Mickey Flynn became known as the “Ghost of La Palma”.
Because of the 1950-55 success of Clare Van Hoorebeke’s Anaheim Colonists program, the Anaheim parks department had agreed to expand the La Palma Avenue baseball park to include 7,500 grandstand seats in the outfield.
The first football game drew an overflow crowd of 9,000 persons in 1956 and Flynn scored the only touchdown with a 71-yard run in the fourth quarter that defeated Redlands, 6-0.
Flynn’s exploits soon gave way to his being compared to an invisible figure.
Sid Ziff, the sports editor of the Los Angeles Mirror, was credited with the origin, but longtime patrons of La Palma Stadium suggested that Flynn became known as the Ghost for another reason.
“The lighting on the field was not the best back then,” wrote Steve Kresal of the Los Angeles Times in 1989. “Flynn could disappear into the shadows, then reappear downfield on his way to a big gain.”
Flynn, who averaged almost 14 yards a carry in the varsity seasons of 1954-56 and who was the individual star of the 1955 Anaheim-San Diego playoff, was the first athlete inducted into the Orange County Sports Hall of Fame in 1986.
