Bob Townsend is rightfully proud of the baseball team he got started 28 years ago: the second coming of the Santa Barbara Foresters. Out of his love of baseball and his community spirit, it has grown into an extraordinary summer pastime.
Appropriately nicknamed “Towny,” during the 1970s, he played for legendary baseball coaches Fred Warrecker (Santa Barbara High), Rusty Fairly (SBCC), and Dave Gorrie (UCSB). He was the type of player that Fairly deemed to call Santa Barbara’s “Charlie Hustle.” Townsend went to work as a building contractor, and he got into coaching after hours, learning the ropes from Scott O’Leary at Dos Pueblos High.
Townsend was coaching with Al Ferrer and Bob Brontsema at UCSB in 1991 when Gaucho outfielder Nick Satriano asked him if he knew of a program where he could sharpen his skills during the summer.