I have many memories of the upstairs apartment in the two-story house at 2119 30th Street in San Diego where I grew up (from age 4 to 24).
Did my house "watch" and "hear" and "feel" and "remember" my time living there?
I wrote a description of the layout of the 30th Street house as I recalled it. I described each inhabitant (my father, my mother, me, my two brothers) and some of the daily events that happened in each room over my 20 years residing there, plus some memories of specific events. I created a PDF of that document and attached it to the AI tool to use.
(2115-2119 30th Street house in 1929, from family sources, colorized by MyHeritage)
1) The first AI prompt that I used for the free AI tool Anthropic Claude Sonnet 4 was for story ideas, plus a short description of each idea: "Please provide twenty family history stories from my house's point of view, based on the information in the attached document."
Anthropic Claude Sonnet 4 provided twenty wonderful story ideas - here is one of them (lightly edited for accuracy, consistency, and detail).
2) My next prompt added significant detail about my father's youth baseball coaching efforts, and was: "Please write a short story about my father's youth baseball coaching efforts with his boys."
(Fred, Randy, Stan and Scott in 1957, from family sources)
Here is the Anthropic Claude Sonnet 4 story (lightly edited):
Coach Fred Seaver
A story from the house at
2119 30th Street
When Little League came to
North Park in San Diego in 1957, it awakened something in Fred that had been
dormant since his own playing days as a young man. Stan had tried out and made a
team, and when the league organizers discovered that Fred had
baseball experience and the organizational skills of a successful
insurance agent, they asked him to coach. What began as a simple
request to help with his son's team became a fourteen-year passion
that transformed my office desk into a strategic command center and
turned Fred from neighborhood insurance agent into one of North
Park's most respected youth baseball managers.
I watched the transformation
begin immediately. My office, already organized with the precision of
Fred's insurance work, suddenly sprouted new filing systems. Roster
sheets appeared alongside policy folders. Lineup cards were tucked
between debit books. The large desk that had been dedicated to
Prudential business now shared space with the complex logistics of
managing young baseball players through seasons that stretched from
spring into summer.
The adding machine that had
calculated insurance premiums now computed batting averages and
earned run statistics. Fred approached baseball management with the
same methodical attention to detail that made his insurance work so
successful. Every player's performance was tracked, every game
situation was analyzed, every strategic decision was supported by
data that Randy meticulously maintained in scorebooks that became
treasured family documents.
Click-clunk-ding. The
sound of a batting average being calculated. Click-clunk-ding.
The sound of team statistics being updated. Click-clunk-ding.
The sound of Fred's competitive spirit expressing itself through
numbers.
Stan started Little League
when he was ten years old, and went on to play Pony League when he
was 13, and Colt League when he was 15. Fred moved up to the
different leagues also, all played at the ball fields in the northern part
of Balboa Park at Morley Field. The dinner table after the Saturday games was
electric – with Fred offering encouragement and the boys
understanding the game situations.
Randy became Fred's unofficial
assistant manager, serving as dugout scorekeeper for every game
across twelve seasons. I watched their evening conferences at my
office desk as Fred would review Randy's detailed scoresheets,
looking for patterns and insights that might give his team advantages
in upcoming games. Randy's careful records tracked not just hits and
errors, but situational performance, pitching tendencies, and the
subtle strategic information that separated good coaches from great
ones.
The seasonal rhythm of
baseball transformed the energy in my walls. Winter evenings meant
roster planning, with Fred studying league rules and player
eligibility requirements with the same intensity he brought to
insurance regulations. Spring brought the excitement of tryouts and
draft preparations, my office becoming a war room where Fred would
evaluate talent and plan team construction with the strategic
thinking of a general preparing for campaign.
But it was during the season
itself that Fred's coaching passion truly blazed. Each week there was
one weekday afternoon practice and two games (one on a weekday and
one on Saturday). I'd feel the anticipation building as Fred gathered
his coaching equipment—scorebooks, lineup cards, the worn glove
he'd had since his own playing days, and eventually the cleats and
uniform that made him look every inch the professional baseball
manager he'd become.
Field preparation was where
Fred's perfectionist nature truly shone. The North Park diamonds were
far from professional quality—mostly dirt infields that required
constant maintenance to be playable. Fred took personal
responsibility for ensuring his team's home games were played on
properly prepared surfaces. I could hear his car engine early on game
mornings as he drove to the field.
The ritual was always the
same: drag the field with a chain link fence to break up the
hard-packed earth, rake out the larger rocks and debris, use the
manual field drag to create the perfect playing surface, and finally
line the baselines and batter's boxes with precise measurements that
would have impressed any professional groundskeeper. Fred understood
that good games required good fields, and he wasn't about to let his
players compete on substandard surfaces if he could help it.
His coaching philosophy
reflected his personality—encouraging but demanding, supportive but
realistic about what it took to win games. Fred taught fundamentals
with the patience of a man who understood that complex skills were
built through mastering simple techniques. Hitting meant proper
stance, appropriate grip, keeping your eye on the ball. Bunting was
important. Base running meant understanding situations, reading
pitchers, taking smart leads, and listening to the coaches. Pitching meant location, velocity and
spin. Defense meant positioning, communication, and the mental
preparation that turned routine plays into automatic outs.
The boys on Fred's teams
learned more than baseball—they learned Fred's approach to life.
Show up prepared. Practice until skills become instinctive.
Understand the rules completely so you can use them to your
advantage. Work as a team while taking individual responsibility for
your performance. Compete hard but with respect for opponents and
officials.
Draft day was serious business
in my office. Fred would spread player evaluation sheets across his
desk, consulting with Randy about statistical performance from
previous seasons, weighing athletic ability against character and
coachability. The decisions made during these sessions would
determine team chemistry for entire seasons, and Fred approached them
with the gravity of a corporate executive making personnel decisions.
His teams won more than they
lost because Fred understood that successful coaching meant more than
just teaching skills—it meant creating systems. Every player knew
their role, every situation had been practiced, every strategic
option had been discussed and rehearsed. When critical moments arose
during games, Fred's players responded with confidence because they'd
already faced similar challenges dozens of times in practice.
The All-Star team selections
were acknowledgments of Fred's coaching excellence. League organizers
knew that Fred's teams were well-prepared, well-coached, and
represented the best of youth baseball competition. Managing All-Star
teams meant coaching the most talented players from across the
league, but it also meant the pressure of representing North Park
Little League and Pioneer Pony League in regional competition where coaching
mistakes would be magnified.
I loved watching Fred in his
coaching uniform. The same man who spent weekdays in business attire,
calculating insurance premiums with quiet professionalism, would
transform into an animated baseball strategist, calling plays from
the third base coaching box with hand signals and encouraging shouts.
His competitive spirit, usually contained within the polite
requirements of insurance sales, could finally express itself openly
on the baseball diamond.
The Pony League and Colt
League years brought additional challenges as the players grew older,
stronger, and more sophisticated in their understanding of baseball
strategy. Fred adapted his coaching to meet these evolving needs,
treating teenage players more like junior partners in the strategic
enterprise while maintaining the fundamental teaching approach that
had made his Little League teams so successful.
Evening lineup sessions at my
office desk became increasingly complex as the level of play
advanced. Fred would consider matchups, pitching rotations, defensive
alignments, and situational substitutions with the thoroughness of a
professional manager. Randy's scorekeeping became even more valuable
as the statistical analysis grew more sophisticated and the strategic
decisions carried greater weight.
When Scott entered Little
League in 1964, the cycle began again, but with the added complexity
of coaching your own child while maintaining fairness to the rest of
the team. Fred navigated this challenge with the same ethical
approach he brought to his insurance work—Scott earned his playing
time and positions through performance, not favoritism. If anything,
Fred was harder on Scott than on other players, understanding that
coaching your own son required absolute integrity to maintain team
respect.
The transition in 1969, when
Randy took over managing the Little League team as Fred moved up to
coach Scott in Pony League, represented the culmination of Fred's
baseball teaching. Randy had absorbed twelve years of Fred's
coaching philosophy, strategic thinking, and organizational methods.
Watching his eldest son step into the coaching role must have felt
like witnessing the ultimate validation of his approach to youth
baseball.
Fred's coaching years created
a parallel career that was every bit as demanding as his insurance
work but infinitely more emotionally rewarding. My office desk had
supported both enterprises—the methodical calculation of insurance
business and the passionate strategizing of baseball competition. The
same analytical skills that made Fred successful with Prudential made
him exceptional at evaluating young talent and developing game plans
that maximized his teams' potential.
But perhaps the most
remarkable aspect of Fred's coaching career was how it enriched
rather than competed with his family life. Baseball brought Fred
closer to his sons rather than taking him away from them. Stan and
Scott got to see their father in action as a leader and teacher,
while Randy developed a partnership with Fred that lasted well beyond
childhood. Betty enjoyed the game day outings watching her boys play,
and helped out in the snack bar on Saturdays when her son wasn’t
playing. The family dinner conversations during baseball season were
filled with discussions of strategy, player development, and game
analysis that made everyone feel involved in Fred's coaching success.
By the time Fred's coaching
career ended in the early 1970s, he had influenced hundreds of young
players across multiple leagues and age groups. But from my
perspective, watching him work at that office desk night after night,
his greatest achievement wasn't the games won or the championships
earned—it was the demonstration of how passion and competence could
combine to create something valuable for the entire community.
Fred had taken his natural
abilities—analytical thinking, organizational skills, competitive
spirit, and genuine care for young people—and channeled them into fourteen years of youth baseball excellence. My office had been the
headquarters for both his insurance success and his coaching
achievements, proving that the same qualities that made Fred a
reliable provider for his family also made him an exceptional leader
and teacher for other people's children.
The desk that calculated
insurance premiums by day and planned baseball lineups by night
represented the fullness of Fred's life—professional success and
personal passion united in service to family and community. Coach
Fred had found a way to make winning games and developing young
players into the same enterprise, and both had flourished under his
patient, methodical care.
3) The Audio Overview of this story, created by the Google Notebook AI tool is here. (Click on "Audio Overview" to hear it).
4) The Google NotebookLM Video Overview is below:
5) This AI-generated material is historical fiction, since I don't have details of every day or every year in the lives of my own life or the lives of my ancestors. Does it matter that I am presenting these as seemingly real answers or conversations? I don't think so - because my purpose is to enable my descendants to know who their ancestors were and to help them understand the lives of their ancestors. The AI-generated responses are much more readable and creative than any response I have in my memory bank or that I can create.
6) These events really happened over a period of time and the names and events mentioned are real. My father, Fred Seaver, played baseball in high school and on town league teams in Leominster, Massachusetts as a young man, and was a devoted fan of the Boston Red Sox. I found newspaper articles about his town team exploits including box scores.
I was not a good hitter because my eyes were poor, and never played youth baseball except in elementary school. By 1957, I could do batting averages in my head and in long division. Stan and Scott went on to play high school baseball, and Scott played on a Junior College team. We all follow the San Diego Padres on television and occasionally go to games.
And here I've always thought that my father was just trying to relive his youthful exploits through his sons, with baseball strategy liberally applied! I think he succeeded. Growing up, I had no idea he was so methodical, but all the signs were there.
==============================================
Links to my blog posts about using Artificial Intelligence are on my Randy's AI and Genealogy page. Links to AI information and articles about Artificial Intelligence in Genealogy by other genealogists are on my AI and Genealogy Compendium page.
Copyright (c) 2025, Randall J. Seaver
Please comment on this post on the website by clicking the URL above and then the "Comments" link at the bottom of each post. Share it on Twitter, Facebook, or Pinterest using the icons below. Or contact me by email at randy.seaver@gmail.com. Please note that all comments are moderated, and may not appear immediately.
Subscribe to receive a free daily email from Genea-Musings using www.Blogtrottr.com.
