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. 97:
= Joey Bosa, Los Angeles Chargers
= Jeremy Roenick, Los Angeles Kings
= Joe Beimel, Los Angeles Dodgers
The most interesting story for No. 97:
Joe Beimel, Los Angeles Dodgers relief pitcher (2006 to 2008)
Southern California map pinpoints:
Los Angeles (Dodger Stadium bullpen), Torrance
What a relief it was in 2008 — Joe Beimel bamboozled the burgeoning business of baseball bobbleheads.
Something of a left-over in a world of left-handed middle relievers, but one who the Los Angeles Dodgers kept around in the previous two seasons primarily to bind up NL West rival Barry Bonds, Beimel somehow converted under-the-radar. cool surfer vibe into folk-lore status.
The result: His burgeoning following forced the team to make good on a promotional campaign promise and create a ceramic replica of him. Free (to those who bought a ticket to a particular game). And something the team’s entire fan population could appreciate and cherish.
Because that’s what the people wanted. Allegedly.
With all due respect, did everyone respect the process by which this happened and still joyfully live with its consequences?
Nod yes if you are in the affirmative.
The context
Once upon a time, a kitschy paper-mache souvenir that represented the game’s innocence in the 1960s showed up as a generic cherub face with a disturbing grin that could promote the team’s colors and uniform branding.
Then came the modern-day bobblehead, said to have made its a brazen revival after a 1999 test case when the San Francisco Giants gave away 35,000 Willie Mays figurines one day.
The Dodgers, of course, couldn’t sit there and watch a giant opportunity pass them by.
By 2001, the Dodgers ramped up their first offerings as fan giveaways — Tommy Lasorda, Kirk Gibson and Fernando Valenzuela were the first three created. (Dodgers broadcaster Vin Scully said he though the Gibson bobblehead looked more like actor Stacy Keach — hey, they were still working on how to produce these things as close to the person it was named for).
The team kept bobbleheads at a steady flow, aboutt three per season for awhile. It expanded to four in 2007 — and fans were allowed to pick one through an Internet vote. Catcher Russell Martin was the first “winner.”
Then all spring-loaded coils broke loose in the greatness of ’08.
In spring training, the team announced plans for bobblehead nights recognizing incoming manager Joe Torre and All-Star pitcher Takashi Saito. Again, there was a spot (or two) up for grabs. The people would pick their poison.
The likely candidates: Matt Kemp or Andre Ethier. Nomar Garciaparra or Andruw Jones. Clayton Kershaw was just a 20-year-old unproven rookie. His time would come. Manny Ramirez wouldn’t barge in until months later.
In Beimel, there was a 6-foot-3, scruffy long-haired guy from Pennsylvania who came into town a couple years earlier with baggy pants to go with a baggy uniform. He also wore No. 97. At the time, it was the highest number ever used by a Dodger going back to the 1930s (passed by when Ramirez arrived in July of ’08 and took No. 99). Beimel said 97 represented the birth year of his son Drew, his first child.
Beimel made it to the bigs in 2001 with his home-town team, Pittsburgh, as he was an 18th-round pick out of nearby Duquesne University. At first a starting pitcher, he went to the bullpen in his second year and would weave his way through Minnesota and Tampa Bay. Nearly signing with the Chicago Cubs, he landed with the Dodgers in 2006 as a free agent. Dodgers GM Ned Colletti saw him as a weapon for manager Grady Little, more little wiggle room with key lefty-on-lefty situations.
Like, with Barry Bonds.
“That was probably my favorite team to play for, playing in L.A. in front of 40- to 50-thousand every night, just being in a city like that,” Beimel would say. “I lived my first two years in Pasadena, then moved to (Redondo Beach). When I got there it was ‘Oh my gosh, I’m never leaving here.’”
Beimel started ’06 at Triple-A Las Vegas and, after a 3-0 with a 1.38 ERA in 10 games, he was called up and readily used. He was third on the Dodgers with 62 appearances, tasked with setting things up for the later-inning heroics of Jonathan Broxton and rookie Saito. Beimel even managed to stick around for two saves in the process to post a 2-1 mark and 2.96 ERA in 70 innings.
Stupidly, he wasn’t available for the 2006 NLDS against the New York Mets.
Breaking a midnight team curfew, Beimel sliced up his left hand on a broken beer glass while joyously patronizing a New York bar two nights before the series opener.
“We had the six hour flight and I slept the whole way there,” Beimel explained years later. “We went for dinner, had a few drinks and wound up staying out later than I should have. I took a false step onto a platform and had a beer in my hand and tripped. The beer smashed in my hand. And blood was everywhere.
“I didn’t think anything of it and wasn’t going to affect me, but I got stitches. And when I tried to throw, it was hurting and I thought they could give me something for the pain. Then I threw my slider and it ripped open and started bleeding again.
“It’s easy to go out and be over-served. You go out and pitch in front of 50,000 and have a lot of adrenaline and go out after the game, you don’t want to just go to hotel and stare at the wall so you want to go out with the guys and have a few beers and that’s fine and nothing wrong with that, but you stay out a little longer and that’s what happened in that specific instance.”
His defeault was to claim this all happened in his hotel room, trying to catch a glass of water in the bathroom before it hit the floor. He finally fessed up.
“I wasn’t sober by any means,” he would admit. “(And) I’m not a good liar.”
The Mets’ sweep of the Dodgers in three games was sobering in itself. Before Game 3 at Dodger Stadium, Beimel, who had to watch the first two games in New York from his Pasadena apartment, showed up in the locker room and embarrassingly apologized to his teammates.
All of which didn’t help him when salary arbitration cases came up for the 2007 season. The Dodgers, still in a playoff hangover, countered the $1.25 million deal he asked for with a $912,000. Beimel lost that argument.
For a 2007 team that would miss the playoffs and bounce around with a .500 record, the Dodgers ended up using Beimel for 83 appearances — setting an obscure franchise record for left-handed throwers. Broxton also was needed for 83 games and that total remains fourth-most all-time in franchise history for most shows by any pitcher. Beimel added one more save to go with a respectable 4-2 mark and 3.88 ERA, finishing 10 games.
That would also be Bonds’ final season in the majors — of the 28 homers he hit in ’07 to finish with an MLB-record 762, only one came against the Dodgers. As Bonds was closing in on Hank Aaron’s all-time record in early August, Beimel was discovered by the New York Times’ Jack Curry as someone who seemed to have figured out the way to keep him quiet. Beimel explained all it took was being aggressive rather than snip around the corners and give him what amounted to an intentional unintentional walk: “I get paid to get guys like that out … It always kind of upset me a bit when you see guys blatantly scared to throw him a strike.”
When the 2008 salary arbitration case came up, Beimel and his people could lean into the fact that he was not only healthy and happy but he held left-handed hitters to a .188 average and allowed just 10 of 57 inherited runners to score in ’07. And Bonds may have been retired now, but Beimel could point the fact that in 19 head-to-head meetings, Beimel held him to a .063 average (1 for 16) with three walks. The one hit: A homer, of course.
Beimel asked for $2.15 million in ’08, the club came in at $1.7 million, so they settled at $1.925 mil, still more than doubling his salary, and also incentivized it by giving him the chance to make up to $160,000 more if he was to reach 85 appearances.
As if it was up to him.
Meanwhile, the Dodgers were also incentivizing fans to invest in their bobblehead bonanza giveaways. (Seriously, did fans really thing these token of appreciation were “free” if their game-seat tickets happened to go up in price?)
The Dodgers weren’t just keeping pace, but setting a standard. Overseas production became more expedient. Reproduction of the player faces were better and better. Sponsor logos could now be added to cheese them up and create added-value to have the whole process underwritten.
Maybe the Beimel Bump and the free spirit of ’08 would be a tipping point in this whole business venture. Or, it was a point of no return.
As the Dodgers’ month-long voting took place in April — social media wasn’t much to speak of, and companies were still trying to figure out how to harness the Internet interaction — the bobblehead vetting business seemed to get even more …. creative? It was at least more open to ideas.
A good ‘ol boy named Troy from West Virginia started posting a series of basement-enhanced YouTube videos tributes, declaring his admiration and affection for this Beimel dude. Maybe some of it was the fans feeling empathy that new Dodgers skipper Torre was invoking a Yankees custom and asking players to cut their hair. Especially Beimel.
A few Dodgers fan blogs got behind the video clips and brought in a new audience.
The votes for Beimel started piling in — there was no limit on how many times fan could click.
Word was that Joe Beimel’s parents, Ron and Marge, were also in on the push for ballots. Why not?
By mid-April, Beimel was told that after further review, he garnished far and away the most attention for a bobblehead in his name, image and likeness. He would be the 25th bobblehead that the team produced since the turn of the century.
“This is a cool birthday present and a real honor,” said Beimel at the time. “I really want to thank the fans who voted for me, and I know my kids will get a kick out of this. I just hope that I get into the game that night and help the team earn a victory.”
But years later, during a 2023 podcast interview, Beimel did a deeper dive on how he remembered that bobblehead deal all coming together — and how it almost didn’t.
“So this Dodgers PR guy comes up and says, ‘You’re winning the fan vote, it’s crazy, but we’re not going to give one to you — because you’re not someone who we’d make one for anyway,” said Beimel.
“They wanted to have one for (pitcher) Brad Penny. I was like, what? The guys on the blogs heard about it, emailed them, ‘you better give him a bobblehead’ … so they gave me one and they gave Penny one. I never expected to ever have a bobblehead. I’m a left-handed reliever. Most people don’t even know we’re on the team. But it was an experience you’ll never forget.”
The announcement still came with measured skepticism. The then-popular and snarky website, Deadspin.com, even posted: How will Dodger fans ever live this one down? Over at LarryBrownSports.com came the anticipated response: “Have you ever heard of a situational left-hander getting his own bobblehead before? This is absurd, I tell you!”
Too late. He already had earned the fans’ appreciation. By mid season, he had been in the discussion to be added to the NL All Star team. His 3-0 mark and a team-high 38 appearances, to go with a 1.08 ERA, was strengthened by the fact he had not having given up a run in more than a month.
“I’m not counting on it,” he said. “If it happens, it happens.”
It didn’t happen. But his August 12 night did.
When the first 50,000 fans were forced to take possession of the Beimel beauties as they entered the stadium (the announced crowd was some 47,500), it may have been no coincidence that Beimel entered the game in the seven inning in relief of Kershaw to provide damage control. Although the Dodgers trailed Philadelphia, 3-2, they scored one in the eighth and one in the ninth on an Ethier single to pull off a 4-3 win, which was credited to reliever Hong-Chih Kuo.
Fans felt the mojo. It was a valuable win in the pennant race. It was almost a magical turning point in a season-long grind. It provided levity.
The next night, Garciaparra hit a walk-off homer to beat the Phillies, 7-6. (Beimel appeared in the sixth inning of that one and gave up a walk before he was taken out).
The next night, the Dodgers capped off a four-game sweep of the NL East leaders with a 3-1 win.
Two days after that, Beimel got the win in a 7-5 triumph over Milwaukee, which had scored four in the top of the ninth to tie the game at 5-5. Beimel got the last out of that inning, forcing left-handed hitting slugger Prince Fielder to ground out. In the bottom of the ninth, Ethier hit a game-winning two-run homer. Beimel improved to 4-0 and the Dodgers inched four games over the .500 mark
While the Dodgers ended up winning the NL West at 84-78, two games ahead of Arizona, Beimel would finish with a career-best 2.02 ERA in 49 innings over 72 games, not allowing a homer. The lone blemish on a 5-1 record was giving up a double to start the bottom of the 11th on a Sunday afternoon in Philadelphia and watching the next Dodgers reliever give up a game-ending homer.
After the Dodgers lost to the Phillies in the 2008 NLCS, Beimel was a free agent again.
He landed first in Washington, then Colorado and back to Pittsburgh, where it looked like he could be done at age 34 needing Tommy John surgery. But two years later, the Seattle Mariners dialed him up, and Beimel gutted out two more seasons in the big leagues.
In 2017, at age 40, he was first with the New Britain (Pennsylvania) Bees in the Atlantic League and joined the Kersey (Pennsylvania) Kings of the Federation League in time for the playoffs.
In his longest outing since his first stint with the Pirates back in 2002, Beimel got a no-decision pitching the first five innings of a 4-3 win. He was wearing his 2011 Pirates-issued uniform because the Kings didn’t have one for him and that was the only entire uniform he had.
“I just wanted to hit, that was the basically the reason behind it,” Beimel said. “We have a house here in Kersey. We try to get back as much as we can and it’s usually around the holidays, so after I decided to hang it up we might as well go there for a month until we go to this tournament.”
Beimel actually tried another comeback in 2021 at age 44 with San Diego but didn’t make it out of Triple-A El Paso. The 4.2 WAR and 216 appearances he made in three seasons with the Dodgers was his greatest stretch in 13 MLB years. His 1.8 WAR in ’08 was statistically his most productive season.
Mixing a fastball with a change up, slider and sinker, Biemel lasted 19 pro seasons with 22 different teams, appearing in more than 900 games and logging nearly 1,300 innings.
“I basically played my whole career with nothing above-average as my second pitch,” he said. “I had a good sinker and could locate my fastball.”
That’s a bit of anomaly for a big-league hurler.
“I’m an anomaly for a lot of different reasons,” Beimel added.
Beimel remains the only Dodger ever to wear No. 97 and one of only two MLB players to ever wear it. He uses that as part of his social media identification — @joebeimel97 to promote his Beimel Elite Athletics training lab based in Torrance.
Included in a story in the Los Angeles Times spotlighting young pitchers who continue to undergo arm troubles, Josh Mitchell, director of player development, said Beimel will only work with youth athletes who are ready to take the next step. Beimel uses motion capture to provide pitching feedback, and uses health technology that coincides with its athletes having to self-report daily to track overexertion and determine how best to use their bodies.
When it’s all said and done, Beimel got a bobblehead to show for his big-league career. He shook up the future of it without needing something spring-loaded to force the issue.
And with it came a belated bobblehead party thrown by Troy from West Virginia:
The legacy
Baseball fans aren’t stupid. As they learned the value of an eBay resale for bobbleheads of any shape, material or noted celebration, especially those in limited supply, someone established National Bobblehead Day in America in 2015. A year later, the National Bobblehead Hall of Fame emerged in Milwaukee.
Beimel is one of many in that collection. The Beimel bobble remains in healthy circulation, in the $20 range online, often not even taken out of the box to preserve its integrity.
The Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, by the way, also got in on the bobblehead craze in 2001. It has, aside from the abundance of Mike Trout and Shohei Ontani replicas, also found space for its Rally Monkey, Mickey Mouse and Snoopy. The Single-A Lancaster JetHawks, Rancho Cucamonga Quakes, Inland Empire 66ers, and Lake Elsnore Storm had their share of bobble giveaways as well. So did the independent league Fullerton/Orange County Flyers.
The Dodgers have not shied away from ramping up production — Beimel perhaps giving them permission to be even more creative as the competition for collectors went up exponentially.
It also became a “thing” when a player was honored with a bobblehead to do “something” to celebrate. Like in 2009, when Ramirez came off the bench to hit a grand slam in July of 2009.
The Dodgers even figured out a way to make good on a promise to do a Justin Turner bobblehead during the COVID-19 shutdown and give it to fans who missed out on attending games in 2020.
A website that keeps track of such things insists the Dodgers are 127-75-0 on bobblehead nights. That can’t be right, right? It also keeps track of bobbleheads once scheduled and then trashed — like the Dodgers had one planned for Trevor Bauer in 2021, and Julio Urias in 2023, but … Beimel avoided any of that kind of messiness.
By the 2022 and 2023 seasons, the Dodgers created the demand for 21 nights of bobbleheads, ranging from one for the Lakers’ LeBron James, for USC quarterback Caleb Williams, for co-owners Magic Johnson and Billie Jean King, for singer Elton John, another for Hello Kitty, and finally, one for relief pitcher Joe Kelly in a mariachi outfit.
For 2025, the team announced a bobblehead schedule highlighted by four nights to honor the second Dodgers season of Ohtani — his MVP (April 2), parts 1 and 2 of a 50/50 tribute (May 15 and Aug. 27) and a regular bobblehead (Sept. 10). There is also nights for Freddie Freeman (April 11), Dave Roberts (April 26), Mookie Betts (May 13), Vin Scully (May 19), Will Smith (May 21), Tommy Edman (June 2), Blake Snell (June 16), Ice Cube (June 21), Yoshinobu Yamamoto (July 2), Joe Davis (July 6), Ron Cey (July 18), Fernando Valenzuela (July 19), Teoscar Hernandez (July 22), Roki Sasaki (Aug. 4), Kobe Bryant (Aug. 8), Blake Treinen (Aug. 22) and Tyler Glasnow (Sept. 18).
That makes … 21. Yikes.
Will any of them ever have a ballad written and performed about them? (Just make sure the name is spelled correctly … “e” before “i” … and, yes, there is an “e.”).
Who else wore No. 97 in SoCal sports history? Make a case for:
Joey Bosa, Los Angeles Chargers linebacker (2016 to 2024):
The third overall pick by the San Diego Chargers in 2016 out of Ohio State was the AP Defensive Player of the Year, and sported No. 99 for his first three seasons. His switch to No. 97, which he wore with the Buckeyes, started in 2019, the same year his younger brother, Nick, was also drafted out of OSU by the San Francisco 49ers and started to wear No. 97 himself. As a four-time Pro Bowl pick, Joey Bosa signed a five-year, $135 million extension with the team in 2020, making him the highest-paid defensive player in the league. And a fan favorite. Especially, when he was healthy.
Jeremy Roenick, Los Angeles Kings center (2005-06):
Just one of the 20 NHL seasons that led to a Hockey Hall of Fame career actually happened in L.A. — he made his name in Chicago (eight seasons) and Phoenix (six seasons) before finding the West Coast via a trade with Philadelphia coming out of the 2004-05 strike-lost season. For someone who piled up 513 goals and 703 assists as one of the highest-scoring U.S.-born player, only nine goals and 13 assists came with the Kings in his 58 games. Why? “I struggled because I couldn’t get my skates sharpened the way I like,” Roenick once said. “I wasn’t confident in my footing. I wasn’t confident in my feet. When you feel like you’re going to fall down and you’re off balance, you’re going to struggle. hen you can’t skate the way you like, it leads to a bad back, bad groin, bad hamstrings, bad hips. It’s been a battle from the beginning. I have a different skating radius than most guys, so when I change teams, it’s tough for the trainers to find the right lie and the right cut that I need to use with my skates, so it’s tough.” So when Kings fans became vocal about his lack of production, which didn’t help coach Andy Murray or GM Dave Taylor keep their jobs, Roenick famously told them to “kiss my ass.”
Have you heard this story?
Francisco “Chico” Herrera, Los Angeles Dodgers clubhouse attendant (2008 to 2022):
In some thrift store around Los Angeles there have to be T-shirts showing up that read #DontRunOnChico and #LetChicoHit. It has nothing to do with the ficticious bail bondsman that sponsored the kids in “The Bad News Bears.” Just check Chico Herrera’s Wikipedia page.
The Dodgers’ clubhouse kid wasn’t kidding around when the team asked if he could fill out the roster in intrasquad games during the ramp up to the COVID-pandemic delayed 2020 season.
With jersey No. 97, Herrera played left field and did some pinch running. He had been with the organization as a clubbie, a ball boy and a bat boy since 2008, when he was 18 and still at Hollywood High, where he reportedly hit over .500 as a shortstop. As he went onto play at L.A. Valley College for two years, he continued working with the Dodgers — even attending a open tryout in 2012 in Arizona. As the media covered the Dodgers’ workouts, it couldn’t help but notice Herrera’s abilities. He caught a fly ball and with a strong throw kept a runner from tagging to score. He started a double play by catching a ball in deep left field and throwing Chris Taylor out at second trying to advance. In another game, he made a running over-the-shoulder catch off a Mookie Betts fly ball on the warning track, then hit the cutoff man, who threw a runner out scrambling back to first. Dodgers players like Justin Turner championed his play and called for him to get some at-bats — but it didn’t happen. The exposure he received from the local and national news all the way to MLB Network’s “Intentional Talk” unintentionally made Herrera the COVID pick-me-up story.
Anyone else worth nominating?
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