North Hills’ Barto grieves loss of college coach in crash
Garret Barto, a former baseball player at North Hills High School, played his first college game Tuesday, and ESPN was there along with other media outlets. A large crowd of more than 2,000 also was there to watch.
But for Barto and all of the players on the Orange Coast College team, the attention was for all the wrong reasons.
“It’s been a tough few days,” Barto said.
Barto is a Pittsburgh connection in the Kobe Bryant tragedy. Barto lost a coach he admired, someone he simply called “Alto” and also a “mentor.”
Barto is a redshirt freshman player at Orange Coast, a junior college in Costa Mesa, Calif. The team had a successful, legendary coach in John Altobelli — until Sunday. Altobelli, his wife, Keri, and one of his daughters, Alyssa, were three of the people who died in the helicopter crash that killed nine, including Bryant and his 13year-old daughter, Gianna.
“I know in the future, all through my adult life, any time I see anything about Kobe, it’s going to be tough because I’ll always think about this,” Barto said.
On Tuesday night, not long after that first game that drew national attention, Barto talked about losing the coach he treasured, the guy who is the reason this Pittsburgh kid came all the way to California to play college baseball. And Barto told stories, one about his coach that now seems eerie and one about Bryant that might make you cry.
“One thing that sticks out now is two days before all of this happened, we had an abnormally long team meeting before practice,” Barto said. “Alto was just telling us how to appreciate being out here on this field every day. He actually said, ‘I’m grateful to come out here on this field and grind with you guys.’ And he said, ‘Don’t take this for granted because it could all be gone just like that.’
“Looking back, I can’t really believe he said that only two days before this happened. It’s the first thing I thought of when I came to the field Sunday after it happened and saw groups of people huddled up on the field.”
Barto tells more about Altobelli and how his coach’s family and Bryant’s family were close and used to go to the beach together. Altobelli’s youngest daughter, Alyssa, was a basketball teammate of Gianna “Gigi” Bryant. The day before the crash, Barto said John Altobelli was telling some parents of Orange Coast players that he was going to fly with Kobe to their daughters’ game the next day.
“He told a lot of Kobe stories, but the one I now remember most was just recently,” Barto said.
Barto and a teammate were fielding ground balls one day at a practice and had to toss each ball into a nearby bucket after they fielded it. Barto tossed a ball that missed the bucket by about three feet.
Barto said, “Alto came over and told me, ‘I hope you didn’t yell ‘Kobe’ when you shot that ball into the bucket.’”
Barto laughed and said no. Barto picks up the story from there.
“So [Altobelli] says to me, ‘You know I just asked Kobe what does he yell when he shoots a piece of paper in the trash? I asked him if he yells ‘LeBron.’ Kobe said, ‘I definitely don’t yell that.’
“So I asked him what does he yell? Kobe said, ‘I yell Gigi.’”
But now about Barto and how in the world did a kid from Pittsburgh end up in California, having a personal connection to this sad story? Well, Barto was a talented high school player, a third baseman who hit better than .500 on the 2018 North Hills team that won the WPIAL Class 5A championship. When North Hills beat Mars, 3-2, in
11 innings in the title game, Barto started off the winning rally with a double in the 11th inning.
Barto was receiving interest from some small colleges in Western Pennsylvania, but he had a grandmother who lived in California. He thought about going to college somewhere near her and found out about Orange Coast, located only a mile away from his grandma. He researched how the Orange Coast baseball program enjoyed plenty of success and how Altobelli was a fixture with the program, coaching the Pirates for more than two decades.
Barto sent Altobelli some information about himself. Barto then visited Orange Coast, met Altobelli and liked him so much that he decided to attend Orange Coast (Barto did not play last season because of an injured shoulder).
“It’s hard to find the words when you lose a mentor like this,” Barto said. “It’s crazy I call [Altobelli] a mentor because I’ve only been here for a year-and-ahalf. But he put things in perspective about life. … He’s a legend out here. This would’ve been his 28th year as coach. Anyone he meets, they love him right away.”
Barto lives at an off-campus apartment with a few teammates and was eating breakfast Sunday morning when one of his teammates yelled from upstairs, “Hey, Kobe Bryant supposedly died in a helicopter crash.”
That news was horrible enough. But then teammates started a group text.
“We put two and two together because some of us knew Alto was talking about going with Kobe on the helicopter to the game,” Barto said.
Barto said an Orange Coast player finally texted Altobelli’s other daughter, Lexie, who delivered the news.
“You don’t want to believe it at first,” Barto said.
Barto said the team decided to play its opener as scheduled Tuesday “because that’s what Alto would’ve wanted.”
Altobelli was 705-478-4 in his 27 seasons at Orange Coast. Barto hopes to play at Orange Coast this season and then maybe move on to play at a four-year college. The horrible memories of this week will last forever. But Barto also has some terrific memories.
“Alto used to tell us about Kobe’s competitive streak, that Mamba mentality,” Barto said. “I know Kobe had that one quote about trying to inspire people to be great at what they want to do. I personally think Kobe got that from Alto.”