On January 17, 1994, 12-year-old Spencer Gordon was having a sleepover with his best friend Jared at their Northridge home when they were woken up by the sound of endless explosions.
“It was deafening,” Gordon recalls 30 years later. “I couldn't even hear myself scream.”
Gordon saw Jared bouncing off the walls in the shaking bedroom. He tried to run but couldn't find his footing as he kept falling from the force of the earthquake. A mirror and dresser fell in front of the door, leaving him and Jared trapped. Their father smashed the door open with his shoulder, reached over the dresser and grabbed the kids with one arm and pulled them outside, where they huddled in the hallway and rode out the rest of the magnitude 6.7 earthquake.
Broken glass was strewn on the floor. Dishes, glasses, pots and pans had all fallen from the kitchen cupboards into a two-foot-high pile of rubble. The water and electricity had been cut off for six days. The swimming pool was half empty.
“Everything that was going to fall fell and broke,” recalled Gordon, now 42. “It was absolutely terrifying.”
Gordon and his Northridge City Little League teammates can now remember that summer when their worlds were turned upside down, until a magical run to Williamsport, Pennsylvania, brought them deep cathartic joy.
After the Northridge earthquake on January 17, 1994, Interstate 10 split and collapsed above La Cienega Boulevard.
(Eric Draper/Associated Press)
Nathaniel Dunlap was in Riverside, where he was staying for a baseball tournament, when he felt an earthquake strong enough to wake him and his mother. He tried to contact his father and grandmother, who were still in Northridge, but couldn't. It was only when he turned on the TV in his hotel room that he learned the epicenter of the earthquake was in his hometown.
To make matters worse, Dunlap and her mother had no way to get home: several overpasses on the 5, 10, 118 and 210 freeways had collapsed, and the remaining overpasses were jammed in both directions as people fled and tried to get home.
When they finally completed the 85-mile drive to Northridge the next day, Dunlap recalled, “It was like driving into a war zone.”
“Our house was still standing, but everything inside was destroyed,” he said.
The Dunlap family – 5-foot-11-inch-tall Nathaniel, his parents, grandmother and their dog – slept in a three-person tent in their backyard for the next three weeks, not knowing the extent of the structural damage to their home.
A man looks out at the street from his walled-off home at the destroyed Northridge Meadows Apartments.
(Los Angeles Times)
“We lived really close to Winnetka Park, and when we drove through there for a few weeks after the earthquake, it looked like a tent city,” Dunlap said. “A lot of people were displaced because their homes were not safe, or a lot of the apartment buildings in the area had collapsed or were completely unstable.”
In the immediate aftermath of the earthquake, David Teraoka also had no water or electricity. All the food in their refrigerator had gone rotten, so the family boiled water from the swimming pool to heat up simple meals like instant noodles. But more than anything, Teraoka remembers, his children had really nothing to do during those days.
“Everything entertainment-related was closed,” he said. “Shopping malls, movie theaters… I remember just being shocked to see some buildings collapsed, everything closed. (Life) wasn't normal for a really long time.”
Teraoka's composure finally began to return about a month later, when he was finally able to return to baseball practice.
“It was really refreshing to be able to go to the ballpark with my buddies. It was like a nice escape,” he said. “I'd say it was definitely therapeutic.”
A boy runs past a car crushed by an apartment building destroyed in the Northridge earthquake.
(Rolando Otero/Los Angeles Times)
Coach Larry Baca noticed a change in his players' attitudes once they were back on the field.
“My time on the field was just so much fun,” Gordon said. “My teammates were great, so funny. We were all pranksters, we all liked to joke around. … We all supported each other.”
“It was amazing,” Baca said. “When they came out to the ballpark, the guys felt a sense of calm and were so happy. They know their ceiling isn't going to come down.”
Baca also knew how talented they were, and he knew Northridge City Little League would be in the spotlight once the all-star season began that summer.
Their lineup was loaded with powerhouses from first to ninth batter, including the powerful cleanup hitter Gordon, two ace hitters on the mound in Dunlap and Justin Gentile (Gentile was a leadoff hitter who could double as a power hitter when he wasn't pitching), defensive genius Jonathan Higashi at catcher, smooth shortstop Matt Fisher, and young first baseman Matt Cassell, who would go on to have a 14-year career as an NFL quarterback. They also had depth, with Teraoka's bat coming to life on the bench.
The only real difference separating the 1994 team from the 1993 team was that now they were 11 and 12 years old, they had the opportunity to play in the pinnacle of youth sports, the Little League World Series in Williamsport, Pennsylvania.
Some of the kids who had been on the team for a few years knew this and had made it a goal since the first all-star practice, when the team gathered in the dugout and all the players signed a piece of plywood that said, “Northridge is all about giving it its all.”
“We were definitely confident,” Dunlap said. “We knew we had something really special.”
And so the legend of the Earthquake Kids began.
They entered Williamsport with a commanding 20-0 record at district, sectional and regional tournaments, and their championship goal was closer than ever.
Northridge played Brooklyn Central of Minnesota in the first pool game of the Little League World Series. Dunlap remembers how excited and full of energy he was when he took the mound. Dunlap's fastball topped out at 74 mph (equivalent to an MLB fastball speed of 97 mph), but his control was no match for Dunlap's. He gave up four runs on six hits, and the offense scored two runs, but Gordon struck out to end the game and end Northridge's winning streak. For the first time all summer, Northridge lost.
Gordon was devastated. He felt the weight of the moment weigh on him and, after the game, tearfully blamed himself for the loss to his parents.
“I just didn't deliver,” Gordon said. “I had a chance to be a hero and I failed. I felt like a complete failure.”
The loss sent Northridge to the tournament's losers bracket, but they still had a chance to win, and Baca took a moment to call Gordon aside and remind him of that.
“Don't worry. I'll come back. It's nothing difficult,” Baca told Gordon.
Baca, nicknamed “Smooth” by his players, was known for sticking with his players through good times and bad. He was never quick to substitute players or over-analyze opponents. He played for the Best Nine.
“I treated them like baseball players, not like kids,” Baca said. “I was a combat soldier. I was a sergeant. So I treated everybody the same, with respect.”
That mentality paid off, as Gordon, who was 1-for-9 in the first three games of the series, smashed a three-run homer in the first inning of the national championship game to give Springfield, Virginia, an early 3-0 lead.
“I knew if I stayed in the moment, something was going to happen,” he said. “I believed in myself, stayed focused and I got through it. Baseball is a tough sport, it's a sport of failure. You have to stay humble and you have to learn from each moment.”
Those three runs were the only runs of the game. Dunlap was pitching again for Northridge and had a different motivation heading into the game.
The day before the national championships, Baca was standing by a pay phone in the dormitory where the players and coaches were staying when he overheard Springfield coach George Rea on the phone with his mother, a game Springfield had already won once.
“We play (Northridge) again tomorrow,” Baca heard Lale say, “and they've got guys who throw fastballs, but we can hit them.”
When Baca relayed the conversation he had heard to Dunlap, Dunlap was inspired.
Dunlap's pitching speed had dropped compared to his first time on the mound, but he was pitching as intended, continuing the no-hitter through the sixth and final innings.
“Every inning was so smooth,” Dunlap said. “It was amazing.”
Springfield ended Dunlap's no-hitter in the sixth inning with a liner to the outfield. The next batter hit a grounder that bounced hard and just missed Matt Fisher's glove. Suddenly, the tying runner was at home plate with one out.
Dunlap struck out the next batter, and then Ethan Rea, the son of coach George Rea, whom Baca had overheard on the phone, came up to bat.
Baca heard George yell to his son, “Watch the curve!”
Baca signaled Dunlap to throw a fastball. Strike one.
George yelled again on the next pitch, “Watch out for the curveball!”
Baca called for another fastball. Strike two.
“Mind the curve!” George yelled a third time.
Dunlap threw another fastball. Strike three. Northridge City Little League was the U.S. champion.
The team took a victory lap, running around the field carrying American flags as a packed crowd of 20,000 at Howard J. Lamade Stadium chanted “USA! USA! USA!”
“It was a different world,” David Teraoka says. “I felt like a rock star.”
Northridge played Maracaibo of Venezuela in the World Series and came from behind to win the championship, but lost 4-3, bringing their magical streak to an end and it was time to go home. The players knew they would be known as the Earthquake Kids, their games would be covered by the media, and their highlights would be broadcast on SportsCenter, but as the season progressed they spent more and more time isolated in their barracks, not fully understanding the impact they would have back home in Los Angeles.
At least until the plane landed.
Talk show host Jay Leno interviews Northridge Little League players on September 5, 1994.
(NBCUniversal via Getty Images)
They arrived at Los Angeles International Airport, where a crowd of family, friends, and reporters was waiting at the gate. Some were holding signs, and nearly everyone was cheering and screaming. As the players passed through the gate, limousines were waiting to pick them up, each overflowing with pizza boxes. They were no longer the Northridge All-Stars, they were the Earthquake Kids, and they weren't going home. They were going to K-Earth 101. They were going to Disneyland. They were going to be introduced at Dodger Stadium. They were going to meet Bill Clinton, Ronald Reagan, and then-Mayor of Los Angeles Richard Riordan. They were on Jay Leno. They even had a cameo in the 1995 film “Three Wishes,” starring Patrick Swayze.
They were invited to the Rose Parade, and Northridge held a parade in their honor, escorted in convertible Corvettes down Devonshire Street and Reseda Boulevard.
“I feel like we were really lucky to have been able to experience that,” Jonathan Higashi said. “The success that we all had, and the aftermath of all of this that a lot of people don't get to experience. We got to experience that.”
Thirty years have passed since their 15 minutes of fame, but the memories of 1994, good and bad, are forever etched in the city of Northridge. Some lost their homes, others their lives and loved ones. A generation of Los Angeles is forever scarred by that year. But even if for a short time, a group of 11- and 12-year-olds gave their community something to cheer about, a sense of pride, and above all, hope.
“It was something innocent to cling to,” Teraoka said. “For me and my parents, it was a great distraction from the damage to our home and community. I look back on it now as an adult. … As a child, I really enjoyed experiencing those moments.”
