Concord league commissioner Ana Villalobos made her acceptance speech to 800 attendees at the Play Ball Lunch in San Francisco when she was inducted in the Junior Giants Hall of Fame. Behind her are Giants radio announcers Jon Miller (left) and Dave Flemming (right). John Noguchi, co-chair of the Giants Community Fund, stood right behind Villalobos. (Photo courtesy San Francisco Giants)
Concord’s Ana Villalobos inducted in Junior Giants Hall of Fame
Concord league commissioner Ana Villalobos was inducted in the Junior Giants Hall of Fame days before the start of the major league baseball season along with San Francisco Giants managers Bruce Bochy and Dusty Baker in front of 800 attendees at the annual Play Ball Lunch in the City.
Villalobos is the small dynamo behind the Junior Giants League in Concord, now facing some challenges ahead of its seventh season.
Her boss at Monument Impact, Mike Van Hofwegen, and Villalobos got the program going with 120 kids in 2013 and now over 300 (pretty evenly split between boys and girls) take part in the free league each year. Coaches and all other adult participants are volunteers.
Junior Giants, the flagship program of the Giants Community Fund, is a free, non-competitive and innovative baseball and softball program for underserved boys and girls, ages 5-18 years old.
Villalobos left Monument Impact three years ago to take a position as a senior health education specialist for Contra Costa County Health Services, but she couldn’t leave her Junior Giants.
The program also offered her solace in her lowest moment. Her 21-year-old son Raul was killed while walking to his job in Walnut Creek in 2015 while his mom was at a funeral in her native Mexico. She drove 12 hours back to Concord aware of an issue but not knowing the fate of her son.
She told Marcus Thompson of “The Athletic” that ““Junior Giants kept me alive” while she struggled with the unimaginable grief of losing a child.
She explained to Thompson that she leaned on her work with the Junior Giants to start filling the gaping hole in her heart. Her youngest daughter, Grace, was a Junior Giant and is currently becoming a coach. Raul’s son Samuel is going to be a Junior Giant one day in his grandma’s league.
When she helped bring the Junior Giants to Concord (there are 24,000 youth in 370 cities in the program) “I didn’t even know how to play baseball,” she said. “I started Junior Giants not because I’m a huge fan. But now I am, and my heart belongs to the Giants.
“But the issue is, I started Junior Giants because it was a huge need in Concord to bring our children back to the community. To keep them out of the streets and let them know that they are wanted, that they’re needed and that they’re loved. I believe our children need us more than ever. … A lot of them are not bad kids. They are amazing and I think we forget to remind them how wonderful they are.”
The Giants said of Villalobos, “Ana is everything we could want in a Junior Giants Hall of Famer. She serves in this role on an entirely volunteer basis with a separate full-time job. Ana never let the tragedy of her son’s death slow her passion for Junior Giants. She has said multiple times, “I have lost one child, but Junior Giants brings me 200 more every summer.”
Despite any challenges in her personal life, the Giants said “she is not swayed from her support of Junior Giants. She has spoken at the Play Ball Lunch, Commissioners Camp, a Board Meeting and a Pure Storage event which raised over $116,000 for the Fund, and more.”
Concord Police Activities League has been a major financial supporter of the program but that ends this year, so Villalobos is hunting for more support, including from the Concord Recreation and Parks Department.