COSTA MESA, Calif. — It was here, at the “House That Alto Built,” where NBA royalty was forced to hide.

Kobe Bryant arrived at Pirate Park at Orange Coast College one spring morning in 2018, just early enough to avoid being spotted by eager onlookers. As he entered the ballpark, the five-time NBA champion slunk his 6-foot-6 frame through the narrow entryway and remained hidden behind the press box until he was summoned. As OCC baseball head coach John Altobelli spoke near home plate, Bryant emerged, eager to ruminate and discuss with Altobelli’s players the “Mamba Mentality” that became his mantra during his legendary basketball career. He spoke of the ferocity, focus and vision that is required with competition — the same traits he saw in Altobelli.

Bryant and Altobelli were friends, an NBA legend and a junior college coaching icon bonded by paternal love, two men who embodied each other’s best traits in their respective professions. Altobelli’s youngest daughter, Alyssa, was teammates with Bryant’s daughter Gianna, the two 13-year-olds playing travel basketball together for Bryant’s Mamba Academy youth team. The two fathers connected, with Altobelli often giddily mentioning the times the “Black Mamba” would let him ride with him on his helicopter to games — he’d get to ride five or so times, with Alyssa taking countless more trips across Los Angeles to birthday parties and games. Saturday night, as his team was in the midst of an intrasquad scrimmage before Tuesday’s season opener, Altobelli stopped to tell his assistant coaches that he, his wife, Keri, and Alyssa would be riding to the second day of Bryant’s Mamba Cup tournament together on Sunday morning.

They were aboard Bryant’s helicopter when it crashed in Calabasas. Nine names were listed on the flight’s manifest, Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva said Sunday, declining to confirm any names. None survived, including Bryant and Gianna, and Altobelli and his wife and daughter. He was just 56 years old.

As the news of Bryant’s passing flooded the Internet, OCC assistant coach Nate Johnson’s heart sunk. He called Altobelli’s phone to no avail, then dialed Altobelli’s son JJ, a scout for the Boston Red Sox.

“I kind of had a feeling,” Johnson said. “A bad feeling. I tried to call him, make sure it wasn’t true. He said it was.”

Elsewhere, Tony Altobelli’s phone was buzzing. For the past 14 years, he’s served as the sports information director for OCC’s baseball program, getting a firsthand look as his older brother transformed a small junior college into a powerhouse. But as he hurried to ask around about what happened to Bryant, an assistant from the Mamba Academy urged him to call his brother. He got no answer. Eventually, he got the news he’d dreaded.

By the time he arrived to Wendell Pickens Field on Sunday, he saw a diamond flooded with current and former players. Johnson had put out a call to his players to meet at the place he dubbed “The House That Alto Built,” and word had trickled out. They stood, recounting memories from Altobelli’s first year at OCC in 1993 to the current team, which would have been his 28th as coach.

All told the same story, one of a man of passion, family and more than just baseball.

“He’s going to be missed, not just at this campus but statewide at this level and all the way through collegiate baseball,” Tony Altobelli told The Athletic.

Altobelli’s tenure at OCC included more than 700 victories and four state titles. His impact was felt far beyond. He was an icon for a junior college community, one whose presence extended far beyond that.

“I’m just trying to make sure everyone knows how great he was,” Johnson said. “He kind of gets overshadowed by Kobe a bit, but he was his own Kobe of the junior college baseball world.”

Jeff Nelson met John Altobelli when he was a teenager. As a senior at Newport Harbor High School, he’d taken to coaching some of the young baseball talent in the area, and was instantly taken by the young, fiery John. So when he got the news Sunday, he drove straight to the ballpark.

The two had remained close through each of John’s stops. He started as a junior college standout at Golden West College before transferring to the University of Houston and bringing them to within a win of the College World Series. Then he had assistant coaching stops at Houston and UC Irvine before earning his first head coaching gig at OCC. Altobelli spent nearly three decades at the school, with summer stops in the Alaskan League and the Cape Cod League bolstering his resume and extending his list of former players to include Aaron Judge, Jeff McNeil and Mariners prospect Braden Bishop, among others.

“Tough to hear the news of coach Altobelli,” McNeil tweeted Sunday. “One of my favorite coaches I have ever played for and one of the main reasons I got a chance to play professional baseball. Both the baseball and basketball world lost a great one today.”

Nelson saw firsthand how Altobelli drew himself to players such as himself, junior college players who often had to battle to keep a dwindling dream alive. Players who arrived Sunday included former walk-ons, players who’d kept pushing in their baseball pursuits only because Altobelli had extended that opportunity. It’s one Nelson wished he’d had, and something he often talked about with Altobelli.

“That’s how I’ll recognize him the most, because he was all about helping other people and helping other players to achieve their goals as long as they can,” Nelson told The Athletic. “Baseball always ends someday, but John was able to help a lot of players extend that ‘someday.’ He was just a great individual.

“It’s a loss that you can’t replace. It’s just a sad day. He’s going to be missed.”

Travis Moniot, like so many others, was looking for a second chance.

One year at the University of Oregon was all Moniot required to know he needed a change, an opportunity to prove himself in the game he loved. So when it came time to transfer, he immediately knew he wanted to go to OCC. Moniot had met Altobelli in Cuba while playing for the collegiate national team, and the coach’s reputation as a developer of talent preceded him.

What Moniot would come to know went beyond that. Altobelli succeeded in helping him achieve his dreams, with Moniot eventually transferring to the University of Arizona following one season at OCC and getting drafted by the Chicago White Sox in the 17th round in 2018.

But that’s not why he immediately made the two-hour drive to OCC from Palm Desert upon hearing about Altobelli’s passing. He did it because of the man he’d learned so much from, whom he’d come to admire and often tried to emulate.

“He was a coach, but he left such a deeper impact on all of us,” said Moniot, weeks away from heading to his second professional spring training with the White Sox. “He left the world a better place. We came here to play baseball, but we left as better people, to treat people a better way, to just go about our lives the way that he did. He was always extremely selfless. It was never about him for 28 years that he was here. It was about furthering our careers and what we wanted to do with our lives.”

Altobelli did more than coach. He fought for his players. He laughed with them. Cried with them. As several players huddled near the home dugout Sunday afternoon, they recalled the good times, the bad times, the funny times. Someone joked about how the man they referred to simply as “Alto” would turn photos from their CPR certification courses into memes. Others quipped about how he’d knock them out of the way to get them away from umpires, only to sprint over and harp in their ears instead. They looked and laughed at photos of his ugly sweater from their Christmas party. Then there was the time his pal Kobe Bryant showed up unannounced, wowing them all.

Moniot brought up the time when, on Halloween, he called a practice and seemingly didn’t show up. Then players sat in amazement as a man in a giant pirate costume — mirroring the school’s mascot — wandered the outfield for a half-hour without saying a word. When the masked pirate man finally spoke, the players realized the prank their coach had pulled.

“He had a huge thing on and he wasn’t talking to anyone,” Moniot said. “He was just walking around for a long time. We were like, ‘Who is that?’ We weren’t looking for Coach Alto. We were just kind of looking at each other’s costumes. But that ended up being him. He finally started talking. He didn’t talk for like 30 minutes that day.”

Tony Altobelli’s knowledge of his brother’s heart spans beyond John’s 28 years with the school. After all, as the youngest of seven he’s known John his entire life, “a whole 49 years,” he quipped.

That’s what made Sunday even harder. He stood out on the field his brother tended for years — until he finally raised enough money to replace the grass and dirt with turf — and saw the change his brother had brought. John’s fundraising efforts four years ago, which totaled $2.1 million, brought new bathrooms, new scoreboards, batting eyes and bullpens, and a new press box for Tony, too.

“Before this field was what it is, every day he was out here draining ditches when it was raining and mowing the field himself, chalking everything and doing all the maintenance behind it,” Tony said.

Once John got the new turf installed, Tony would often hit him with a joke: Since everything was so perfect (especially by junior college standards), what was he going to do will all his time?

“Oh, I guess I’ll pick up sunflower seeds, and things of that nature,” John would quip back.

“He’s probably the hardest-working human being I’ve ever seen in my life,” Tony said. “He really left his legacy. This field is going to be his legacy. The players that have been here his 28 years, that’s his legacy. He’ll never be forgotten.”

The legacy will also be in the family he cultivated at Orange Coast College, not just with his brother so heavily invested in the program but in having his eldest daughter, Lexi, serve as bat girl.

“He’s always been a part of this area,” Tony said. “His family meant the world to him. The fact that he was with them in the end, it was no surprise.”

His family was a common presence around OCC’s campus, and even those without blood relation were included. Altobelli coached approximately 1,000 players. All of them, Tony said, were part of his family for life.

From left to right: Alyssa Altobelli, John Altobelli, Oakland A’s prospect Boog Powell, Keri Altobelli and Lexi Altobelli. (Courtesy of Nate Johnson)

Tony Altobelli hurried to the field after that call from the Mamba Academy assistant and was greeted by the swarm of current and former players. Still serving as the program’s SID, he fielded questions from several reporters, ensuring that they had all the proper information, went on TV for live hits and spent hours talking to those eager to learn about the man he knew so well. Then, after a few hours, he headed off to do the job he never thought he’d have to do — write a press release about his own brother’s death.

“Pretty heavy stuff,” Tony said, before insisting that’s what John would’ve wanted.

As he left the field, he recalled his fondest memory from what would be John Altobelli’s final game. As John’s Pirates sought their fourth state title of his tenure, Tony served as the state tournament’s public-address announcer as well as its statistician and SID. So, for the final time, he was the man who got to introduce his brother as a state champion.

“That’s a memory that really hasn’t stuck in my head just yet, but now just saying that I’m getting emotional,” Tony said. “That’s one I’ll remember forever.”

By the time Nate Johnson’s playing career ended, following a successful collegiate run at Pepperdine, he knew he wanted to be a coach. He just didn’t know how, or who to be, who to emulate, as anyone in their early 20s can understand.

Johnson was still in Southern California when his opportunity came. His old Little League coach had served as a longtime volunteer assistant at nearby Orange Coast College and was getting ready to step down. He encouraged Johnson to replace him. That’s when he met John Altobelli for the first time, as a “kid fresh out of college” looking for a chance.

Altobelli brought Johnson on board as staff. It was a chance Johnson didn’t even realize he would get. He quickly and quietly rose up Altobelli’s staff, growing to emulate the coach’s passion and ease when interacting with players. He saw the intensity and looked to incorporate it within his own coaching, mixing it in with a joke to cut the tension that naturally followed. Even Sunday, Johnson embodied that, finding those who were silent and bringing a smile to their faces. This was Altobelli’s program, down to the “Forever A Pirate” inscription on the back of Johnson’s cap.

He spoke of Altobelli’s alter ego, in which he’d refer to himself as “Norman,” a coach who was calm but always on edge.

“(Norman) was his way, when something happened, he’d go,” Johnson said. “But he was never that guy that was going to yell, scream. He wanted the best out of everybody, and he did it out of respect, not out of being that controlling, mean kind of a guy.”

When this year’s practices began, Altobelli had named Johnson his associate head coach. Upon Altobelli’s retirement — which he said would happen in the next three or four years — the program was going to be Johnson’s, something he struggled to comprehend even before Sunday. Now, at age 30, he will run the program, something that shocked him to say out loud.

“To honor him? That’s so hard,” Johnson said. “I’ve always thought about that. When he’s done, what am I going to do? I can name the field after him, I can do all that kind of stuff. Does it really honor him? I don’t know. Trying to be the coach that he was is probably going to be the hardest thing, but probably the thing that’s going to honor him the most. Just trying to carry on what he’s done the last 28 years. That’s going to be the only thing I’m going to be able to do.”

That’s all they can do, is move forward. OCC has its season opener on Tuesday at home at Pirate Park. In his first move as interim head coach, Johnson asked his players to vote, either to cancel Tuesday’s game, the first in the school’s title defense, or to keep going along. The same option was presented for practicing on Monday.

Both votes were emphatically in favor of playing.

“There’s nothing they want more than to put another (banner) up there for him,” Tony Altobelli said, before walking off.

(Top photo of John Altobelli: Courtesy of Nate Johnson)