old Fort Wayne Pistons, now the

Detroit Pistons.

The vivid memories are all stacked up in rich humor banks. There was

always humor from our boyhood days, even though he was four or five

grades ahead of this corner.

Yardley always loved humor, including times his peers made fun of him.

Football was a good fit with his slight frame in pre-high school days

on the street. It was the first street on the Little Island connected

with Balboa Island where the Yardleys lived for a time. As a young lad,

he owned the only football around the village, as we recall.

His buddies were always welcome to join the game. But Yardley often

took charge by laying down the rules.

One of the hilarious occasions was when Yardley got edgy if a ruling

didn’t go his way, especially if it was controversial.

If so, Yardley had a habit of striding forward to grab his football.

From there, he and the ball disappeared into the corner home.

The late Jim Brooks once laughed and said, “Gawd, we’d laugh when he

would parade off with that football. And the game would not continue

until he returned hours later ... or maybe not at all.”

Yardley’s buddies would also box him out physically in basketball and

often take advantage of him since some of them had him beaten for size.

However, the day came when they couldn’t do that. When Yardleygot

taller and stronger, they chose to treat him a little more kindly on the

courts.