News

Teacher and coach Tim Moellering passes away

January 20, 2011 3:30 pm by Lance Knobel

Tim Moellering, Berkeley High history teacher and baseball coach, who died on Tuesday.

Tim Moellering, a history teacher and baseball coach at Berkeley High, died on Tuesday after a long battle with cancer. Moellering had come to BHS in 2002 after 19 years teaching at Willard Middle School, where he was both a teacher and the football coach.

BHS Principal Pascuale Scuderi wrote to parents that Moellering “remained humorous and selfless throughout his struggle. Tim was an exceptional practitioner in the classroom. Students got significant quantities of humor and perspective to compliment the expertly delivered content that we came to expect in his courses. His commitment to the academic and athletic programs of this school and thereby this community were exemplary.”

Mark Coplan, Berkeley Unified School District spokesman, had a more personal reflection: “For me, Tim watched our two oldest grow up and David had the wonderful experience of playing football at Willard for Coach Moellering, and later failing his AP History class at BHS. Tim was an easygoing guy, but he always taught his students; he never failed in his responsibility as an educator, family friend of not. I really valued that.”

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  • Eric

    He was also my neighbor and a nice person. Sorry to hear of his passing.

  • Ellen

    Huge, huge, huge loss for BHS.

  • Gale

    My son’s baseball coach. A very sad day for BHS.

  • Peggy

    His Facebook page is filled with tributes. More importantly, he inspired students and his standards were very high; kids looked up to him, adored him and praised him, to his face and now in the face of his passing. He was the role model we want our teachers to be.

  • Lauren

    What a sad time for the Berkeley Community This is a huge loss, His impact was so great we will feel the effects for a very long time. His passing will leave a void that will never be filled. RIP

  • John Seal

    And to add to the sadness, this picture was snapped at the soon to be mothballed Evans Diamond…

  • Matt

    Tim is a legend.
    He was my teacher.
    My coach on eight great baseball teams (3 championships).
    My friend …someone who loved music beer and good company.
    He left a mark on hundreds maybe thousands of people and will not be forgotten.
    I wish the family and other close friends well.
    It was suggested by my mother and I agree that the Willard baseball field
    be named in Tim’s name, it would be the right thing to do.

  • http://www.animalpeoplenews.org Merritt Clifton

    For me, Tim was first & longest a teammate, in five states & two nations. I met Tim in 1966 when he was eight and I was 12. He was already the second-year captain of a neighborhood team of mostly older players. My team, with my brother Ted hitting third while I hit fourth, massacred Tim’s team twice in early 1966, but had trouble filling out a lineup, so Tim — already a talented recruiter — proposed a merger. Our merged team, the Oxfords, with Tim as manager, was 24-1 in 1967 against Little League competition. After that we lost
    one game in 1970, basically because I disregarded Tim’s strategic advice & became the goat because of it, and were 7-0 with two ties in reunions, 1981-1991, when we disbanded due to loss of able-bodied players.
    Many of us have seen football games turn into gangfights. On Halloween night, 1970, I was the big guy standing alongside Tim (and future SF State pitching ace Gary Hart was the other guy standing with him) when Tim turned a gangfight at Live Oak Park among guys mostly five years older into a football game.
    Tim was only 13, but already had the knack of defusing any confrontation. This served him well later on several occasions when he talked distraught students who brought firearms to school into surrendering them before anyone got hurt.
    In 1971 I was the batting coach and Gary Hart was pitching coach when Tim pitched a team composed of other teams’ cuts to the Berkeley city youth baseball league championship. Barry Fike, who notified me of Tim’s death, was the left fielder & clean-up hitter.
    A few years later Tim played center field for a summer team that had Rickey Henderson in left, Gary Pettis in right, and Shooty Babbitt at shortstop. There were scouts at every game, he told me, but he’d have had to play standing on his head to have been noticed.
    Tim went on to play & manage semi-pro baseball for KRON/Snoopy’s around the San Francisco Bay area, played amateur ball in Germany, and played some town team ball with me in northern Vermont in 1987. Our youngest teammate was Matt Raleigh, later a 10-year pro who rose as high as AAA & twice led minor leagues in home runs. I was standing in center field when as shortstop Tim saved a big game by perfectly executing the hidden ball trick — a play they were still talking about when I left the region three years later.
    Tim continued to play ball off & on until 2007. I believe his last at-bat came against me in a fast-pitch softball game here on Whidbey Island in Washington. He hit a hard one-hopper back to the mound, I turned it into a double play, & then we went to Seattle to
    drink beer & await his flight home.
    We played against each other a lot, too. Because I always kept a log of how I did against any pitcher I saw much of, I happen to know that I hit 20-57-.521 off Tim, lifetime, in 140 AB, hitting him way harder than anyone else I ever saw.
    Any other pitcher would have stuck the ball in my ear at least once in 40-odd years, & many tried, but Tim never even knocked me down.
    Tim thought he did once, by accident, & was immediately apologetic, but actually I’d just tripped over my own feet & told him to get his butt back to the mound & pitch.
    Then he struck me out swinging at a change-up. Of all the many times I faced Tim, that’s the AB I remember best. He knew I’d be swinging to hit the ball out of the park, & I was so far out in front of him that I’d just about stuck the bat up my own ass by the time it reached the plate. About all I could do was walk back to the dugout feeling like an idiot. Tim could have laughed, but he didn’t. He saved the laughing for afterward, over beer, & then only when he saw that I was laughing. He’d gotten me that time, fair & square.
    I last saw Tim at his house on the eve of my 40th high school class reunion last September. Fike was there, and another of our longtime teammates, longtime San Jose high school baseball coach Vinegar Ben Maisel. Tim had just maintained his streak of having attended every U.C. Berkeley home football game since 1971. The team won,
    the San Francisco Giants were in first place, & he was happy.
    “Until we meet again,” he said.
    Tim last sent me an e-mail after the Giants won the World Championship. He died wearing his Giants’ cap.