California (ARCADIA). Out of Brian Gardner’s baseball bats, just one made it through the Eaton Fire. But he only required that.
The 48-year-old Gardner picked up the bat and prepared to hit. He was informed to anticipate a heater.
He laughed, “I call it a fastball, not a heater.” One of my new trigger words is “heater.”
He and eight other guys had met up to play in a park in Arcadia on a Sunday afternoon with clear skies. Before the Eaton Fire tore through their neighborhood in Altadena three weeks prior, uprooting them all from their tight-knit community in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains, they were performing a weekly routine for a few hours.
Even Gardner’s home bar, which contained over 1,000 bottles of whiskey, was burned to ashes. Additionally, he lost a Cadillac Eldorado with cattle horns on the front grill, which he used as a special treat to drive his children to school on Fridays. He currently resides with his wife, two kids, and 13-year-old terrier in a rental home.
Gardner said to no one in particular, “That felt good; that felt really good,” as he leaned his bat on the fence after finishing his turn.
The men participate in Altadena Sandlot, a group chat that was created by a father in 2023 to help men in the area communicate with one another. More than two dozen guys had primarily used it to rib each other and organize their weekly get-togethers to shag balls in the field. However, since the fires in the Los Angeles area, it has evolved into something else entirely: a means of exchanging fear and anxiety, getting useful advice, and reestablishing a connection with the community they sorely missed.
It wasn’t intended to be a fathers’ support group, but that’s what it became as a result, Gardner said.