Ken Perez had already confirmed his place in town as a coach who consistently brings his teams to victory, even before a string of winning seasons at Tracy High.

He led the Bulldogs sophomore baseball team to an 83-17 record over the past four years, and each year they kept getting better. The team won 45 of 50 games the past two years, and last year boasted a 22-2 overall record, including a 13-game winning streak at the start of the season and a San Joaquin Athletic Association league title at the end.

There’s even more about Perez’s lifelong dedication to baseball on the program for an Oct. 11 appreciation dinner at the Bogetti Barn in Vernalis. A group of friends, including Eric Hayes, Albert Bogetti and Rich Gruber, organized the event after hearing that Perez would retire as a coach at the end of the 2009 season because of a medical condition.

“He’s been Mr. Baseball in Tracy forever,” Hayes said.

Hayes recalled the early 1970s, when he and other 11- and 12-year-olds played the game under the mentorship of Perez, who was the catcher for the Tracy High team and also a coach for the Tracy Recreation District’s baseball leagues.

For the past nine years, Perez has brought up another generation of ballplayers as coach of the Tracy High sophomore team. It’s a role that brought him full-circle, from his earliest memories of watching New York Yankees games with his father, Eddie Perez, through his high school years, college ball and playing with local semipro teams.

“If I didn’t coach these past nine years, something would be missing from my life,” Perez said this week.

It’s a rewarding job, he said, because his teams take their practice seriously and bring what they learned to the diamond on game day.

“It’s fun to work hard and then watch it come together,” he said. “And that’s what makes it so much better than an individual sport, because you have so many people to share it with.”

Perez, 52, said that he has lived baseball as long as he can remember. His father made him a Yankees fan before Major League Baseball came to the West Coast.

He spent four years as a Tracy High Bulldog, playing two years and part of his sophomore season on the varsity team under coach Don Nicholson. He graduated in 1975 and spent four years as a catcher for the Fresno State Bulldogs.

He also played American Legion ball as a teenager, spent two years with the semipro Mi Ranchito Saints from 1975 to 76, and was a player and manager with the semipro Tracy Angels from 1977 to 1986.

After that, he took time away from baseball so that he and his wife, Paula, could raise their two children, Bailey and Kyle.

But when Tracy High Athletic Director Mark Stroup offered him the sophomore coaching job in 2001, Perez knew it was a chance to get back to his roots and help young men in the same way his mentors — he counts among them recreation director Joe Wilson, coach Nicholson, American Legion coach Steve Lopez, and Fresno State coach Bob Bennett — helped him.

That part of his life came into focus this past year after Perez was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.

ALS became known as Lou Gehrig’s disease after it claimed the life of the Yankee great in 1941. The disease attacks the central nervous system and limits strength and mobility in the hands and legs at first, and eventually leads to muscle paralysis.

The ALS Association reports that the disease is usually fatal within three to five years. In some cases, though, progression of the disease slows or even stops, and one in 10 patients will live with the disease for 10 years or more, some for 20 years or more.

“I’m just taking it day by day,” Perez said. “I’m a fighter. I’m going to fight it.”

But following his diagnosis, he decided that 2009 would be his last year as a coach.

Perez noticed something was wrong in July 2008 during batting practice with his summer travel team, the River Dogs, when he had trouble holding onto the ball. Soon, he had trouble walking and began to get muscle cramps.

He saw a doctor at Stanford Medical Center, and on Jan. 7, the day of baseball sign-ups at Tracy High, he received the diagnosis.

Perez now has limited use of his hands and sometimes walks with a cane, but he’s still at his job of 26 years with W.H. Breshears Inc. of Modesto, where he manages the wholesale division for Chevron products.

“I just want to keep things as normal as possible as long as I can,” Perez said. “I have to deal with it, but I don’t need to dwell on it.”

At the Oct. 11 appreciation dinner, though, Perez can expect people to spotlight his contributions to the community as a player, coach and mentor.

Gary Reeve, assistant coach with Perez for the past nine years and a teammate with the Tracy High Bulldogs, Fresno State Bulldogs and Tracy Angels, said folks at the dinner will have plenty to say about how Perez inspires other players. Reeve specifically recalls how Perez transformed the Tracy Angels with his work ethic.

“With Kenny coaching, we worked hard and surprised some teams,” Reeve said. “After a while, they weren’t surprised anymore.”

Reeve added that Perez prompted the same motivation out of the Tracy High sophomores.

“Kenny has been what really makes things jell on the field. He left no doubt about what he was trying to do.”

Hayes said he embraced Perez’s no-excuse style of coaching, adding that he also learned how effective Perez could be as an opponent — Hayes coached the St. Mary’s Rams sophomore team in 2003.

“The toughest two games of the year were against Tracy,” he said. “It was a typical Perez team. They were well-prepared.”

The appreciation dinner shows that Perez’s lifelong involvement with baseball gained him a town full of dedicated friends. Money raised at the event will go into a scholarship fund for his daughter, Bailey, a sophomore at Fresno State, and son, Kyle, a senior at Tracy High.

“It’s not like I’m going through this alone,” Perez said. “I’ve done something right to have so many people care about me.

“In the time you have on this Earth, you’d like to think you made a difference. This makes it a little easier to think that in some small way I have.”

At a glance

• WHAT: Appreciation dinner honoring Kenny Perez

• WHEN: 3 p.m. Oct. 11

• WHERE: Bogetti Barn, 35088 Welty Road, in Vernalis

• TICKETS: $50 per person

• DONATE: Community Banks of Northern California, Ken Perez Trust Fund, 2140 W. Grant Line Road, Tracy 95377.

• INFO: Elaine Bogetti, 609-6445 or ebogetti@cv-access.com; Jennifer Shull, 483-6108 or s.schull@sbcglobal.net; Mike Patrick, 559-438-8058 or mjtheface@comcast.net; Rich Gruber, 480-4395; Louie Villalovoz, 612-4433.