Central Valley Native Dylan Floro Made it to the Major Leagues
Dylan Floro’s high school baseball coach knew he had someone special when Dylan Floro made the varsity team as a high school freshman.
Dylan Floro, Tampa Bay Devil Rays. Photo: Major League Baseball
After outstanding careers in high school, and then on to Cal State Fullerton, Dylan signed on with the Tampa Bay Devil Rays farm system. In July, he was platooned to the Devil Rays where he has pitched throughout most of the second half of the 2016 season.
The team website now reports he was recently reassigned back into the Rays farm system. Everyone is hoping he’ll return to the big team in 2017.
Making it in the major leagues was a dream-come-true for this Merced County native. He was born in Merced, and grew up in Atwater where he remains a deep source of pride to his family and his coach at Buhach High School.
At Buhach, he was such an outstanding player that he was moved to the varsity team in his freshman year.
Coach Scott Wise was in the dugout for Dylan’s high school baseball career. “Exceptional,” he summed it up to me in an interview about Dylan’s remarkable arc from outstanding school and college player to the major leagues.
“Moving up to varsity as a freshman really showed his level of ability.”
According to the official website of Major League Baseball, Dylan led all of minor league baseball in 2014 when he played for Tampa’s double-A affiliate Montgomery.
That year, he pitched 178 and two-thirds innings. He was named the Rays' Minor League Pitcher of the Year for 2013 after leading the organization with a 1.77 ERA.
He was selected by the Devil Rays in the thirteenth round of the 2012 first-year player draft out of Cal State-Fullerton.
Coach Wise says Dylan’s family is all about baseball. An older brother Brock played at Buhach and then on to Cal State Fullerton leading the way for Dylan’s selection by the school for his college ball.
A younger brother plays in organized baseball in Atwater. Dylan’s dad is a youth baseball coach.
“Dylan’s mom and dad were always there for him,” Scott said. “It’s a solid family all the way around.”
Dylan is a product of what some describe as Atwater’s special connection to baseball. Observers have pointed to strong baseball teams from the area going back as far as the 1920s and 1930s right on up to the present day.
The community had a semi-pro team, the Atwater Packers, that was incorporated in 1949 and played in the forties and fifties.
In recent years, the Atwater Aviators played in the Golden State Collegiate Baseball League. Baseball is part of the community fabric of Atwater.
A community doesn’t magically receive outstanding baseball talent. As in any special accomplishment, there are a lot of factors. In the case of Dylan Floro, coaching was certainly a factor.
Involvement by the family is also important. His parents Dee and Kent nurtured this passion for the game and provided the love and support necessary for Dylan and his siblings to succeed.
Also important, according to Coach Wise, has been work ethic.
“I remember Dylan taking care of his pitching mound after practice without being asked,” the coach recalls. “You knew he was going to achieve what he has achieved. He’s not afraid to put in the work; he will do everything that was needed both on and off the field.”
Baseball card expert John Kucho says the baseball card companies probably won’t release a Dylan Floro card until next year at the earliest. This photo is from the Devil Rays website. Photo: TampaBay.rays.mlb.com
While the Devil Rays entered the final month of the 2016 season in
In the meantime, Dylan’s coaches hope to see him again during the off-season as he had done in the past.
“I usually see him in the
The combination of upbringing, community support, and good coaching has helped Dylan make it to the major leagues. And while the future is definitely wide open for this Central Valley pitcher, there will always be a connection to where it all began.
Steve Newvine lives in Merced
For more on Dylan’s latest statistics, go to MLB.com or tampabay.rays.mlb.com
Merced Radio Station KYOS to Mark 80th Anniversary in October
If you listen to local AM radio station KYOS (1480 on the dial, 1480kyos.com on the internet), you have probably heard an announcer proudly announce at the top of each hour that the station has been serving Merced since 1936.
K97.5 Program Manager Dave Luna’s voice is heard on station promotional announcements for KYOS. Photo by Steve Newvine
On October 13, the station will reach a historic milestone: eighty years on the air.
The station began serving the city of Merced from a studio in the Hotel Tioga. It was a daytime station at that time. It would sign-on (a term that comes from a broadcasting regulatory requirement that a radio operator sign a program and engineering log) every morning and then sign-off at sunset.
It began with a relatively low-powered signal that could cover the city. In later years, the station’s signal was boosted so it could cover Merced County. The broadcast day eventually would be lengthened to 24-hours.
Throughout Merced’s history in the twentieth century and so far into these early years of the new century, the community has seen a multitude of change. One constant has been the AM radio station that has continuously been the voice of the community for eighty years.
Another constant for close to half of those eighty years has been radio announcer Dave Luna. He’s the Program Manager and morning personality for K97.5, the FM sister station owned by Radio Merced’s parent company Mappleton Communications.
Dave listened to KYOS as a teen growing up in Newman in Stanislaus County. He went to work for the station part time beginning in 1979 and has worked for the various owners of the broadcast group that includes KYOS full time since leaving college.
A bumper sticker from the heyday of station KYOS. Photo from KYOS.
“KYOS was the big top forty rock-and-roll station in Merced,” Dave told me from his K97.5 studio on Main Street in Merced. “It’s what all of us listened to in those days.”
Dave says he moved to the FM side of the house as more and more listeners gravitated away from AM stations. His time with KYOS follows a pattern that is close to a history of AM radio in the United States.
“AM radio is tough,” he says. “Some AMs have just shut down, some are hoping news and talk will save them. “
KYOS runs satellite driven programming of news and talk radio Monday through Friday. Weekend programming includes some public service programs and an oldies format with music from the fifties, sixties, and seventies.
An early broadcast home to KYOS. Picture from KYOS
One can only imagine what those early years for KYOS were like. Radio was still a relatively new communication medium. While there were network shows like The Jack Benny Program or Fibber McGee and Molly, Merced audiences likely were drawn to local programs.
As music became the primary program source for radio in the years following the start of television, stations like KYOS found their new niche and were big players in local communities.
“I remember driving by the KYOS studio at the corner of 18th and Main when I was a teen,” Dave Luna recalls. “You could see the thunderbird logo on the building and the announcer through the large glass window. My buddies and I would wave and the announcer might wave back.”
Those were glorious times that have faded somewhat for local radio in the advent of large corporate ownership, changing listener tastes, and automation.
The iconic thunderbird logo on the KYOS studio at G and 18th Streets in Merced. Photo from KYOS
But KYOS has survived. It may not be the powerhouse it was in the fifties, sixties, and seventies, but it has carved out an audience that prefers news and talk.
For many loyal audience members, it is a station they are familiar with and a place they feel comfortable listening to on a regular basis.
There are no special plans to commemorate the milestone KYOS will soon mark. While the station’s eightieth anniversary may be just around the corner, the focus in radio is always on the future.
And what will the station look like in twenty years when a one-hundredth anniversary may be in order?
“Radio now is still connecting with listeners who don’t want to pay for satellite services - Stations like K97.5 connect with our audience not only on the airwaves but also through social media.”
Local radio competes in a marketplace filled with many outlets for people to inform and entertain themselves.
Successful staff people, like Dave Luna with his over thirty-five-year tenure with the station, have found success by being resourceful and by being adaptable to changes in the work environment.
“I learned some valuable lessons from my dad about work ethic,” he says. “I have adapted and will continue to adapt as radio evolves.”
Dave Luna keeps rock and roll photos and vintage album covers on the studio wall at the Radio Merced offices on Main Street in Merced. Photo by Steve Newvine
Dave has seen a lot of change in his years with KYOS and K97.5. For him, the most drastic shift came when the Castle Air Force Base closed in the mid-1990s.
He said it was common when the Base was in operation to see many military people walking down Main Street in Merced on a weekday.
Those days are gone, but new days are on the horizon. A radio station that broadcast the news of the United States entering World War II, the election of a dozen presidents, the moon landing, and so many other iconic events, continues to inform and entertain listeners in and around Merced County.
Happy eightieth anniversary to KYOS!
Steve Newvine lives in Merced.
He’s written Sign On at Sunrise, a novel about a young man who works at an AM radio station in the 1970s.
Steve worked part time at radio station WBRV in Boonville, New York in the 1970s. That station recently marked its sixty-first anniversary.
To explore Steve Newvine's complete collection of books, simply click on the link below.
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Steve is also open to delivering speeches for service club programs and other public speaking engagements.
Contact him at: SteveNewvine@sbcglobal.net