This is the latest post for an ongoing media project — SoCal Sports History 101: The Prime Numbers from 00 to 99 that Uniformly, Uniquely and Unapologetically Reveal The Narrative of Our Region’s Athletic Heritage. Pick a number and highlight an athlete — person, place or thing — most obviously connected to it by fame and fortune, someone who isn’t so obvious, and then take a deeper dive into the most interesting story tied to it. It’s a combination of star power, achievement, longevity, notoriety, and, above all, what makes that athlete so Southern California. Quirkiness and notoriety factor in. And it should open itself to more discussion and debate — which is what sports is best at doing.
The most obvious choices for No. 29:
= Eric Dickerson: Los Angeles Rams and Los Angeles Raiders
= Rod Carew: California Angels
= Adrian Beltre: Los Angeles Dodgers
= Eric Turner: UCLA football
The not-so-obvious choices for No. 29:
= Harold Jackson: Los Angeles Rams
= Billy Smith: Los Angeles Kings
The most interesting story for No. 29:
Eric Dickerson: Los Angeles Rams running back (1983 to 1987); Los Angeles Raiders running back (1992)
Southern California map pinpoints:
Anaheim; Los Angeles (Coliseum)
A vintage clothing store on Main Street in Santa Monica, trying to cash in nostalgia and draw customer attention, figured that putting a Rams’ No. 29 blue-and-gold jersey in its window might elicit a response amidst a collection of fading Star Wars memorabilia and outdated Elton John concert T-shirts.
The gold numbers were bold and dynamic. Large and upright.
Like Eric Dickerson.
All that was missing were a pair of aviator goggles, a neck roll and boxy shoulder pads.
A mesmerizing style that almost made him look like a thoroughbred race horse shifting through the pack of competitors with deft precision, Dickerson only played four-plus seasons in Los Angeles for the Rams, and none were in Los Angeles.
The greatest single-season in yards accumulated that an NFL running ever experienced in league history came in 1984, in Anaheim.
The most polarizing contract debate about the same player’s future came three years later.
Dickerson had a series of nicknames in his career. “Mr. Fourth Quarter,” because of his stamina, “Number One,” because he was often the first choice in the offensive play calling. He was also “Mr. Benny,” for his known frugality.
For obvious reasons, thanks in part to his name, he was also “The Dick.”
The bickersome Dickerson left Southern California in 1987. Prematurely. To some, it left the Rams in a ramshackle status for years beyond.
Dickerson did come back to L.A., with enemy colors, for one last statement, in 1992.
At least 20 years after his NFL retirement, in 2016, when the Rams moved back to L.A., Dickerson signed a one-day contract with the Rams so he could officially quit on his terms with the team.
By then, who was paying attention?
The background
On Pro Football Reference.com, players “whose career was of similar quality and shape” put Eric Dickerson on par with Franco Harris, Barry Sanders, Thurman Thomas, Tony Dorsett, Marcus Allen, Walter Payton, Emmitt Smith and O.J. Simpson. Dickerson ultimately most compares to Simpson, mostly because it was Simpson’s single-season NFL rushing record that Dickerson right past blew past 12 years after Simpson was the first to break 2,000 yards.
Six Pro Bowls, five first-team All Pro selections and four rushing titles were on Dickerson’s resume when he retired in 1993 with 13,259 yards. At the time, only Payton (16,726) had more yards. Jim Brown, considered the benchmark of any NFL running back, had retired with 12,312 in 1965 with a standard no one came close to until Payton passed him more than a decade later.
Dickerson was the Texas native from a city famous for making bed mattresses. He wore No. 19 for four years when he was part of a “Pony Express” backfield at Dallas’ Southern Methodist University, twice leading the nation in rushing and third in the 1982 Heisman voting behind Herschel Walker and John Elway.
In the 1983 NFL draft, Dickerson landed in the Rams’ laps at No. 2 overall because, in the famous “Year of the Quarterback” draft, Elway went No. 1 (to Baltimore, traded to Denver), and the first round included Jim Kelly, Dan Marino, Todd Blackledge, Tony Eason and Ken O’Brien. Dickerson already angered Houston fans by stating flatly that he didn’t want to play for the Oilers and later irritated more Texans by asserting that he hated the Dallas Cowboys.
In cool and collected SoCal, Dickerson set the NFL record with 2,105 yards rushing in 16 games, which adds up to 131 yards a game. A 5.6 yards per carry went with a league-best 14 touchdowns, which were four fewer than he scored as a rookie the year before when he also racked up 1,808 yards.
In 1985, he thought he was worth more money. He held out the first two games of the season. Some Rams fans seemed to side with team management and some threw Monopoly money at him, others setting fire to their own No. 29 jerseys.
In a 2025 USA Today story about the NFL’s timeline of the most notable holdouts, Dickerson was at the top. While he did returning and help the Rams to the playoffs with his 1,234 rushing yards and 12 touchdowns, the damage was done.
Back to a full season in ’86 at age 26, Dickerson piled up another 1,821 yard rushing season on a phenomenal 404 rushing attempts. For the third season in his first four years, he also went past 2,000 in total offense, leading the league each time.
Those first four seasons as a Ram also accounted for about 7,000 yards rushing and about 1,600 carries. As of 2025, three of the top 25 NFL single-season rushing seasons were posted by Dickerson in a Rams’ uniform at age 23, 24 and 26.
But when the 1987 season started, the Rams were again baffled by Dickerson’s latest training camp holdout. He was making $682,000 that season. The Rams offered him $975,000. Not the million-a-year Dickerson thought he was worth.
So after the first three games, Dickerson’s incessant complaining led the Rams to trade him to Indianapolis in a blockbuster 10-player, three-team deal. The Rams hardly got a even trade, accepting Greg Bell and Owen Gill to fill his place.
The Colts gave Dkcierson a four-year, $5.6 million deal.
By 1988, Dickerson was back to leading the league with 1,659 yards rushing.
Dickerson still wore No. 29 the entire time.
Still, “The Dick” was underneath.
The Colts suspended him for part of the 1991 season for “conduct detrimental to the team,” and subsequently traded him to the Los Angeles Raiders for the 1992 season. The Raiders, using him as a situational running back, released him at age 32. He signed with the Atlanta Falcons.
He retired in 1993 after four games, never having played in the Super Bowl. But he had a smokescreen.
In his 2022 memoir, “Watch My Smoke,” Dickerson is in vintage 1980s NFL Jheri curls.
It reminded me of a friend who once asked Dickerson to sign a photo of himself so he could give it to his dad, whose name was Dick.
“From one Dick to another,” Dickerson wrote.
Two years after he was named to the NFL’s 100th anniversary team, he took the time in a book to explain himself – the contention with Rams management that led to his ridiculous trade, the opinions he holds today that allows him to be a frequent guests on Los Angeles talk radio and has a role in the Rams front office as vice president of business development.
Of course, in 2016, Dickerson used his clout to dismiss things coach Jeff Fisher was doing on the field. Dickerson revealed that Fisher, in his mind, banned him from the sidelines because of his criticism toward the team. Dickerson vowed then that he would not show up to a Rams game so long as Fisher was employed. Fisher was fired. Dickerson is back.
In his book, he talks more about the life of a black celebrity in a town of celebrities and all other things he encountered. The scandal he was part of when recruited at SMU in the 1970s.
The legacy
Imagine Dickerson in today’s college football world of name, image and likeness. There he is in a Super Bowl commercial, wearing his Pro Football Hall of Fame yellow jacket outside of SoFi Stadium, jogging through the city in a Rams sweatshirt, putting on his goggles, and espousing the benefits of a Sleep Number bed.
We’re guessing his sleep number is … 29? Like the ads he’s also been doing on local radio for the Spotlight 29 Casino out in trendy Coachella?
“The numbers two and nine stand for my birthday. Sort of,” he told me once. “My birthday is actually Sept. 2 — or 9-2 — but that doesn’t work for a running back so I flipped the numbers around.”
Wonder what the folks in Sealy, Tex., think about all that while taking a nap from their long day working at the mattress factory.
Who else wore No. 29 in SoCal sports history?
Make a case for:
Rod Carew, California Angels first baseman (1979 to 1985):
After his first 12 years in Minnesota, he retired to Anaheim to collect his 3,000th hit and become an AL All-Star six more times. His .314 average with the Angels in 834 games actually brought his career mark to .328 when his Hall of Fame career was finished. The Angels retired his number in 1986 (before a game against the Twins) and, at the time, it was the first player number ever retired by the franchise (after No. 26 for owner Gene Mauch) and during the ceremony he received a Los Angeles Rams football jersey number 29 from Eric Dickerson. Carew moved to Anaheim Hills after leaving the game as a coach and wrote a book about miraculous post-playing career health issues, “One Tough Out: Fighting Off Life’s Curveballs.”
Adrian Beltré, Los Angeles Dodgers third baseman (1998 to 2004):
Voted into the Baseball Hall of Fame with 95 percent in his first year of eligibility in 2024, Beltré’s first seven seasons started when he was (allegedly) 19 in L.A., and ended with him establishing the franchise single-season home run record of 48 in 2004. That total also not only led the National League, but it propelled him into a free-agent frenzy — thanks to aggressive agent Scott Boras. After marginal stops in Seattle and Boston, Beltré became a Texas legend. As Mike DiGiovanna wrotes in the L.A. Times as the 2024 Hall ballots were being counted, Beltré was “considered a teenage prodigy” when he agreed to a $23,000 deal with the Dodgers in 1994. “There was little about his early career, marred by a birth-certificate issue and his slow recovery from a botched appendectomy in the Dominican Republic, which screamed surefire Hall-of-Famer,” wrote DiGiovanna. Beltre’s first five seasons with the Dodgers (’99 to ’03) were a less-than-impressive .262, with a .748 on-base-plus-slugging percentage and averaging just 16 homers and 65 RBIs a season. The Dodgers nearly lost him in 2000 when a Major League Baseball investigation found they had signed him before his 16th birthday. Beltré sat out the first six weeks of 2001 after undergoing surgery to close a wound in his large intestine, the result of an infection from an emergency appendectomy that January. He never was part of an NL All Star team as a Dodger even thought he was second in MVP voting in ’04. Beltre was fourth in the league hitting .334 and 121 RBIs with a 1.017 OPS). The red flag was that Beltré played most of that season with bone spurs in his left ankle that required surgery after the season. Beltre’s 147 homers as a Dodger franchise player is 18th all time.
Eric Turner, UCLA football defensive back (1987 to 1990):
His program-best 14 interceptions in 44 games for UCLA led to him becoming the No. 2 overall pick in the 1991 NFL draft, the highest drafted defensive back in modern pro football history. Out of Ventura High, Turner was nicknamed “E-Rock” and was often compared to former Bruins great Don Rodgers. A memorable moment as a Bruin came in the 1987 UCLA-USC game at the Coliseum. Turner intercepted a pass from USC’s Rodney Peete at the goal line on the final play of the first half to prevent a score, and then returned it for what looked like a 100-yard pick-six until Peete ran him down and tackled him about 10 yards short of the end zone. After nine years and two Pro Bowl appearances, it was revealed in the 2000 NFL offseason that Turner battled abdominal cancer. He died in Thousand Oaks at age 31. The Ventura High field was named in his honor and he was inducted into the UCLA Athletics Hall of Fame in 2008.
Harold Jackson, Los Angeles Rams receiver (1968, 1973 to 1977):
Three of his five Pro Bowls, more than 3,000 of his career 10,372 yards receiving and 36 of his 76 career touchdowns came with the Rams, where he started wearing No. 48 for just two games as a rookie in 1968. He was traded to Philadelphia and emerged as en elite receiver. The Rams re-acquired him in exchange for quarterback Roman Gabriel. Statistically, his greatest NFL game came against Dallas on October 14, 1973, when he caught seven passes for 238 yards and four touchdowns, which came during a streak of four games where he caught 13 passes for 422 yards and eight TDs).
Have you heard this story:
Billy Smith, Los Angeles Kings goalie (1971-72). His rookie season was in L.A. as the fifth-round pick in the 1970 draft got into five games in the 1971-72 season, gave up 23 goals, and lost three times. He was the No. 3 netminder behind Gary Edwards and Rogie Vachon (who would go to the Hall of Fame). Smith was made available in the 1972 expansion draft. The New York Islanders grabbed him. In 17 seasons there, the team won four Stanley Cups (1980, ’81, ’82 and ’83, and lost in ’84), Smith won the Vezina (in ’82), Jennings and Smythe (in ’83), went into the Hockey Hall of Fame in 1993, and was named to the NHL’s Top 100 players of all time roster in 2017 (one of 15 goalies).
We also have:
Tommy McDonald, Los Angeles Rams receiver (1965 to 1966)
Bobby Knopp, Los Angeles/California Angels infielder (1964 to 1969)
Chuck Essegian, Los Angeles Dodgers outfielder (1959 to 1960)
Tim Wallach, Los Angeles Dodgers third baseman (1994 to 1996, also wore No. 25 in 1993 and No. 23 for the California Angels in 1996)
Don Stanhouse, Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher (1980)
Christian “Chicho” Arango, LAFC forward (2021 to 2022)
Anyone else worth nominating?
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