"Everything comes to him who hustles while he waits." — Tommy Edison
Author: fartheroffthewall
Tom Hoffarth is a sports journalist in Los Angeles, born and raised (reared is the correct phrase, but it just sounds wrong) and specializing in the sports media business. A USC graduate from the School of Journalism (it still exists, somewhat) in 1984, he is also available for service at https://www.linkedin.com/in/tomhoffarth/
Jim Gilliam: Los Angeles Dodgers Butch Goring: Los Angeles Kings Hal Bedsole: USC football Fred Lynn: California Angels Marco Danelo: USC football
The not-so-obvious choices for No. 19:
Mike Gillespie: USC baseball Jim Fox: Los Angeles Kings Dennis Dummit, UCLA football Lance Rentzel: Los Angeles Rams
The most interesting story for No. 19: Will Ferrell: Los Angeles Angels center fielder (2015), Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher (2015) via University High of Irvine football, basketball and baseball (1983 to 1985) and USC Southern California map pinpoints: Irvine, Hollywood, Los Angeles (USC, Coliseum, BMO Park)
Official Baseball-Reference.com documentation has it all there for anyone who cares to verify it happened: Will Ferrell, age 48, started and ended his Major League Baseball playing on March 12, 2015.
He was, for all intents and purposes, an exhibitionist.
The stunt was dreamed up to pay homage to Bert Campaneris’ historic/promotional feat in September of 1965 playing every position in a game against the Angels, including pitching both right- and left-handed. Maybe Ferrell didn’t read up on that game, as Campaneris, then age 23, had to leave in the top of the ninth when he was injured playing catcher, the last of his nine positions, and his team lost in extra innings.
Personal glory sometimes has to overshine team outcomes.
Of course, there was a TV angle to it. It was done for an HBO special, “Ferrell Takes the Field.” He took it by storm. And, if he couldn’t pull it off, the whole idea could have collapsed under its own working ad-lib script.
It went this way:
12:05 p.m. — Seattle Mariners at Oakland Athletics (HoHoKam Stadium, Mesa) 1:10 p.m. — Chicago Cubs at Angels (Tempe Diablo Stadium) 2:10 p.m. — Cincinnati Reds at Arizona Diamondbacks (Salt River Fields at Talking Stick) 4:05 p.m. — San Francisco Giants at Chicago White Sox (Camelback Ranch, Phoenix) 6:15 p.m. — Dodgers at San Diego Padres (Peoria Stadium)
In his all-red Angels’ jersey — the team he followed most growing up in Orange County — Ferrell trotted onto the field and subbed in for Mike Trout as the center fielder. Who else gets to do that?
Immediately, he cleanly handled a line-drive single hit to him by the Chicago Cubs’ Wellington Castro. Ferrell switched uniforms, became the Cubs’ third-base coach, also played some first base, then came up as a pinch hitter — only to strike out.
He also struck out later that day in an appearance for the Chicago White Sox as well as their DH, managing to foul off a 92 mph pitch from the Giants’ Jean Machi.
In the finale of his helicopter shuttle, Ferrell landed with the Dodgers. Manager Don Mattingly played along and called on Ferrell as a relief pitcher in the seventh inning.
The Padres’ Rico Noel tried to bunt on him. Ferrell deftly fielded it and threw him out.
He came out of the game to cheers.
He swapped jerseys, and played right field for the Padres against the Dodgers for an inning. Officially, Ferrell didn’t wear No. 19 for the Padres — honoring that it had been retired for Tony Gwynn. He wore No. 20. But then again, the Dodgers had retired No. 19 for Jim Gilliam. Ferrell was the first, and last, to show that number again in Dodger blue.
Then he retired. Topps also made a series of baseball cards highlighting the day to prove it happened.
This wasn’t the first, and likely won’t be the last time, Ferrell inserts himself in a live sports event.
It’s in his improve nature. It’s also in his athletic talents.
Los Angeles Times: Feb. 16, 1986, University vs. Saddleback varsity basketball.
In the wild, wild world of Will Ferrell filmography, wait long enough, and you’ll experience a moment where he morphs into a sports-guy parody where he can somewhat, kinda, surprisingly show off some of his sporting abilities.
The best part: The critics don’t really know what to make of it. They often sigh and decide how creativity morphed into stupidity. But that’s usually the point. They don’t get it.
In The Guardian, it wonders if that HBO baseball special: “Is this supposed to be Will Ferrell or something else? Is this a documentary or a mockumentary? … This is the latest in a string of genre deconstructions from the star who seems to be floundering around for something fun to to … Maybe Ferrell’s experiment isn’t facilitated by the fracturing of the television audience – maybe it’s actually some sort of meta-commentary about it. All of these parodies – the over-the-top miniseries, the made-for-TV movie, the documentary – are from a simpler time when we sat down as a nation and watched one thing all together, so much so that the conventions became cemented in our subconscious. Perhaps these silly little projects are really Ferrell’s way to unify us once again by reminding us of all the things we shared. … Nah, he was probably just a little bit bored and between movies.”
Daily Variety’s Brian Lowry wrote: “It’s an awfully thin construct … ‘Ferrell Takes the Field’ is just another in a series of minor-league endeavors, one that’s nowhere near his best stuff. …”
Lowry noted the the backstory was worth doing more about: Craig Pollard, a USC fraternity brother of Ferrell’s, had his baseball career cut short by cancer. As a result, Pollard founded Cancer for College, to help support cancer survivors by bestowing scholarships.
“Ferrell Takes the Field, Lowery concludes, “is just another in a series of minor-league endeavors, one that’s nowhere near his best stuff.”
Oh yeah? Trade in your typewriter for a type-cast washed-up MLB comeback.
He pulls off a gymnastics routine (“Old School” in 2003). He dribble-drives as a geographically confused ABA has-been (“Semi-Pro” in 2008). He jumps into the driver’s seat of an ego-maniac NASCAR lugnut (“Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby” in 2006). He figures out how to pull off an awkward figure skater who may stick the landing (“Blades of Glory” in 2007).
A deep-dive August 2026 piece for The Ringer pointed out how sports was the center of Ferrell’s existence going back to playing soccer on Orange County AYSO fields, leading up to his days playing football, basketball and baseball at University High in Irvine.
“He was so into sports,” said Pollard, his Delta Tau Delta fraternity pal. “He’s just a natural athlete, so you could put him in badminton or racquetball or anything like that, and he’d perform.”
Added Hollywood sports film coordinator Mark Robert Ellis: “When you love sports like Will does, you get really comfortable making fun of the characters, making fun of the clichés, making fun of the serious dramatic moments that we expect in a sports movie, and then flipping them on their head. I think he relishes it.”
Put the relish on the hot dog, and you have Ferrell.
In 2008, he told the Orange County Register that the dullness of his environment also planted the seeds of his outlook on life:
“Growing up in suburbia, in safe, master-planned Irvine, there was no drama so we had to create it in our heads. My main form of entertainment was cracking my friends up and exploring new ways of being funny. I didn’t have to have the survival mode instinct like other comics, who grew up in tough neighborhoods. I had the opposite. For me, I grew up in Mayberry, and the humor broke the boredom. And there was a lot to make fun of.”
Ferrell’s daily morning announcements over the public address system in disguised voices at Uni High was a starting point. Playing sports, he figured out that any shortcomings he had could be covered up by provide some dead-pan levity to the tense moments.
Leaning into his soccer abilities, Ferrell wore No. 85 to kick field goals at Uni High and act as a backup safety on the football team going back to his sophomore year of 1983. He made it into the Los Angeles Times’ football summaries as if he was just part of the process.
Los Angeles Times: Sept. 29, 1985: Uni’s Will Ferrell kicks a 34-yard field goal and two PATs (but also missed one).
His first option was to change Trojans jerseys, from Uni High to USC, and see how far he could go athletically. For football, it didn’t quite happen after an unsuccessful walk-on tryout. But with a degree in sports communication in 1990, USC would take him places.
A new option: Work as an anchor at ESPN. Imagine Ron Burgundy, “Anchorman,” alongside Keith Olbermann, trading chippy, quippy quips. He didn’t have the drive to put in the work others far more hungry were willing to do.
Third option: You’re watching it.
Physical, edgy improvisation has been Ferrall’s path. Impersonating Cubs broadcaster Harry Caray during a “Saturday Night Live” skit — not to mention his times as a high school cheerleader, happily showing off his belly. Or anything else in a Speedo.
His IMDb.com bio lists his “trademarks” as playing “childish, immature characters … often appears either naked or shirtless” with his wild curly hair, piercing blue eyes and towering, slender frame.
“I’m not really an exhibitionist,” he has said. “I’m drawn to the outrageous stuff because it’s fun, not because it’s some deep compulsion. I’m no tortured, anger-stoked, deeply neurotic comic. Just a pretty low-key normal guy. … But please keep it quiet, or I may never work again.”
Los Angeles Times: Dec. 19, 1991. The review includes: “Will Ferrell’s opening appearance as the joking street sweep is really the highlight of the production.”
Working as a bank teller and answering calls at a phone bank helped him survive working in local theater. One Los Angeles Times’ Calendar listing of events listed him with four others performing stand-up at Black Angus Steakhouse in Buena Park in the early ’90s. Then came a time as a cast member of the Los Angeles comedy/improvisation group The Groundlings. That led to a “Saturday Night Live” audition and being part of the cast for the 21st season in 1995 at age 28.
His roles on the screen and on TV as an athlete are one thing.
What about the times he just shows up and morphs into an actual sporting event?
Ferrell has already mastered the work of pulling off a live sports prank.
In 2010, he made a surprise appearance for the Triple-A minor-league Round Rock Express against the Nashville Sounds as an “angry pitcher” wearing a fake mustache and gold chains and going by the name “Rojo” Johnson.
He made one pitch, got thrown out of the game, then got into a fight.
Ferrell created the backstory: Johnson, a fire-balling right-handed phenom, was born in the U.S. but raised in Venezuela. He had been serving time in a central Texas prison for running a smuggling ring that imported rare and illegal species of reptiles into the U.S.
Upon his release he joined the Express and, on Thursday, May 6, 2010, carrying in a bag full of beers, he threw his first pitch went behind the head of the Sounds batter. He was immediately ejected. Johnson left the field, but not before scuffling with the umpire and spraying the Sounds player with beer.
Johnson was asked to make a return during the 2011 season but declined citing the affiliation change.
“Rojo doesn’t play for an American League team,” Johnson said. “I don’t just pitch, I also hit. When the Express changed their affiliation from the Astros to the Rangers, I decided to hang up the cleats. I’m a National League guy.”
Hard to know what to believe. Which makes everyone else all in on the joke.
Even when he submitted to the Colbert Questionert in 2025, where one commenter on YouTube said: “This is the first questionert where afterwards I feel like I know the guest even less.”
In a July 2026 episode of Netflix’s “Hot Ones: Extra Heat” taped at Pepperdine’s baseball field in Malibu, helping to promote “The Hawk,” Ferrell said his baseball career at Uni High consisted of getting 18 hits and also striking out 18 times.
This may have gave it some credibility:
Los Angeles Times: April 26, 1986, part of the Orange County high school baseball roundup.
Ferrell also admitted he wasn’t allowed to play center field — just left field or right field. Which led to finding this nugget:
Los Angeles Times: May 17, 1986: Part of the game coverage of University High’s 4-3 win over Santiago in the CIF-2A baseball playoffs.
Ferrell also said on the episode that said his favorite MLB player was Angels second baseman Bobby Grich — because of his mustache. He said he was able to replicate that as Ron Burgundy’s “Anchorman” character.
The mustache has showed up often.
In February of 2013, Ferrell’s friends gifted him an authentic Staples Center red-coat security uniform, which he snuck into the arena. His name badge said “Ted Vagina.” While standing stone-faced on the baseline, Shaquille O’Neal suggested that he eject him — he was about to get up and leave anyway as it was the fourth quarter — so Ferrell complied.
“He was laughing,” said Ferrell. “And he was like, ‘I’m proud of you, man.’ I said, ‘For what?’ He said, ‘No, just where your career has gone. I’m proud of you.’ And I’m like, ‘This is one of the funniest things I’ve ever done’.”
On a June 2026 appearance on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” where the host introduced him as “pound for pound, he may be the funniest based carbon lifeforms on the planet Earth,” Ferrell also admitted one of his first sports-crash ideas was to show up at Anaheim Stadium in 1991 with four friends after the Angels just signed Fernando Valenzuela. They all wore sombreros.
“Maybe it wasn’t PC,” Ferrell said. But it led to the fans behind them upset they tried to wear them when the game got going.
During the 2023 playoffs between the Kings and Edmonton Oilers, Ferrell showed up at his usual rink-side seats at Staples Center/Crypto.com Arena wearing checkered faceprint in the Kings’ colors.
Then there was New Year’s Day 2026 when he was there dressed as an NHL referee. He was seen standing at the glass in one of the corners of the ice. Pretending to officiate.
“I’ve always been in support of the NHL referees,” Ferrell said when interviewed on the Kings’ telecast. “In fact, I trained two of the guys out here. They are two of my prize students, Brandon and Francis. They’re calling a heck of a game.”
During a 2026 appearance on “Jimmy Kimmel Live,” Ferrell was asked if this was just a usual thing he did. He recalled a time when he and four of his friends “who might have had some tortillas” donned sombreros and went to Anaheim Stadium to welcome new Angels pitcher Fernando Valenzuela at the end of the 1991 season.
As one of the group of celebrity minority owners of the MLS’s Los Angeles Football Club, Ferrell famously released a live falcon as LAFC’s “honorary falconer” as part of the team’s first home opener in April, 2018 at Banc of California Stadium also also announced the lineups.
When the Dodgers celebrated Opening Day 2026, Ferrell was part of a pre-taped sketch shown on the videoboard where he searched Dodger Stadium for missing players and trophies. He then appeared driving a blue low-ride convertible, where Freddie Freeman and Miguel Rojas were in the back seats with the 2024 and 2025 World Series trophies.
Maybe that’s why one is given the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor. As Conan O’Brien said during that 2011 ceremony, it’s because Ferrell has an “unmatched level of total commitment” to his roles.
“Why did it take so long,” as Ferrell said when accepting it as its 14th recipient. “You have to understand as a kid growing up in Irvine, California, where I would sit in my room … I had one dream. One singular focus. Even at the earliest age. I can remember wanting to do one thing, and one thing only. Sell insurance.”
He might have needed a accidental dismemberment injury policy on Sept. 19, 2015.
Ferrell was designated as the Trojan alum to lead the football team out of the Coliseum tunnel and onto the field, this time before their game against Stanford in the Pac-12 home opener.
Ferrell sported a No. 85 jersey as a throwback to his high school days.
Seems like a sketch that could have been curated on “Funny Or Die.” In this case, it could have been funny, and he could have died.
It was really just an extension of motivational stunts he would do with former USC head coach Pete Carroll for the players during the season.
Two seasons earlier, Ferrell led the Trojans marching band onto the field dressed as the school mascot — gladiator-style skirt and sandals, gold breastplate, a cape, and a warrior helmet with enormous plume. He carried a shiny sword, which at one point he spun around like a baton twirler.
Will Ferrell’s star on The Hollywood Walk of Fame as of March 24, 2015. (Albert L. Ortega/Getty Images)
In a 2025 Los Angeles Times business story hashing out how artificial intelligence may influence future film making, Mark Goldstein, president and chief executive of the Burbank-based Central Casting said: “We have legendary people that started their career because they wanted to follow their dream to become an actor in Hollywood,” he said, ticking off the names of famous alumni such as Clark Gable, Carole Lombard, Eva Longoria, Will Ferrell and Brad Pitt. “And we don’t see that changing.”
Nice company to have in a paragraph about Hollywood’s past, present and future.
Because one never knows what costume, or uniform, or jumpsuit, Ferrell might end up wearing at a sporting event. Or, if he somehow finds a way to take the field. Or roam the sideline. Or just show up at a golf course.
At some point, he might even bring more cowbell. Golfers would love that.
Los Angeles Times: Aug. 19, 2006: Even 20 years before “The Hawk:”, Will Ferrell figured he wouldn’t be doing a golf project.
Who else wore N0. 19 in SoCal sports history? Make a case for:
Jim Gilliam poses with me during a Dodgers’ Camera Day promotion, circa 1974.
Jim Gilliam,Los Angeles Dodgers infielder (1958 to 1966), Los Angeles Dodgers coach (1964 to 1978):
Best known: His number 19 was retired by the franchise shortly before the 1978 World Series, a reflection of how much the organization appreciated his loyalty and ability to play nearly any positions — mostly second base, third base or left field — going back to his 1953 season in Brooklyn as the NL Rookie of the Year. Starting with the Baltimore Elite Giants of the Negro Leagues as a teenager, Gilliam came arrived five years after Jackie Robinson’s 1947 debut, and he stayed as a player through the 1966 World Series. During the Dodgers’ 1963 World Series run, Gilliam hit .282, with 77 runs, 60 walks and 19 stolen bases to place sixth in the NL MVP voting. While an active player in 1964, he started coaching first base, one of the first Blacks to do so. He started all seven games of the 1965 World Series against Minnesota having started the year as a retired player. His key defensive play of Game 7 perserved Sandy Koufax’s 2–0 shutout victory that won the World Series for the Dodgers. A four-time NL All-Star, Gilliam is the only Dodgers player other than Sandy Koufax to earn four World Series title rings (’55, ’59, ’63, ’65).
Not well remembered: In his 2025 book, “Jim Gilliam: The Forgotten Dodger” author Steve Dimore makes a case that surmises that Gilliam could have not only been the Dodgers’ first Black manager but the first in MLB history if the openings fell in his favor. It would have been most appropriate considering his connection with Robinson. He was given the nickname Junior as a 16-year-old member of the Negro League’s Elite Giants, coming up in 1946, but also had the nickname “Devil” because of his pool hall prowess.
Butch Goring,Los Angeles Kings center (1969-70 to 1979-80):
Best known: After the 1977-78 season, Goring was the first NHL player to win the Lady Byng Trophy — the player who “exhibited the best type of sportsmanship and gentlemanly conduct combined with a high standard of playing ability” — and the Masterson Trophy — the player “who best exemplifies the qualities of perseverance, sportsmanship, and dedication to ice hockey.” His most famous moment on the ice for the Kings was in the 1975-76 playoff quarterfinal series against Boston, as he scored the overtime game-winning goals in Games 2 and 6.
Goring scored 30 or more goals four straight seasons and had 20 or more goals in nine seasons for the Kings. On March 1, 1975, Goring had a four-goal game in a win over Minnesota. He had a career-best 87 points (36 goals, 51 assists) in 1978-79. His only All-Star game appearance came the next season in 1979-80 — just months before he was traded to the New York Islanders in exchange for defenseman Dave Lewis and right winger Billy Harris. At the time, Goring, who just turned 30, was the Kings’ franchise leader in goals (275), assists (384) and points (659) in the 736 games he played over 11 seasons. “I guess I’m disappointed that it didn’t work out Hollywood-style,” Goring said at the time of his trade. “When I thought about my career, I always had it in my mind that I hoped to play it out for the Kings.” Said Kings star center Marcel Dionne: “Butch was a sparkplug for us. I’ve seen him score some of the most spectacular goals that you can think of.
With the Islanders, Goring became part of four Stanley Cup championship teams in six seasons, as he flipped his No. 19 to No. 91, which the Islanders would retire. Upon leaving Los Angeles, Goring’s No. 19 was given to …
Jim Fox,Los Angeles Kings right winger (1980-81 to 1989 -90):
Best known: Fox’s 10-year career as a player saw him score 30 goals three times and retire in the Top 10 list of most all franchise offensive categories. From there, Fox became almost better as the team’s TV game analyst, including a 27-year run with Bob Miller that had the team’s 2012 and 2014 Stanley Cup title runs. Not well remembered: Fox didn’t play during the 1988-89 season as he recovered from knee surgery. When he returned for 11 games of the ’89-90 season, he wore No. 4 because he had relinquished his No. 19 jersey to …
Larry Robinson,Los Angeles Kings defenseman (1989-90 to 1991-92):
Best known: The Kings acquired the eventual Hockey Hall of Fame defenseman from Montreal after his 17 seasons and six Stanley Cup wins there. Nicknamed “Big Bird” for his 6-foot-4 and 225-pound frame, Robinson’s three seasons in L.A. was capped off by an All-Star game selection at age 40. Robinson’s name appears on the Stanley Cup 10 times: Six as a player, three as a coach or assistant coach and once as a scout. The Kings hired him as their head coach in 1995 after he was with the New Jersey Devils. His four-year term: 122-161-45, making the playoffs once. Not well remembered: Perhaps his most impactful move in Southern California was opening a Play It Again Sports used equipment shop in Torrance, where signed copies of his book, “The Great Defender: My Hockey Odyssey” could be found.
Sean Avery, Los Angeles Kings left wing/center (2002-03 to 2006-07):
Best known: Perhaps the only thing that kept Avery from leading the NHL in penalty minutes for three straight seasons with the Kings was the fact that the 2004-05 campaign was canceled because of a labor dispute. It was bookended by Avery’s league-high 261 PIM in ’03-’04 and 257 PIM in ’05-’06. The 218 games he played over four-plus seasons resulted in 35 goals and 64 assists, and a +/- of minus-13. Traded away to the New York Rangers, Avery maintained a reputation for, as his Wikipedia pages notes, “controversial and disrespectful behaviour both on and off the ice, and having a agitating playing style that led to multiple teams waiving him and to having a contract terminated.” Over his 10-season NHL antagonist, Avery compiled more than six times as many penalty minutes (1,533) as he did points (247) and his actions with the Rangers in the 2008 Stanley Cup playoffs — facing and moving in front of Martin Brodeur to block the New Jersey Devils goalie’s vision — led to an unprecedented mid-series rule change by the league. Not well remembered: Avery retired in 2012, moved to L.A. and gravitated toward modeling and acting, plus writing his 2017 book, “Ice Capades: A Memoir of Fast Living and Tough Hockey.” Director Christopher Nolan has come to add Avery in his action films, including “Oppenheimer” in 2023 and “The Odyssey” in 2026, the later of which he was cast as Laodamas, one of Odysseus’ muscular, helmet-clad men. As of ’26, Avery has appeared in 11 feature-length films. “I’m never going to stop,” he told the New York Times.
Best known: “Prince Hal” went from Reseda High to Pierce Junior College and into the USC Athletic Hall of Fame, the National Football Foundation Hall of Fame and inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame just prior to his death in December of 2017. The 6-foot-5, 230-pound Bedsole helped lead the Trojans to a 1962 national title, the first for John McKay, catching two touchdowns passes in USC’s win over Wisconsin in the 1963 Rose Bowl. The two-time first-team All AAWU and the first Trojan to have 200 receiving yards in a single game (201 against Cal in 1962, a school record for 21 years). He caught 82 passes for 1,717 yards and 20 touchdowns in his Trojan career, all school records at the time, and his 20.9 career average per reception remains a USC record (minimum 30 catches). Not well remembered: Bedsole, the 1959 L.A. City Player of the Year, came to USC as a quarterback.
Dennis Dummit, UCLA football quarterback (1969 to 1970):
Best known: The Long Beach Wilson high grad spent two years at Long Beach City College and then set 14 records with the Bruins in 21 Pac-8 games, finishing as the top passer in the program’s history and two-time winner of the Red Sanders Award as the team’s MVP. At the time of his UCLA Athletic Hall of Fame induction in 2004, he was ranked as the No. 7 Bruin all-time passer with 289 completions out of 552 passes for 4,356 yards and 29 TDs. A National Football Foundation Scholar Athlete, Dummit was passed over in the NFL draft after his senior year, signed as a free agent with the Los Angeles Rams and played in a few exhibition games before going to the Canadian Football League and World Football League. Not well remembered: From Dan Jenkins’ profile on Dummit for Sports Illustrated in late October of 1969 focused on the influx of JC transfers into the major college system: “First of all, nobody wanted Dummit when he got out of high school in Long Beach. Everybody wanted the guy who played ahead of him, a thrower named Bob Gritch (sic). UCLA signed Gritch (sic). But so did the Baltimore Orioles, and they paid him money…. Dummit, meanwhile, was talked to by Utah, Navy and Long Beach State and offered nothing. So he went to the community college … A good-looking, yellow-blond 6-footer, who wears a sweatband around his head to make his headgear fit, Dennis developed in the Jaycees as a passer, a cool, accurate thrower with what (UCLA coach Tom) Prothro calls “the best anticipation” of any passer he’s coached. Last December, Prothro knew he wanted Dummit — needed Dummit — and he got him. “We had to find a quarterback, and I went to the Jaycees to get one,” said Prothro. “I’m happy I found one with a 3.6 grade average as well as an arm.” After Dummit led UCLA to a 6-0 start and a No. 6 national ranking, they suffered a 14-12 loss to USC. As Jenkins wrote for SI on Dec. 1: “All afternoon and evening the Wild Bunch bounced Dennis Dummit around the Coliseum floor like a double dribble, smothering him for loss after loss and forcing him to throw the football upward, downward and sideways.”
Fred Lynn,California Angels outfielder (1982 to 1984):
Best known: The El Monte High star turned down the chance to sign with the New York Yankees in 1970 and went to USC — to play wide receiver on the Trojans’ football team, part of the roster that won the 1972 Rose Bowl. An All-American on the baseball team, Lynn was drafted by Boston in 1973 and, two years later, was the American League Rookie of the Year and AL MVP. Coming to the Angels in an ’81 pre-season trade where he was swapped for Joe Rudi and Frank Tanana, Lynn made three more straight AL All-Star appearances (to give him nine in a row), highlighted by hitting a grand slam in the 1983 game at Comiskey Park in Chicago. Not well remembered: With the Angels, Lynn initially wore No. 8 in 1981 because Bert Campaneris had the No. 19 that Lynn wore in Boston.
Best known: One of only two to play in and coach an NCAA championship baseball team, Gillespie came from Hawthorne High to play on USC’s 1961 NCAA title team, and then coached the Trojans to five Pac-10 titles and four College World Series appearances, winning it all in 1998 after going to the championship game in 1995. Gillespie, who won 763 games at USC and coached 42 All-Americans, was also successful as UC Irvine’s head baseball coach from 2008 to 2018. He was inducted into the American Baseball Coaches Association Hall of Fame in 2010 , the USC Athletics Hall of Fame in 2018 and had his No. 19 retired in 2022 and posted with a logo on the right-field fence next to Rod Dedeaux’s No. 1.
Bob Boyd,USC basketball center (1950-51 to 1951-52):
Best known: An All-CIF player at Alhambra High School, the 6-foot-6 center became more high-profile as the Trojans head basketball coach who won 215 games from 1966 to 1979 but was in only one NCAA Tournament because of conference rules. Boyd was USC’s most valuable player as a senior in 1952, averaging a team-best 12.2 points a game that season for Forest Twogood’s 16-14 team. Boyd also led Twogood’s ’50-51 team with 9.2 points a game.
Dave Weatherman, Cal State Fullerton pitcher (1978 to 1981):
The winningest pitcher in school history threw a complete game as the Titans won their first College World Series title in 1979, a 2-1 victory over Arkansas. Weatherman, out of West Torrance High, had been knocked around in a win over Pepperdine in the semifinals and was pulled early, so coach Augie Garrido felt he was rested enough to start the next day without any rest. That capped his sophomore season with a 15-2 record and 3.09 ERA. He finished tops at Fullerton in innings pitched (453.1), wins (42) and complete games (25), following up a 9-3/2.90 ERA as a freshman with seasons of 8-3/3.24 ERA as a junior ant 10-3/3.90 ERA as a senior in 75 games with 61 starts.
Best known: Out of Long Beach Poly, named to the Parade magazine high school All-American team, Lewis was the first Bruin to win the Mackey Award as the nation’s tight end after making 58 receptions for 741 yards and 10 touchdown as a senior. In 32 stars of 49 games, Lewis, at 6-foot-6 and 261 pounds, set the UCLA school record for tight ends with 126 receptions as well as 1,571 yards and 21 TDs. The 28th overall pick in the 2006 NFL Draft by Jacksonville was inducted into the UCLA Athletics Hall of Fame in 2022.
Have you heard this story:
Lamar Willis, Compton College football receiver (2025):
In 2025, the Compton College football program was in danger, again, of being canceled for budget reasons, lack of victories and general disinterest. The community kept rallying to keep it alive. Enough so that it started supplying more players to fill the roster from past generations. Willis, who last played at Bellflower High and was coaching football as late as 2014, was 45 when he was recruited to play — joining his son, Josiah, wearing No. 20 and playing defensive back (out of Cerritos High). Willis’ stats say he played in two games during Compton’s 0-10 season (the last two games were losses by forfeit). This is the same Lamar Willis who ran for mayor of Compton in 2021. Among Willis’ teammates on this Compton team was 50-year-old linebacker Orson Villalobos (his bio is on the No. 50 post).
Best known: Six days after USC’s win over Michigan in the 2007 Rose Bowl, where he connected on two 26-yard field goals and two of four PAT tries, Danello was found dead at the bottom of White Point Cliff near the Point Fermin Lighthouse in San Pedro. Two thousand people attended Danello’s funeral at Mary Star of the Sea Catholic church. As a sophomore in ’05 and a junior in ’06, the San Pedro-nativeo went from walk-on to scholarship to starter when he converted 26 of 28 field goals and made good on 127 extra points. He benefited from the high-powered Trojans’ offense in 2005 by setting NCAA, Pac-10 and USC records for PATs (83) and PAT attempts (86). The son of former NFL kicker Joe Danello, Marco was an All-L.A. City first team linebacker at San Pedro High as a senior in 2002. In the 2007 season opener, as USC players wore a No. 19 sticker on their helmets, coach Pete Carroll and Athletic Director Mike Garrett presented a jersey to Danello’s parents. After the Trojans’ first touchdown against Idaho, the team lined up in PAT formation, with the holder kneeling, and took a five-yard delay of game penalty as a tribute as they stood still, waiting for the kicker to come on the field.
Curtis Pride, Anaheim/Los Angeles Angels outfielder (2004 to 2006):
He was born deaf. Audiologists found him to be 95 percent deaf in both ears as a result of his mother having rubella – German measles – while she was pregnant. He would play professionally for 23 years, including parts of 11 seasons at the major-league level. A left-handed-hitting outfielder who primarily served in a reserve role, he had 199 big-league base hits, 50 coming off the bench, and 29 as a pinch-hitter. In 1995, Pride was presented the Tony Conigliaro Award to honor a player who has overcome “an obstacle and adversity through the attributes of spirit, determination, and courage” that were trademarks of Conigliaro. In 1997, the Detroit Tigers released him, and the Boston Red Sox (Conigliaro’s former team) picked him up, but gave him only two at-bats. The first resulted in a pinch-hit home run, at Fenway Park. Why Pride didn’t get more opportunities at the highest level – and why he jumped from organization to organization – is somewhat of a mystery. Asked if his deafness played a role, Pride wouldn’t speculate as to whether he was discriminated against. All he’d say was, “Teams appreciated my ability on the field, and more importantly, I was a very good team player.” This, from his Society of American Baseball Research biography.
Lance Rentzel, Los Angeles Rams receiver (1972 to 1974):
Rams receiver Lance Rentzel makes a reception and is tackled by San Francisco’s Bruce Taylor (44) in an exhibition game at the L.A. Coliseum on August 16, 1975. (Photo by Bob Riha, Jr./Getty Images)
No. 19 turned out to be his NFL comeback jersey — the number he wore earlier in his career with Dallas and Minnesota, and then returned for one last year with the Rams after serving a 10-month suspension by the NFL for conduct detrimental to the league. Rentzel was convicted of marijuana possession, but he was already on probation for an indecent exposure charge before a 10-year-old girl that went back to 1970 when he was with the Cowboys. Then it was revealed that in 1966, he was charge of indecent exposure and disorderly conduct. In ’71, Rentzel, given No. 13 and trying to reboot his image, led the Rams in receptions with 38 even as his value as a player had started a steep decline from his previous six NFL seasons. The Cowboys tried to cut their losses, sending him to the Rams as he was undergoing psychiatric help. The subsequent scandal caused his wife, actress and singer Joey Heatherton, to divorce him. While with the Rams, he was the subject of a long 1972 feature story in Sport magazine — “The Story Behind His Fight For Respect” –which led to his autobiography, “When All The Laughter Died in Sorrow.”
We also have:
Jeff Dankworth, UCLA football quarterback (1974 to 1976) Alex Hannum, USC basketball forward (1943, 1946 to 1947) Remy Hamilton, Los Angeles Avengers kicker (2002 to 2007)) Bert Campaneris, California Angels shortstop (1979 to 1981) Dante Bichette, California Angels outfielder (1988 to 1990) Bill Munson, Los Angeles Rams quarterback (1964 to 1967) Lance Rentzel,Los Angeles Rams receiver (1971 to 1974) Sean Avery, Los Angeles Kings defenseman (2002 to 2007) Note: Chargers receiver Lance Alworth did not play for Los Angeles in 1960 but joined the team a year later en route to a Hall of Fame career in San Diego.
Anyone else worth nominating?
Hanging in the window at the famous Langer’s Deli on Alvarado and 7th Street near MacArthur Park, a No. 19 Dodgers-type jersey hangs. The reason: The No. 19 sandwich — pastrami, coleslaw, Russian dressing and Swiss cheese on rye bread — is what it is most famous for over the last several decades. The word is that some 80 percent of customers order is the No. 19. It runs about $24 if you go in and order. If you want it through Goldbelly.com, a two-sandwich make-your-own pack runs $150. At least they could throw in a T-shirt.
Eddie Meador: Los Angeles Rams Michael Cooper: Los Angeles Lakers LenDale White: USC football Wally Joyner: California/Anaheim Angels Maurice Jones-Drew: UCLA football Jim Hardy: USC football and Los Angeles Rams
The not-so-obvious choices for No. 21:
Alyssa Thompson: Angel City FC Zack Greinke: Los Angeles Dodgers Walker Buehler: Los Angeles Dodgers Milton Bradley: Los Angeles Dodger
The most interesting stories for No. 21: Sean Burroughs: Long Beach Little League baseball (1992 and 1993), Long Beach Wilson High baseball (1995 to 1998) Jeff Burroughs: Long Beach Little League baseball (1963); Long Beach Wilson High baseball (1965 to 1969) Southern California map pinpoints: Long Beach
1992: Sean Burroughs pitches in the Little League World Series at Willamsport, Penn., against Panama. Long Beach, representing the U.S. West region, lost the series initially but was awarded the title when it was discovered Panama used players who did not live in their city.
Debbie Burroughs said exactly what you’d expect as someone’s protective mother and faithful wife.
“Let’s focus more about the ups than the downs,” she said, as I explained to her in August of 2013 that I was compiling a look back at the 20 years since her son, Sean, and her husband, Jeff, were part of Long Beach Little League’s back-to-back World Series celebrations in Williamsport, Pennsylvania.
We could minimize some of the details about Sean’s comeback from an assortment of personal issues. At that time, he was back in the Los Angeles Dodgers’ minor league system, in Double-A, up against it at age 33. Maybe there was pathway back into a sport that had become his identity.
Stearns Park, home of Long Beach Little League tucked away amidst Lakewood Boulevard, the 405 and the Los Coyotes Diagonal, south of the Long Beach Airport runway, had been the baseball haven for Jeff and Sean Burroughs as they learned the game. Like a diamond handed down through generational caretaking.
They both grew up to learn the sport with their parents and friends and teammates, then gravitate over on the other side of Los Alamitos Traffic Circle and launch down Pacific Coast Highway to find Long Beach Woodrow Wilson High, across the street from the well-used Blair Field. It sent them both into a Major League Baseball career arc.
Jeff’s calling card became the 1974 American League’s Most Valuable Player Award, twice named to the MLB All-Star team of each league. The last of his 16 seasons was with Toronto, coming up a game short of going to the World Series.
Sean’s seven years of MLB play showed a lot of early promise, but an injury, trades and releases marked the journey. An addiction to pain killers were not helpful.
Jeff and Sean, as the father-son combo and favorite sons of Long Beach, could reflect two decades later on what they went through.
1993: Sean Burroughs connects on a hit during the Little League World Series in Williamsport, Penn. (Rick Stewart /Allsport)
It may have brought joy, but there was a tragic end when, late in a May day afternoon in 2024, word spread that Sean had died at age 43.
In a circle-of-life moment, he was at Stearns Park to drop off Knox Burroughs, his 6-year-old son and Jeff and Debbie’s grandson, for his Little League game. Sean was an assistant coach for his son’s team. But when he wasn’t there for the first pitch, some were concerned and started looking for him. They found him down in the parking lot and called 911.
Debbie would send a text to the local newspapers to confirm that Sean died of cardiac arrest from a fentanyl overdose.
Sean Burroughs, right, with his son, Knox, in 2023. (Long Beach Press Telegram).
Sean’s obituary included how he wasn’t just a Little League darling of 1992 and ’93, but also the first to go on from that achievement and add an U.S. Olympic gold medal, in 2000.
But that all seemed like a lifetime ago.
“Sean was a legend in LBLL and the baseball community,” said Long Beach Little League president Doug Wittman.
One day he was playing catch and hitting balls pitched to him by David Letterman on his “Late Night” show in New York, joking bout how he’d like to grow up to be a gynecologist.
He had literally been handed a key to the city of Long Beach. He couldn’t lock away some demons.
Ted Williams himself once referred to Jeff Burroughs as “the greatest young hitter I’ve ever seen,” after the Washington Senators made him the No. 1 overall pick out of Long Beach Wilson High in the 1969 MLB Draft. Williams would be his first big-league manager. Burroughs was grateful for that arrangement.
Jeff Burroughs, with the Washington Senators’ Denver Triple A team, listens to Senators star Frank Howard during an exhibition game in 1970 in Denver. (Denver Post via Getty Images)
Burroughs had just won the CIF-Southern Section 4A Player of the Year Award, hitting .567 overall (33 for 58, as well as 27 for 46 in Moore League play for a .587 mark), as his team won its league title. Future MLB player Bobby Grich was a teammate. Just the latest in the city’s roll call of players with pro baseball careers.
Jeff Burroughs and Bobby Grich on the Long Beach Wilson High campus on January 11, 2020 for an alumni game. (Brittany Murray/MediaNews Group/Long Beach Press-Telegram via Getty Images)
Knee surgery set Burrough’s high school career back as far as him playing football or being on the track team, but baseball was his sweet spot, as a pitcher and hitter.
A scholarship to Arizona State was on the table when Burroughs decided to take a $88,000 signing bonus and became a Senator. Washington’s interest in Burroughs piqued after they gave him a semi-private tryout in a very public place — Anaheim Stadium, when the Senators were in town to face the Angels — and he launched a few batting practice balls out into the parking lot.
Almost a year later, in July of 1970, the 19-year-old made his first big-league appearance, playing right field at the Senators’ Robert F. Kennedy Stadium home, facing Milwaukee’s Al Downing. Burroughs admitted he wasn’t ready for all this, went just 2-for-12 during that 10-day window, and was sent back to the minors for more acclimation.
There were another 59 games of big-league learning in 1971 before Burroughs and his teammates were uprooted when the franchise relocated to Arlington, Texas, in 1972 to become the Texas Rangers. His game-winning two-run homer off Minnesota’s Bert Blyleven in May of that season was one of his few highlights. He not only battled some back issues, but the reality that he was now trying to impress new manager Whitey Herzog. He missed Williams.
“We had our differences,” Burroughs said, “but I have to say that Ted Williams taught me to think at the plate a little more — that hitting isn’t just walking up there and taking three swipes.'”
In first full season in 1973, Burroughs challenged Reggie Jackson for the AL home run lead, slugging 30 to go with 85 RBIs and .279 average.
Texas outfielder Jeff Burroughs is helped off the field by teammates after fans storm the field during a game against the Cleveland Indians at Cleveland Municipal Stadium. Texas was awarded a forfeit win. (Paul Tepley Collection/Diamond Images/Getty Images)
Before the 1974 season, Dodgers general manager Al Campanis admitted he tried to pull off a trade with Texas to get Burroughs, willing to give up both Claude Osteen and Willie Davis. The Dodgers ended up sending Osteen to Houston for outfielder Jimmy Wynn, and Davis to Montreal for relief ace Mike Marshall.
Burroughs’ second full season otherwise had some real headline-grabbing moments.
In June, he was a focal point during an unnerving “10-Cent Beer Night” promotion that the Cleveland Indians staged at their home park. As the crowd got unruly, a fan jumped out and tried to take Burroughs’ cap in right field. When Burroughs tried to fend him off, it ignited a free-for-all, and he ended up jamming his left thumb. His batting average had been at a season-high .332 before that series.
By July, he was voted into a starting spot in the American League lineup for the All-Star Game.
“Burroughs has a great future,” Rangers manager Billy Martin said of him at the All Star break.
Burroughs’ AL-leading 118 RBIs paired up with 25 homers and a .301 average, and he took all 24 first-place ballots in the AL MVP voting. He was also AL Player of the Year by The Sporting News. In retrospect, his 3.6 WAR wasn’t as glossy as several below him in the balloting who exceeded 7.0, but that stat wasn’t a thing to consider then. The RBIs were a reflection that the Rangers’ second-place finish in the AL West standings gave Burroughs a solid platform.
“He’s got so much potential it’s unreal,” said Rangers shortstop Jim Fregosi of the 23-year-old.
A Jeff Burroughs collectable RC Cola collectable can from 1974. (Brittany Murray/MediaNews Group/Long Beach Press-Telegram via Getty Images)
Burroughs’ approach for the 1975 season was to seek more power production. He hit 29 homers to go with 94 RBIs, but his average dropped to .226 with a league-worst 155 strikeouts. The 1976 season saw his homers drop to 18.
After buying a home in Arlington, the 26-year-old was justifiably upset when the Rangers traded him to the Atlanta Braves on December 9 for five players and $250,000. Rumors had been they were trying to send him to the California Angels in exchange for Nolan Ryan, but a Ryan injury held the deal up.
With a new three-year Braves’ extension and a no-trade provision under the watch of owner Ted Turner, Burroughs hit a career-best 41 homers and drove in 114 in his first year in the National League in 1977. He made the 1978 NL All Star team leading the league with a .432 on-base percentage — he was passed by in that lineup with a league-high 114 walks to go with his .301 batting average. His home run totals in ’78, ’79 and ’80 barely passed that high-water mark of 41 from ’77 and he battled more injuries.
His dismal start to the 1980 season under new manager Bobby Cox saw him benched at times in favor of up-and-coming Dale Murphy. Burroughs’s highlight that season was breaking up a not-hit attempt by the Dodgers’ Jerry Reuss with a seventh-inning double in June.
As the 1980 season ended, the best news Burroughs had was the birth of his second son, Sean, on September 12. But the family would be on the move. Jeff was traded to Seattle for 1981 (where he had a three-homer, six-RBI game in August in Minnesota), and had three more seasons in Oakland, reunited with manager Martin.
His final year in Toronto was back with Bobby Cox as a part-time DH for a team that won the AL East in 1985 but lost in seven games to Kansas City for the right to face St. Louis in the World Series. He hit the last six of his 240 career homers and was done at age 34.
Jeff and Sean Burroughs after the 1993 Little League World Series title.
The family’s journey back to Long Beach, to the neighborhood where Jeff grew up, was intentional. Jeff was a local hero, playing a lot of golf, even more ocean fishing, trying to find more purpose in his life.
That seemed to come whenever the local Little League season started back at Sterns Field.
Jeff could impart his knowledge as coach of his son’s teams. Oldest son, Scott, was on the Long Beach Little League 1991 team that advanced out of its region.
The first real test for the team came before nearly 10,000 fans in San Bernardino during the Little League Western Championship tournament. Long Beach trailed Hawaii, 2-1, going into the top of the sixth and final inning, against Hawaii’s top pitcher Lanakila Niles. Long Beach was down to its last strike — Ryan Beaver was up with a 1-2 count.
“The kids were really moaning and groaning at that point,” said manager Larry Lewis. “I kept trying to rally them, saying that as long as we have one out left, one strike left, we still have a chance. But they weren’t listening too well.”
Beaver drove a long fly ball to right field and the Hawaii center fielder appeared to leap and catch it to end the game. But the Long Beach fans 15 rows deep in right center burst out in celebration when they saw the ball pop out and over the fence for a home run.
Sean Burroughs was up next with the game tied and started pounding his bat hard on the plate. It was a ritual the 11-year-old said he did during the year when trying to “channel the home-run gods.”
Burroughs smashed a home run to left field for a 3-2 lead. In the bottom of the sixth, Burroughs was back on the mound. With two out, Hawaii loaded the bases. Burroughs enduced a strike out on a 3-2 pitch to give Long Beach the win.
Long Beach got to Williamsport and fought through winning the U.S. bracket — Beaver hit a home run to give his team a 1-0 win in that title game. They then faced Zamboanga City in the Philippines in the overall championship. Sean, who had 16 homers in the tournament, including two grand slams, with a .640 average, plus eight wins on the mound, went 1-for-4 with a run scored as the shortstop and leadoff hitter in that title game. But the Far East won, 15-4.
Or did they? It was discovered a few weeks later by the local media that the team had eight players ineligible players on the roster, over the age limit and not living within the city boundaries. So Long Beach, which had a 12-0 run to reach the tournament, would come away with a spotless 17-0 overall mark after the forfeit was recorded.
The team already had a heroes’ welcome when they returned to Long Beach as the U.S. champs with a parade through the city. The team got a call from Vice President Dan Quayle while they were celebrating at Cirivello’s pizza parlor. .
But they didn’t get the full experience of a World Series title embrace.
1992: Sean Burroughs, No. 21, pitches and hits in the Little League World Series.
“The kids have learned that if you follow the rules and don’t mouth off … don’t complain, you’ll come out on top,” Debbie Burroughs said in an Associated Press story in late September.
“Things are back to normal, we’re busy,” Sean, then at Will Rogers Middle School, also said in the story.
Sandi Lewis, wife of manager Larry, added: “The kids of course just wanted to be kids and they let most of this stuff just roll off them. They weren’t feeding into any of it, they were the same old kids and most of them wanted to get back to surfing and boogey boarding.”
Their resolve was to go back and try to win it all again. The odds of one of the almost 8,000 teams who play in the Little League worldwide claiming one title is far-fetched enough. But two in a row?
“Sean Burroughs was probably the most famous Little League Player ever at the age of 12,” said Larry. “Everyone knew who he was, and we sort of had an advantage going into that 1993 season because many of the kids were afraid of him.”
1993: Sean Burroughs in the on-deck circle at Williamsport, Penn. (Rick Stewart/Getty Images)
Sean was one of four who bridged the 1992 and ’93 teams, as 11-year-olds going onto 12. There was also twins Chris and Kevin Miller and Alex DeFazio. Ten new players were on the ’93 team, including Larry’s son, Timmy.
Pitching three consecutive no-hitters going back to the West Regional final, Burroughs capped off with the last in the 11-0 U.S. championship game. He was the sixth player to throw two shutouts in a series and the second with two no-hitters, getting 16 strike outs among the 18 outs over six innings. He was the first American-born player to get that done as well. Sean put together a 13-0 record on the mound during the entire playoff run, hit 17 homers and batted nearly .700.
Long Beach’s 3-2 triumph over the Latin America team from Chiriqui, Panama happened when Jeremy Hess, nicknamed “Winnie the Pooh” in local media coverage because of his small statue, came up with the bases loaded and two out in the sixth inning and delivered a game-winning single off the wall in right field. Sean, ineligible to pitch after winning the U.S. title game, was 0-for-1 with two walks, a run scored, and two errors at shortstop.
Long Beach won 20 games and lost just once to get to that title. Their only set back was against Thousand Oaks Little League in a regional double-elimination Southern California Regional, a 16-1 drubbing. Long Beach came back back a couple of days later to eliminate Thousand Oaks.
“You know, I always thought lightning couldn’t strike twice in the same place,” said Lewis. “But I guess that is a falsity, because we sure did it.”
Over the two summers, the Long Beach All-Teams that Sean Burroughs played on, and Jeff Burroughs coached on, went 37-1.
Sean Burroughs celebrates with friends and family back in Long Beach after the 1993 World Series.
Jeff, who in 1990 wrote a Little League coach instructional guide based on his experiences, aired it out in full “Bad News Bears,” non-PC form when he summarized the experience in “The Little Team that Could: The Incredible Often Wacky Story of the Two-Time Little League Word Champs” in 1994 with local Long Beach scribe Tom Hennessy. It serves as a time capsule for that run.
The author bio on the back flap lists Jeff as the one telling a “once-in-a-lifetime adventure not only as coach but as the father of the team’s star pitcher, Sean, perhaps the most ballyooed 12-year-old ballplayer of all time.”
“As some of you might guess, coaching Little League is a thing you do when life gets dull and you decide to spice it up by risking your job, marriage, car, lower back, community standing, credit rating, financial security and sanity,” Jeff wrote on page 5. “Nothing in my 1,689 major-league games prepared me for the greater challenges of the smaller league.”
Like, a kid, Charlie Hayes, who Jeff stumbled upon at 3 a.m. when going to the bathroom at the Williamsport dorm.
The kid was sleeping in a trash can.
“You woke me up,” he admitted to the coach.
“Charlie, what in the world are you doing in the trash can?” Jeff asked.
“It’s comfortable,” he said.
“Realizing there was no future in this conversation, I turned out the light and went back to bed,” Burroughs wrote.
Jeff’s chapter that focused on Sean included how his wife, Debbie, had been cheering from the stands during his first 8-0 no-hitter: “C’mon, Burly!” It was nickname Sean “earned by virtue of his bulk,” Jeff admitted about his son, all 5-foot-4 and 125 pounds.
At one point, Long Beach Press-Telegram writer Dave Cunningham asked Jeff if he could get a hit off Sean.
“I wouldn’t face Sean,” said Jeff, age 42 at the time. “I’d beg off. It would be too embarrassing if I couldn’t hit off him.”
Jeff shed more light on Sean’s makeup, calling him “a rambunctious guy and a rattle-thrower almost from the day he showed up, never a discipline problem but sort of ‘normal wild,’ if that makes sense. The lad was always getting into things, always teasing his older brother (by 13 months) … By the time he was 3, he was throwing and catching hard.”
Jeff said Debbie had a better explanation for Sean’s talents: “If you wanted to paint a picture or sing a song, you couldn’t do either of those things because those aren’t the gifts God gave you. God gave you the ability to play baseball.”
Jeff sensed that Sean was sensitive but also mature, humble and self-aware.
“My own major-league career means nothing to him,” Jeff said. “He treats me like any kids treats his dad — essentially with total disgust. Maybe we’re lucky because I have been in the big leagues. Other parents may try to live vicariously through the baseball success of their kids. But I don’t have to … I think I’m better known now as Sean Burroughs’ father than he is known for being Jeff Burroughs’ son.”
Even so, as Jeff added, when Sean made him livid by after getting caught setting off a fire alarm in the dorms late at night after the World Series win.
Jeff Burroughs congratulates his son, Sean, as he rounds third base after hitting a home run against Richmond, Va., in the Little League World Series on Aug. 24, 1993. (Carol Francavilla / Associated Press)
Jeff was content being the assistant coach to manager Larry Lewis. The two met years earlier when they both enrolled their children at Bayshore Preschool, and they had become fast friends.
Jeff didn’t need the hassle of trying to appease the parents; Larry, a lawyer, could handle that.
Jeff said the only real difference of opinion he had with Larry trying to decide when to use Sean down the stretch. Jeff thought it was best to use him in the U.S. title game rather than trying to save him for a potential World Series game two days later. Larry wanted to save Sean for a championship and use Brady Werner in the U.S. title game.
“I thought if Sean did not pitch and we lost, I would never live it down,” Jeff wrote. “Finally as we had done hundreds of times before we reached an agreeable decision.”
Sean’s no-hitter was saved because a scoring error — against him. At one point, a ground ball was hit back to him, but it glanced off his glove and went to second baseman Chris Miller. He threw late to first. It was ruled an error on Sean — and he owned it.
He also owned the moment. Or the two years of moments.
“Oh yeah, definitely a fun time, hanging out with my buddies, just pure baseball,” Sean would recall in 2013, admitting he carried around his favorite troll doll for good luck, which the mothers on the team took as a team mascot.
“Back when you didn’t care about the stats, you went to the beach to bake in the sun in the morning, came home for lunch, then hit the field to see if we could score more runs than the other team. And we usually did.”
Fame in the early 1990s, a pre-social media age when pressures weren’t often put on kids until TV came into play, is something Sean could process well later.
“I think the most important thing to remember about Little League is not to take everything too seriously,” he said. “Sometimes the kids can get too flashy when they see themselves on TV. That’s part of the fun, I guess, but at the same time, you can’t get away from the most integral part of the game – winning as a team. If you go 0-for-4 and your team wins, that’s what matters.”
Long Beach Wilson High’s Sean Burroughs earned All USA Baseball Team honors in 1998. (Bob Riha, Jr./Getty Images)
Sean Burroughs’ growing up in baseball led to him following his Little League chapter with a stellar career at Long Beach Wilson High, capped off in a senior year hitting .528 with seven home runs and 38 RBIs in 29 games.
He had a scholarship offer to USC when he was taken with ninth overall pick in the 1998 MLB draft by the San Diego Padres, a favorite of general manager Kevin Towers. Burroughs signed a $2.1 million bonus and some were already calling him the franchise’s “best hitting prospect since Tony Gwynn,” another Long Beach baseball legend.
Two summers later, Sean emerged as the MVP of the All Star Future’s Game in Atlanta. The U.S. roster included C.C. Sabathia, Mark Buerhle, Barry Zito, Josh Hamilton and Vernon Wells. Burroughs went 3-for-4 at the plate and cut down a runner at home after a fine defensive play at third base to keep the game tied in the top of the eighth inning.
Jeff Burroughs, center, looking upward, is surrounded by teammates in Australia after winning the Olympic gold medal in 2000.
Burroughs had earned the Padres’ organizational Player of the Year honor when he hit .359 with eight homers and 80 RBI for Fort Wayne of the Class A Midwest League and had a 23-game hitting streak before being promoted to Rancho Cucamonga of the Class A California League, where he went 10-for-23 in six games. He was hitting .291 with two homers and 42 RBI for Double-A Mobile prior to the Olympics.
From 2000 to 2002, Burroughs was in the top 10 of Baseball America’s Top 100 prospects.
Burrough’s first three MLB seasons for the Padres, between the ages of 21 and 23, saw him hit a steady .271, .286 and .298. While not showing much power, he was reliable in driving in runs and with his defense. He had a career-best seven homers in 2003, driving in 58 runs as the Padres’ leadoff hitter.
There was even a moment that came up in 2005 when he got back on the mound. On Sept. 20, in what would be a 20-1 loss the Padres suffered against the Rockies at Coors Field, Burroughs came in from third base to pitch, giving up four hits and the final three runs.
That Little League magic was so long ago.
Sean Burroughs is mobbed by teammates after hitting the game-winning single in the bottom of the 10th inning against the San Francisco Giants during San Diego’s Opening Game Day at Petco Park on April 8, 2004. Burroughs went 3-for-6 that day with 3 RBIs in a 4-3 win. (Donald Miralle/Getty Images)
Then, injuries happened.
A slide into second base in a 2005 game between the Padres and Dodgers at Dodger Stadium didn’t feel right. It turned out Burroughs broke a blood capsule in the back of his leg.
Aggressive treatment was necessary to treat the circulation problem. He didn’t react well to it, his numbers slipped.
The Padres traded him to Tampa Bay in 2006. He signed as a non-roster invitee with the Seattle Mariners in December of 2006 before being released during the 2007 minor league season. He had a .312 lifetime batting average in the minor leagues, but nothing much to show for it.
Sean Burroughs watches from the Padres’ dugout during a 2004 game against Toronto at Petco Park in San Diego (Donald Miralle/Getty Images)
A broken Burroughs didn’t know where to turn. He spent the next three seasons detached from the game, admitting he couldn’t focus on priorities.
Burroughs described his experience as what Nicolas Cage’s character had in “Leaving Las Vegas” – blowing through his earnings, admitting to scrounging for food, existing on Slurpees and In-N-Out burgers, trying all kinds of drugs, bloating to more than 260 pounds and not recognizing himself in the mirror any longer.
In a 2011 interview with ESPN’s Jim Caple, Burroughs said he struggled with alcohol and drug abuse during his final seasons.
“I was hanging out with some bad people and had done some bad things,” Burroughs said. ““That was more important my last couple of years playing ball, and the last few years. I was kind of like a garbage can. Whatever I had or needed, I would find and take it. I wasn’t an out-of-town type of guy. Whatever I had or needed, I would find and take it. I would just try and fill myself with as much substances as I could, legally or illegally.”
In 2013, Burroughs told me: “I think I was just mentally and physically exhausted and I ventured out, not sure why. It’s just part of growing up, worrying about producing, living up to expectations.
“You’re in your 20s, you think you’re indestructible and nothing bad will happen to you – and that’s the farthest thing from the truth, whether you’re an athlete, a politician, a doctor or a lawyer.
“I learned the hard way. I still loved the game. I just had to get my head straight.”
After his family helped him pull his life together, Burroughs gave baseball another shot. He started working out with Chase Utley, a former Long Beach Little League pal, and got back in shape.
Arizona signed him — the general manager was Kevin Towers, who drafted him 12 years earlier. Burroughs hit .273 in 78 games and helped the Diamondbacks toward a playoff spot in 2011. It was the last time Burroughs would get close to another World Series — he went 1-for-3 in three games during a five-game series loss to Milwaukee.
Above: Sean Burroughs of the Arizona Diamondbacks celebrates with Manager Kirk Gibson and bench coach Alan Trammell after a 2-0 victory in 2011 against the Washington Nationals in Washington, D.C., the city where his father game up in the big leagues (Greg Fiume/Getty Images). Below: Sean Burroughs, second from right, joins teammates in the Chase Field home locker room to celebrate a win over San Francisco that clinched the NL West title on Sept. 23, 2011. (Christian Petersen/Getty Images)
After his release, Burroughs thought he had a roster spot in Minnesota for 2012. Twins minor league coach Gene Glynn worked with Burroughs in the Venezuelan Winter League that off-season. Burroughs made the team’s Opening Day roster but was designated for assignment after appearing in just 10 games, going just 2-for-17 (.118). He finished out the year in Triple-A Rochester, batting .272 with 18 RBI across 67 games.
In April of 2013, the Dodgers gave him some hope.
After a month in extended spring training, Burroughs wasn’t given any guarantees when he was dispatched to the team’s Double-A Chattanooga Lookouts. One of his teammates was Yasiel Puig, and Burroughs could speak Spanish with him — his mother, Debbie, was a Spanish teacher.
The team anchored the bottom of the Southern League’s North division, eliminated long ago from the playoffs, but Burroughs kept looking for an opening.
Sean Burroughs, with the Dodgers’ Chattanooga Lookouts in 2013.
Burroughs’ Twitter account at the time with the Dodgers’ organization said he was “living the dream by hotel rooms and bus rides.”
That hardly made sense. But it was a sense of humor he used to keep him sane. There was always a shot he could be called up to the Dodgers in September as a left-handed hitting pinch hitter/infielder.
“The big leagues were all about charter flights and filet mignon, and now it’s 12-hour bus rides leaving a 1 a.m. after a game getting in at noon the next day, but I feel lucky to be playing with an organization like the Dodgers,” Burroughs said then. “It just comes down to still loving baseball, the camaraderie with the teammates, trying new things, making adjustments. How can that not still be a thrill?”
DeJon Watson, the Dodgers’ assistant general manager for player development, called Burroughs a “good citizen, works his tail off without complaining, great with the kids on that team, and a good fit in Chattanooga. His body has been breaking down a bit on the back end of the season. He’s still giving us everything he has.”
His parents knew the surroundings were good for him.
“As a mom, you always concentrate on the positives, and see the negatives as a learning experience,” Debbie Burroughs said at the time. “I think Sean’s very happy now. So many people still look up to him. He can talk to kids who’ve had the same problems he’s been though. He’s healthy. The Dodgers may cultivate him as a coach.”
“I love the camaraderie in the clubhouse,” Sean admitted, “but I do hang with the coaches more.”
Hampered by more hamstring and shoulder injuries, Burroughs hit just .219 without a homer in 57 games. He would never add to his MLB lifetime stats — 528 games, a .278 average with 12 homers and 143 RBIs.
“I’ve seen both sides of the spectrum, for sure,” he admitted. “I think a lot of the people here who maybe didn’t know me well at first have got closer and made this a positive experience. This is a tough game as it is. You can be going great sometimes and feel you’ve got it all together, and two days later, it feels like the first day of spring training.
“It’s about finding a positive outlook when things aren’t going well. Maybe I tried too many different approaches at the plate this year, and nothing really clicked. The last couple of weeks, I went back to my old self and I seemed to have been feeling better, stronger.”
When the Dodgers let him go, Burroughs played for the Bridgeport Bluefish of the Atlantic League from 2014 through 2017. His lowest batting average during those four seasons was .321 in 2015. Burroughs decided to walk away before the 2018 season — the mayor of the Connecticut city decided to convert the city’s ballpark into an amphitheater, forcing the Bluefish to find a new home.
It was time for Burroughs to go home. A place where his dad, Jeff, was now coaching 8-year-old Little Leaguers himself back at Stearns Park.
He had already talked about a time when he’d be out of the game, get married and start a family. He wanted to get an EMT license, which happened in 2018 when he began working as a security supervisor for Allied Universal.
“I think the most important thing to remember about Little League is not to take everything too seriously,” Burroughs said.
“Sometimes the kids can get too flashy when they see themselves on TV. That’s part of the fun, I guess, but at the same time, you can’t get away from the most integral part of the game – winning as a team. If you go 0-for-4 and your team wins, that’s what matters.
“That’s not only hard to instill into an 11- or 12-year-old – you’re so young, you don’t even know what’s going in your life, let alone baseball. But it’s also harder to understand as you get older. When you’re at this level of the minor leagues, you’re so focused on moving up, individual performance.
“I can look back to when I was 21 and in the big leagues, focused on holding my own, wanting to make people feel like they made the right decision about you.
“Sure, that can all build up. The stress of the world can take you down. You just have to figure out how to build yourself back up. I learned that it’s not how far you fall, it’s how you get back up.”
2013: Billie Gwinn, Alex Defazio, Kevin Miller, Timmy Lewis, Charlie Hayes and Randal Shelley gather at Stearns Park in Long Beach 10 years after their Little League World Series win. (Jeff Gritchen/Orange County Register)
2023: Sean Burroughs and his father Jeff Burroughs, left, with Dan and Dane Mayfield, Larry Lewis, David Gonzalez and Tim Lewis at Sterns Park in Long Beach 20 years after their Little League World Series win. (Brittany Murray, Press-Telegram/SCNG, Aug. 24, 2023)
Sean Burroughs didn’t get back up when Long Beach Fire Department EMT workers tried to revive him in the parking lot of Stearns Champions Park in 2024 — the city had added “Champions” to the official name after the Little League title run.
When Burroughs was pronounced dead at the scene, Long Beach paused.
“It was very shocking,” Wittman said. “It’s a real sense of family at Long Beach Little League. So when we lose one of our own, it hurts.”
In 2023, on the 30th anniversary of the Long Beach Little League’s triumph, it would be Burroughs’ opportunity to relished in the moment with his friends.
The Long Beach Press Telegram’s Rich Archibold caught up with the team and pointed out how, back in ’93, the historic Long Beach Naval Station and Naval Shipyard were about to close, following the shutting down of the Naval Hospital. McDonnell Douglas was also cutting aviation jobs by the thousands.
Much of the pride in the city had evaporated. Until the Little League team gave them something to cheer about.
“After that game against Panama (to win it all in 1993), I told the players that they would never, ever forget that game,” Jeff Burroughs told Archibald near the pitching mound of Al Huntley Field.
“He is right,” said Sean.
Long Beach Press Telegram.
Dane Mayfield, who played on the 1992 team, said he remembered most the parade down Pine Avenue when that team returned home. A longshoreman at the Port of Long Beach, Mayfield said that time was unforgettable.
“People still talk to me about it,” he said.
They still talk about Sean Burroughs as well. And his father, Jeff.
Jeff poignantly ended his “The Little Team That Could” chapter about Sean with this:
“Sean came off the mound after one of his no-hitters at Williamsport and walked right into my arms. I’ll carry that memory forever, but you will not find that moment recorded on the score sheets. They haven’t yet devised a scorekeeping symbol that means ‘one great kid hugging one dad with a lump in his throat’.”
A Sean Burroughs signed baseball noting the No. 21, the first number he wore as a member of the San Diego Padres in 2002.
SoCal and Little League history
In a 2025 piece by USA Today marking the “most iconic Little League World Series moments” since the championships started in 1947, Long Beach’s back-to-back titles came in at No. 1.
At No. 3 was the 2023 El Segundo Little League championship run led by Louis Lappe:
“What’s better than leading the LLWS tournament in both home runs and RBIs? How about winning the tournament with a walk-off home run? Lappe did absolutely everything for his California squad during the tournament, especially in the role of hero. It couldn’t have been more dramatic. California was leading Curacao in the championship game, 5-1 after four innings. In the fifth, Curacao hit a grand slam to tie the game. Lo and behold, Lappe led off the sixth inning. Fans leaned forward in their seats. Everyone was dead quiet when the announcer uttered a jinx for the ages, noting that Curacao had not surrendered a home run for the entirety of the Little League World Series. On cue, Lappe sent everyone home with a moonshot to left field.”
Lappe, already 6-foot-1 and 153 pounds at 12 years old, was not just head-and-shoulders above most of his teammates, but he could make eye contact with the team’s 53-year-old volunteer manager, Danny Boehle. Lappe’s victory lap was punctuated by launching himself into the air and landing on home plate.
“I was just looking for a good pitch,” Lappe told ABC after his Series-leading fifth home run over the team’s seven games. “My mentality was just get the next guy up and if we kept doing that, we would have won either way, but I’ll take the homer. When that pitch came, even before I hit it, I was like, ‘Oh!’ I was so excited and happy. When I got around to home plate, I made sure to touch it.”
Lappe’s teammates had already nicknamed him “The Natural.” Just 24 hours earlier, in the U.S. title game, Lappe hit a three-run homer in the fifth inning and struck out 10 batters in 5 1/3 innings on the mound for a 6-1 triumph against Needville, Texas. It was the fourth day in a row El Segundo won an elimination game — the same Needville sent it into the consolation bracket earlier in the week.
Lappe nearly didn’t show up for his final year of Little League eligibility. He played for a few years before, but sat out the season at age 11, deciding instead to focus on soccer, basketball and another travel baseball team. Lappe eventually asked Boehle if he would be OK to rejoin the program.
Boehle said he was fully on board – enough to want to coach the team himself.
El Segundo won 20 out of 22 games in five local, state and regional tournaments in the summer of ’23. Its only other loss, aside from the first-round in Williamsport, was to the all-star team from Sherman Oaks, 4-3, in the opening game of the championship series in what would decide the Southern California State Tournament. El Segundo won the rematch, 3-2, later that day.
Of Lappe’s 10 hits in El Segundo’s seven games of the World Series, five were home runs. He also had 10 RBIs and scored eight runs. Teammate Brody Brooks, 3-for-3 with a homer in the U.S. title game, had 13 hits, 13 runs scored and five RBIs. In the title game, Brooks, the last of four El Segundo pitchers, was credited with the victory, pitching a hitless sixth inning, striking out two. The rest of the squad: Lennon Salazar, Finley Green, Lucas Keldorf, Colby Lee, Max Baker, Declan McRoberts, Ollie Parks, Crew O’Connor and Jaxon Kalish. All with the cool baseball names, right?
‘Gundo” at George Brett Field as they watched the Sunday title game on a large-screen TV some 2,600 miles away. Victory celebration plans quickly followed.
The El Segundo players and coaches were not only celebrated with a city-wide parade, but visits to Dodger Stadium and a USC football game were part of it, while the players were about to return to school and perhaps some normalcy.
El Segundo is a Spanish word that translates to “The Second” in English. It is a reference to the second Chevron oil refinery, which helped create the town decades earlier. As Normar Garciaparra said when the team joined the Dodgers’ SportsNet LA pregame show: “It’s not El Segundo any more. It’s El Primero. They’re not second to anyone. Time to change the name.”
By February of 2026, Lappe, who grew to 6-foot-2 as a 15-year-old freshman third baseman, started his high school career at Harvard-Westlake School in Studio City. Boehle and four of Lappe’s El Segundo Little League teammates gravitated to rival Loyola High in L.A.
Since El Segundo Little League launched in 1954, no team from that baseball-enriched town had ever gone so deep in a tournament. There are plenty of high school titles to boast about at El Segundo High, especially when John Stephenson was the coach and future big-league careers were shaped there, starting with four Brett brothers.
Huntington Beach (2011, a 2-1 win over Japan) and Granada Hills (1963, a 2-1 win over Stratford, Conn.) are the other two Southern California teams who have won Little League titles. Irvine (1987), Northridge (1994), South Mission Viejo (1997) and Thousand Oaks (2004) also made it to the title game before coming up short. Chula Vista, near San Diego, won it all in 2009 and lost the 2013 international title game.
Little League in Southern California is rich in history. The Wrigley Little League in L.A. sits on the site of the old Wrigley Field, just East of the Coliseum. Many who play on that dirt and grass don’t even know of its connection to that time and place.
Long before Mone Davis, Southern California Little League history has the story of Victoria Brucker, No. 20 for the West Team, the first girl on an American squad in the World Series, representing San Pedro’s Eastview Little League in the summer of 1989. Their cleanup hitter as a 5-foot, 3-inch, 137-pound first baseman. Getting all the way to the U.S. semifinal game. Girls had only been playing Little League for 15 years prior to that moment. She is now a swimming coach in Hawaii.
As for famous athletes who have a connection to Little League in Southern California:
= Hall of Fame pitcher Jim Palmer, who grew up playing in the Beverly Hills American Little League. He moved to Whittier from New York when his widowed mother went to operate a dress shop. They moved to Beverly Hills in 1956. “We first lived at 145 S. Almont, then after my mother got remarried, my stepfather bought a house in Coldwater Canyon,” Palmer said. “But I kept going to Horace Mann (Elementary School) because I wanted to stay in school with my friends. They’d come to games driven by their chauffeurs, while I came on my bike after my paper route.”
= Dusty Baker, who managed the Houston Astros to the 2022 World Series, grew up playing Little League in Riverside. It led to a 19-year MLB career (12 with the Dodgers, and the 1981 World Series) and 20 years as a manager. In 2007, he was added to the Little League Hall of Excellence.
= Future MLB home run sluggers Dave Kingman and George Foster played in the same Hawthorne Little League together in the early 1960s. Kingman famously maintained that he still held the Little League home run record in Hawthorne for many years. “I hit 15 homers in about 15 games one year,” he told the New York Times in 1976. “I remember there was a drainage ditch about 50 feet beyond the left‐field fence and I put a few over the drainage ditch.” Foster once told The Sporting News in 1976 of that time: “Kingman hit 20 homers and I hit five one summer. I may catch up with him some day in homers, but don’t think I’ll ever catch up to him in height.”
= Matt Cassel was part of the ’94 “Earthquake Kids” from Northridge that won the U.S. bracket and lost to Venezuela 4-3 in the final. During his football career at USC, where he was a backup to Carson Palmer and Matt Leinart, Cassel was drafted by the Oakland Athletics in 2004, but he signed with the New England Patriots as a seventh-round draft pick in ’05 to back up Tom Brady. With Kansas City, Cassel made the Pro Bowl and retired after the 2018 season.
= Brian Sipe, who would have an NFL MVP season as a quarterback in Cleveland and retire as the franchise leader in passing yards and TDs, was part of the Northern Little League in El Cajon/La Mesa team that ran through the Little League World Series, winning a pair of games in extra innings before defeating Texas in the final to claim the championship.
= Actors Kevin Costner and Tom Selleck were added to the Little League Hall of Excellence. Coster, inducted in 2000, was recognized for his participation in Saticoy Little League in Ventura — where he once struck out 16 batters in a game and threw a couple no-hitters. Selleck, inducted in 1991, was an all-star pitcher with the Pioneer Little League of Sherman Oaks.
= Current MLB players with a connection to their local Little League includes Gerrit Cole (Western Little League in Tustin), Giancarlo Stanton (Tujuga Little League), Lucas Giolito (Santa Monica Little League), Nolan Arenado and Matt Chapman (Lake Forest Little League), Jack Flaherty (Southern Little League in Sherman Oaks), Christian Yelich (Thousand Oaks Little League), Nick Pratto (on the Huntington Beach Little League team that went to the Little League World Series in 2009), Hagen Danner (Ocean View Little League of Huntington Beach that went to the 2011 Little League World Series), Max Fried, Gabe Kapler and Torey Lovullo (Encino Little League), Pete Crow-Armstrong (Southern Little League in Sherman Oaks), and Freddie Freeman (Long Beach Little League).
Who else wore No. 21 in SoCal sports history? Make a case for:
Eddie Meador: Los Angeles Rams cornerback/halfback/free safety (1959 to 1970):
Best known: A six-time Pro Bowl selection, two-time first-team All NFL and one who continues to hold the Rams’ franchise records for interceptions (46, five returned for TDs). And blocked kicks (10). And fumble recoveries (18 from the opp0nents, plus four more of his own teammates). He was named to the Rams All-Time franchise teams when votes took place in 1970 and 1985. They referred him as “The Gremlin” for his relentless play. Because it’s all true.
He was also one of three safeties named to the NFL’s 1960s All Decade team with St. Louis Cardinals’ Larry Wilson and Green Bay Packers’ Willie Wood. Those other two are both enshrined in the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio. Why Meador isn’t remains a topic of discussion.
A website called EdMeador21.com once existed with a home page that read: Welcome to the Pro Football Hall of Fame Nomination site for Eddie Meador: Leader, Hero, Father, Athlete, Champion, Legend.
Meador’s son, Dave, was behind the Internet campaign.
“The voters don’t remember watching him play,” Dave Meador said on a podcast a couple of months before his father’s September of 2023 passing. “And even if they were football fans, they weren’t necessarily watching the Rams or number 21 on the Rams at the age of 13, 10 or whatever. I think that’s a little bit of a barrier. Out of sight; out of mind.”
Going back to 2009, Meador’s lack of Hall induction was being processed and questioned.
From Bleacher Report: “It is astonishing that Meador has yet to be inducted into Canton. He has gone to the same amount of Pro Bowls as 15 other defensive backs that are already inducted. … Tackles were not a recorded statistic in his era, but he exceeded 100 tackles in several seasons. He once had 126 tackles in a 14-game season, which is an impressive rate for a free safety. He was fast, quick, tough, and smart. For all he did on the field, he did even more off the field. He was very active in charities, especially with the Special Olympics. His leadership abilities were seen from his days in college up until the day he retired from the NFL.”
“I probably was as good a ballplayer as some of the people that’s already in there,” Meador told the Los Angeles Times in 2009, then at his home in Natural Bridge, Virginia, after years of living in Downey. “Maybe not, but I think that.”
The Rams got him as a relative bargain, the 80th overall pick in the seventh round of the 1959 NFL draft. The team’s 10th player chosen at that point. (FYI: The Rams later in Round 28 also took Rafer Johnson out of UCLA, No. 333 overall, but he had other plans).
Meador was simply an athlete — tailback, defensive back and kick returner for tiny Arkansas Tech. The pivot point in Meador’s time with the Rams came when head coach Harland Svare moved him from left cornerback to free safety.
Eventually, new defensive-minded head coach George Allen saw Meador, at the height of the Rams’ “Fearsome Foursome” days, as the one who the most fearless. Meador called the Rams’ defensive signals. During a run where he was named to five straight Pro Bowls from ’63 to ’68, he collected 24 interceptions and returned two for touchdowns.
Meador also became a valued punt and kickoff returner. He for some reason felt responsible to be the holder on the field-goal unit team. Just in case.
Meador once explained how his versatility gave him an advantage during in a key win against the Philadelphia Eagles in 1969. Before he intercepted a Norm Snead pass and returned it 34 yards for a touchdown, he was the holder at a point when the Rams lined up for a field goal trying to erase a 10-0 deficit.
“I looked over at the linebacker on the other side,” Meador recalled, “and I said to myself, ‘I’m going to take this ball and run it.’ I about killed (kicker Bruce) Gossett when he came running in to kick it. By the time he got to me, I was up and taking off.”
For the last two years of his career, he was president of the NFL Players Association.
The Rams staged an Eddie Meador Day in 2018 at the Los Angeles Coliseum, where they played for a short while after moving back from St. Louis as their current home in Inglewood was being built. Meador stood in the end zone on the field he played on, waving to thousands of Rams fans and they chanted his name.
“If the Hall of Fame doesn’t happen in his lifetime or doesn’t ever happen, the L.A. Rams gave him a Hall of Fame moment,” said his daughter, Vicki.
Meador has been in the Pro Football Hall of Fame discussion in more recent years far more often now than when he finished 12 seasons with the Rams in 1970. He has made the Senior Blue-Ribbon Committee initial list for the Class of ’24 and ’25, survived a few cutdowns, but never made it to the final ballot.
In a 2023 Meador obituary written for the Los Angeles Times, Vicki also forwarded a photo of her dad wearing the Rams’ No. 21 jersey and his trademark Brill Cream hair cut:
“I was a 12-year-old kid working as a water boy at Rams camp during the summer of ‘59 in Redlands. While being ignored by most of the veterans, one rookie was always cordial and went out of his way to make me feel like I was part of the team. It was Meador, who ended up being one of the greatest defensive backs in Rams history. He not only should be in the Hall of Fame, but if the Rams did the right thing they’d retire his No. 21!”
Another letter posted from reader Rick Magnante of Encino:
“Growing up in Los Angeles in the ‘50s and seeing my first professional football game at the Coliseum, I won’t forget those stars, the likes of Norm Van Brocklin, Elroy Hirsch, Jon Arnett, Les Richter and, of course, the undersized but truly appreciated Meador. In today’s game, the art of open-field tackling is a thing of the past. Meador stood out as singularly the best to date that I’ve ever seen. The fact that he is not in the Hall of Fame is hard to fathom. His career and numbers stand the test of time.
Michael Cooper: Los Angeles Lakers guard (1978-79 to 1989-90) via Pasadena High:
Best known: The spindly small forward/shooting guard who stood 6-foot-7 and may have weighed 175 pounds played all 12 of his pro seasons in L.A. during the Lakers’ Showtime Era, often matched up specifically against the opponent’s most dangerous offensive player — Boston’s Larry Bird, Chicago’s Michael Jordan, San Antonio’s George Gervin. The role Cooper filled on that Laker dynasty rewarded him with inclusion in the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame’s Class of 2024. This, after becoming the Lakers’ third-round choice, No. 60 overall, in the 1978 NBA Draft out of the University of New Mexico. This was before Jerry Buss’ ownership, or the arrival of Magic Johnson. It was a piece of the “Showtime Era” that would reveal itself later with fans chanting “Cooop,” and Chick Hearn punctuating a dunk with a “Coop-A-Loop” declaration.
Bird deemed Cooper “the best defensive player who ever guarded me … I’ll take that to my grave with me.” Cooper said he developed that mindset early when Jerry West was the Lakers’ head coach at time time he joined the roster.
“I’m heading to training camp. I get to Loyola Marymount, and when I walk into the gym I see Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Jamaal Wilkes and Norm Nixon. So, we get into practice and stuff. Jerry pulls me to the side and he goes, ‘Coop, I already have scorers. I got 30 points in Kareem. I got 27 to 28 from Jamaal Wilkes. I got 22 to 25 in Norm Nixon. There is not enough balls to go around for you to get shots. So, I need somebody to play defense.’
“So, I said, ‘Hey, I already got the fundamentals down. I got the aggressiveness down.’ And now I’ve been told that this was going to be my role. So, I took that to heart, embraced it, got better and better.”
Picked on the NBA’s All-Defensive team first team eight times and second team three times, Cooper was able to hoist the title of 1986-87 Defensive Player of the Year as the Lakers outlasted the Celtics in six games for the NBA title. Cooper’s most memorable offensive performance came in Game 2 of the 1987 Finals, when he drained a then-playoff record six 3-pointers and finished with 21 points and nine assists to give the Lakers a 2-0 series lead.
For the most part, Cooper came off the bench even as many remember him on the court for the bulk of the game’s minutes. Of 872 games played for the Lakers, only 94 were as a starter. But that was all part of the Lakers’ entertainment presentation. It allowed for him to be singled out with the chants of “Coooop” when he reported in from the scorers table and give the game some extra energy when needed.
The most games he started in a season was 20 of 82 games in the 1984-85 campaign. The NBA’s Sixth Man Award was established for the 1982-83 season. The best Cooper ever finished in the voting was his Defensive Player of the Year campaign in ’86-87 when he was off the bench for all but two of his 82 regular season games.
Following his playing career, Cooper served as a special assistant to Lakers general manager Jerry West for three years, joined the Lakers coaching staff for four seasons (1994-97) under Magic Johnson and Del Harris. As a head coach for eight season with the WNBA’s Los Angeles Sparks, he started as the league’s coach of the year in 2000. The team won two league titles (2001 and ’02) and one runner-up (2003) with a record of 178-88 (.699) in the regular season and 26-16 (.619) in the post season. He also had a four-year run as the USC women’s basketball coach (2009-13) with a record of 72-57 (.558). Currently, he serves as the head coach for Cal State L.A.
Cooper remains the only person to win a championship as a player or coach in the NBA, WNBA and NBA Developmeal League (the later with the Albuquerque Thunderbirds in 2006).
In a Los Angeles Time story headlined “Why Michael Cooper finally made it to Springfield,” the conclusion is that it was a long time coming as he became an overlooked but well-deserving candidate. The Basketball Hall has always been a reflection of a player’s entire career in the game — from high school to college to professional, to Olympics and international play, to contributing as a coach and executive. Cooper’s resume checks off several boxes.
Magic Johnson had become one of Cooper’s greatest allies in this process of vetting and discernment by a block of voters who the public doesn’t really know as much about. The same goes for the voters of the Pro Football Hall of Fame and Hockey Hall of Fame.
Michael Cooper defends Detroit’s Dennis Rodman in a game at the Forum in Inglewood in 1988. (Photo by Focus on Sport/Getty Images)
It will be noted Cooper is now one of 14 Hall of Famers who averaged fewer than 10 points (along with players like Dennis Rodman, Ben Wallace and Dikembe Mutombo. Cooper’s greatest offensive season was 11.9 points in ’81-82 season. But Rodman, Wallace and Mutombo were also named to NBA All Star teams. Cooper never had that.
Cooper said West once told him that you have to have at least been a former All-Star and All-NBA player to get your jersey retired with the Lakers. That didn’t happen. But with the Hall of Fame induction, the Lakers plan to retire Cooper’s No. 21 on Jan. 13, 2025 at Crypto.com Arena, joining Johnson, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Jerry West, Elgin Baylor, Kobe Bryant, Jamaal Wilkes, Wilt Chamberlain, Pau Gasol, Gail Goodrich, Shaquille O’Neal, James Worthy and George Mikan.
“When I sit there and they asked me to pull that rope, and I can finally see No. 21 up there in the rafters with everybody else, it’s going to be a moment because, if you know, dying is part of living. And one day we’re all going to leave this earth,” said Cooper. “But the one thing that I get the opportunity to leave for my grandkids, my great grandkids — even with the advancement of these arenas changing, and pretty soon the Lakers will have to get a bigger place and all that — but you know what, whenever they change this arena, they have to put that jersey up there. And my grandkids will be able to say, ‘You know what, that’s my grandfather up there.’ ”
Not well remembered: Wearing No. 42 at Pasadena High, Cooper credited high school coach George Terzian for teaching him the fundamentals, particularly playing defense with feet positioning instead of reaching with arms and hands. After two seasons at Pasadena City College, Cooper transferred to the University of New Mexico for his junior and senior seasons. In 1974, Michael Cooper and his Pasadena team was featured on the local favorite KNBC-Channel 4 High School Game of the Week, as it faced El Rancho. Cooper’s grandmother, who had glaucoma and couldn’t see the TV screen well, wondered if there was a way for him to stand out from the rest of the players on his team, making it easier for her to spot him. So Cooper wore high white socks, two sweat bands on his wrist and left his white tie strings hang out of his shorts. “I looked different,” Cooper recalled. “And I had the game of my life. I had 24 points, 15 rebounds, three dunks and like four or five blocks. That was going to be my attire from there on out. Whether I was with the Lakers or anybody, I was gonna wear long white socks, two sweatbands and my strings out.”
Wally Joyner, California Angels/Anaheim Angels first baseman (1986 to 1991, 2001):
Best known: The “Wallyworld” experience just blocks away from Disneyland during the late 1980s was something to behold. The baby-faced Mormon out of BYU came out of nowhere and was named to the AL All-Star team as a 24-year-old rookie — in the first two months of his big league career, he led the majors in homers. The Angels were just hoping he would be a suitable replacement for Rod Carew.
Joyner would finish with 22 HRs, 100 RBIs and a .290 batting average and runner-up to Jose Canseco (33 HRs, 117 RBIs, 15 SB) in the AL Rookie of the Year voting. If it makes a difference, Joyner finished eighth in the 1986 AL MVP voting; Canseco was 20th. That was also the only All-Star Game selection season Joyner would have in 16 MLB campaigns, ending back with the Angels in 2001 at age 39.
As Will Leitch once wrote about him: “If you were a kid in rural Illinois who collected baseball cards, suddenly no one was more important than Joyner. This was a player no one knew who was suddenly the most popular player in the sport. Getting his rookie card was like the Shroud of Turin, the briefcase in “Pulp Fiction” or the Maltese Falcon. Nobody cared about Jackson, Cal Ripken Jr. or Mike Schmidt. Joyner was all that mattered.”
In his second season, Joyner had a 34-homer, 117 RBI season and .285 average, with a career-best 4.1 WAR. But after six seasons, Joyner left, accepting a one-year, $4.2 million free agent deal with Kansas City — he stayed a Royal until they traded him after the ’95 season — instead of a four-year, $15.75 million deal from the Angels.
He didn’t want to leave.
“Wally Joyner stood at the press room podium at baseball’s winter meetings with tears in his eyes, unable to speak,” the L.A. Times’ Ross Newhan wrote in December, 1991. “The pressure of two months of futile negotiations, of a decision he never expected to have to make after six years with the Angels, was seeping out in an unexpected display of emotion. No one cries at leaving a last-place team, but … Wally Joyner did. Call that a crying shame.”
Not well remembered: Joyner came back to the Angels as a free agent in 2001 and took No. 5 — pitcher Shigetoshi Hasegawa had No. 21, but was released half-way into the season. The thrill was gone.
Jim Hardy, USC football quarterback / defensive back (1942 to 1944), Los Angeles Rams quarterback (1946 to 1948):
Best known: The Fairfax High standout who started going to Trojans games in 1931 at age 8 became the MVP of the 1945 Rose Bowl, throwing two touchdown passes and running for another in a 25-0 win over Tennessee despite battling a 101 fever the night before. Hardy also dropped three key punts for USC that landed on the Tennessee 5, 8 and 7 yard lines in succession. In Hardy’s senior season, he set USC passing records with 58 completions, 739 yards passing and 10 touchdowns. That came a year after he threw three touchdown passes in the Trojans’ 29-0 win over Washington in the ’44 Rose Bowl. He also had 13 career interceptions as a defensive back. He made it into the USC Athletic Hall of Fame in 1999 and the Rose Bowl Hall of Fame in 1994. Hardy, who also played third base for USC’s baseball team from 1944 to ’46, ended up with the Rams during their first three years in L.A. after a stint in the Navy. He became the general manager of the Los Angeles Coliseum from 1973 to 1986, which included the 1984 Summer Olympics. He was noted to be the “oldest living” USC and Rams player when he died at age 96 in 2019.
LenDale White, USC football running back (2003 to 2005):
Best known: Fifty-two rushing touchdowns in three seasons established a Trojan career record as the “Thunder” to Reggie Bush’s “Lightning” combination during the team’s span of national dominance. White ran for three TDs in USC’s 55-19 win over Oklahoma in the 2005 Orange Bowl, and a year later, he had three more TDs as USC lost to Texas 41-38 in the 2006 Rose Bowl. In that game, with 2:13 left in regulation and USC holding a 38-33 lead, the Trojans were at Texas’ 45-yard line and needed two yards on fourth down to keep possession and run out the clock. Everyone knew the handoff would be to White. It was. He came up a yard short. Texas got the ball and won the game. “There’s nothing I can do to shake that,” said White, who finished his USC career with a powerful 3,159 yards, averaging 5.8 yards a carry. “He was kind of a free spirit, marched to his own drum,” quarterback Matt Leinart once said of him. “But I’ll tell you what, man, when the lights turned on, that dude was one of the best football players I’ve ever played with. He was one of the best teammates I’ve ever played with.”
Best known: Before coming to Westwood, the generously sized 5-foot-7 running back made himself known to Southern California football fans when he, as a high school junior, scored four touchdowns for Concord De La Salle in a 29-15 win over Long Beach Poly in 2001 during an epic matchup of No. 1 vs. No. 2 before 17,000 at Long Beach Veterans Stadium. Drew caught TD passes of 25 and 29 yards and ran in from 17 yards for another score to give De La Salle a 21-15 halftime lead. After Drew scored his first TD, he did a flip in the end zone, drawing a 15-yard unsportsmanlike conduct penalty. The game was such a TV success it led to more national coverage of high school football games.
During a career at UCLA he led the team in rushing all three years, set a school record in all-purpose yards (4,688), rushing yards from scrimmage (3,322), touchdowns (33), and an NCAA record of 28.5 yards per punt return. He was named to the UCLA Athletic Hall of Fame in 2017 — not overlooking the fact he set the school’s single-game rushing mark with 322 yards and five touchdowns against Washington in his sophomore year.
Not well remembered: During his junior (and final) year of 2005, Jones-Drew learned from Coach Karl Dorrell that his grandfather, Maurice Jones, died of a heart attack while at the Rose Bowl to see the UCLA-Rice game. Drew, who took the last name of his maternal mother but was raised by his maternal grandparents, had his name legally changed to Jones-Drew, and in the NFL was most often referred to as “MJD.”
Walker Buehler, Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher (2018 to 2024):
Best known: The last pitcher standing for the Dodgers when they won the 2024 World Series at Yankee Stadium in Game 5, Buehler preserved a 7-6 victory by striking out the last two Yankee hitters in the bottom of the ninth. This was just three days after he threw five shutout innings and got the win in Game 3 that put the Dodgers up, two games to one. That put him on a short list of eight players — since saves became an official stat in 1969 — who had both a win and a save in the same playoff series. A two-time NL All Star, Buehler finished third in the 2018 NL Rookie of the Year voting (8-5, 2.62 ERA, 151 Ks in 137 innings). He missed the entire 2023 season with second Tommy John surgery and then went through a 2024 regular season with stats that didn’t show he was all that ready to come back — a 1-6 mark with a 5.38 ERA. But then came the post-season. In the NLDS against San Diego, Buehler gave up six runs in five innings of his only start, Game 3, and took the loss as the Dodgers fell behind two games to one and appeared doomed. Somehow, they recovered. In Game 3 of the NLCS against the New York Mets, Buehler started, and something interesting happened. After pitching from a full windup to the leadoff hitter, he settled into a stretch. With better body control, he threw four shutout innings, striking out six. If injuries to Dodgers starters such as Tyler Glasnow, Clayton Kershaw and Michael Grove hadn’t occurred, Buehler may not have even been on the post-season roster, but there he was now in the World Series. He then became a free agent and went to Boston. Not well remembered: Bueller wore No. 64 in eight appearances during his debut season of 2017 with the Dodgers — both Yu Darvish and Trayce Thompson had been sharing dibs on No. 21.
Zack Greinke, Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher (2013 to 2015):
Best known: A year after he vacationed as a free agent with the Angels in Anaheim wearing No. 23, Greinke logged three standout seasons for the Dodgers, creating a formative top-of-the pitching rotation with Clayton Kershaw that many compared to the days of Koufax and Drysdale. The eclectic and rather mysterious Greinke, a 2009 AL Cy Young winner with Kansas City, went to two All Star games with the Dodgers and posted a 51-15 record with a 2.30 ERA over that time, gaining Cy Young and MVP votes, plus a Silver Slugger and a two Gold Gloves. He had an NL-best 8.9 WAR when he finished 19-3 with a 1.66 ERA in 2015. That’s when his six-year, $147 million deal with the Dodgers reached the halfway point and gave Greinke the option to opt out. He did. He declined the Dodgers new six-year, $160 million deal, and off he went to Arizona for six years and $206 million. His time in Arizona went 3 1/2 season. He put in 20 seasons, finishing where he started with Kansas City at age 39 with a 2-15 record and 5.09 ERA.
Best known: The Gatorade National Player of the Year as a sophomore in 2021 out of Harvard-Westlake School in Studio City (48 goals, 14 assists in 17 games) had been playing on semi-pro teams since age 13 against college-aged players and signed an NIL deal with Nike at age 17 (along with her sister, Gisele) before becoming the youngest player ever drafted into the NWSL. The No. 1 overall pick by hometown Angel City FC in January of ’23 came with Thompson signing a three-year deal. In April, 2023, the third-generation Angeleno debuted with the U.S. Women’s National team (wearing No. 17) in the FIFA Women’s World Cup in Australia. In September of 2025, Thompson agreed to a five-year contract with Chelsea of the Women’s Super League for a $1.65 million transfer fee,the greatest in women’s soccer history. Thompson was the club’s all-time scoring leader with 21 goals in all competitions. Thompson has three goals and three assists in 22 games with the national team.
Tayshaun Prince, Dominguez High of Compton basketball (1996 to 1998):
Tayshawn Prince, right, has his No. 21 retired by Dominguez Hill along with former teammate Tyson Chandler (32).
Best known: Voted Mr. California Basketball, Prince — aka “Tay,” aka “Compton Kid” — won three CIF titles and back-to-back state titles during his time at Dominguez. The 1998 McDonald’s All-American led Dominguez to a 96-9 record, averaging 22.0 points, 9.8 rebounds, 4.0 blocks and 5.2 assists a game as a senior when the Dons went 32-3. As a junior, he averaged 20.0 ppoints, 10 rebounds, 5.0 blocks and 5.0 assists during a 30-4 season. A finalist for the Naismith Prep Player of the Year Award, he had a 3.3 GPA and was on the school’s honor roll for three years. Prince stayed all four years at Kentucky and was SEC Player of the Year as a junior (2001). He won an NBA title with Detroit (2004), was a four-time All-NBA Defense and won an Olympic gold medal for Team USA (2008). His No. 21 was retired by Dominguez High in 2023.
The Daily Breeze, March 23, 1967
Dana Pagett, El Segundo High basketball (1963-64 to 1966-67); USC basketball (1968-69 to 1970-71):
The Daily Breeze, March 17, 1967
Best known: The CIF-3A Player of the Year and second-team Parade All-American at El Segundo High was on coach Cliff Warren’s team that won 34 consecutive games before a 62-56 overtime loss to Monrovia in the Southern Section 3-A championship game. El Segundo won five tournaments that season and Pagett was named the most valuable player in four of them. While averaging 16.1 points and 10 assists a game as a senior, the Daily Breeze story announcing him as the South Bay Player of the Year on a team that included future NBA players Paul Westphal of Aviation and Stan Love of Morningside and future MLB pitcher Bart Johnson of Torrance included: “His assists often counted for twice as many points as he scored himself.” Said Warren: “He was the best player the South Bay ever had.” Pagett signed a letter of intent to go to West Virginia University, but he had a change of heart and stayed home, picking USC over UCLA. Pagett became a valuable third guard on the USC basketball team, still wearing No. 21, and playing behind Paul Westphal and Mo Layton. “He was the first recruit in the area to get away from John Wooden at UCLA,” Warren said. A 1971 NBA Draft pick by Philadelphia, Pagett signed with Portland and spent a year in the ABA with the Virginia Squires (1971-72). Still wearing No. 21.
Not well remembered: After working as an assistant coach at Loyola Marymount University and Long Beach State, Pagett went to Rancho Santiago Community College in Santa Ana and had a long run as a head coach starting in 1982. In 2006 Pagett was added to the Santa Ana College Athletic Hall of Fame for his 15-year run that included leading the Dons to the state tournament 11 times and claiming two titles.Pagett is Santa Ana College ‘s all-time winningest men’s basketball coach with a 323-165 record.
Nolan Cromwell, Los Angeles Rams defensive back / free safety (1977 to 1987):
Best remembered: Seven years after Meador left the Rams, Cromwell, a converted quarterback from Kansas and Big 8 Offensive Player of the Year, took the number 21 and ran off another 11 years with the team, becoming a Pro Bowl player four seasons in a row (1980 to ’83) and collecting 37 interceptions, returning four for touchdowns. He also set a franchise record 671 in return yards and was a standout on special teams as a holder who could run the fake field goal. Cromwell made it onto the NFL’s All-Decade Team for the 1980s.
A heralded defensive back at L.A.’s Roosevelt High and then the California Community College State player of the Year in 1974 at East L.A. College, Cain arrived at USC to start at fullback blocking for tailback Charles White on the Trojans’ ’78 national championship team. After a seven-year NFL career (that included a stop with the Los Angeles Rams in 1985 wearing No. 31), he returned to coach at East L.A. College and L.A. Southwest College.
Steve Grady, USC football tailback (1966 to 1967): After distinguishing himself at L.A.’s Loyola High as a wingback and middle linebacker, where he ran for 2,097 yards and scored 217 points in 12 games as a senior on a CIF title team (wearing No. 36), the CIF State Player of the Year gravitated to Coach John McKay’s Trojans teams as the running back in between Heisman winners Mike Garrett and O.J. Simpson. He had a combined 519 yards and 1 TD in his career, with 108 yards coming in a win over Oregon as Simpson’s injury replacement. After a brief NFL stint, Grady returned to coach at Loyola High and was named its head coach in 1976, staying through 2004 with nearly 270 wins and CIF titles in 1990 and 2003. He was inducted into the CIF Southern Section Hall of Fame.
John Hadl, Los Angeles Rams quarterback (1973 to 1974): He put No. 21 on for two seasons between Eddie Meador and Nolan Cromwell — keeping the number he had for the 11 previous years with the San Diego Chargers — and was second in the MVP voting in ’73 when he led the team to a 12-2 mark and a Pro Bowl nomination. Hadl, also once a fabled quarterback at Kansas, was gone the next year to Green Bay. But Hadl would return to Los Angeles — as the coach of the United State Football League’s Express, as a mentor to rookie quarterback Steve Young.
Cliff Branch, Los Angeles Raiders receiver (1982 to 1985): The last four seasons of his 14-year NFL career, all with the Raiders, game him a platform to perform in L.A. With the ’83 Super Bowl champs he had a 99-yard TD reception from Jim Plunkett to help defeat the Redskins in Washington, D.C.
Shigetoshi Hasegawa, Anaheim Angels pitcher (1997 to 2001): What drove Shiggy to Anaheim was piling up a 57-45 record and 3.33 ERA during six seasons in Nippon Pro Baseball. The 28-year-old middle reliever didn’t net nearly the attention as other Japanese players did who came to the U.S., yet by the time he left the MLB in 2005, he logged nine seasons and had the most appearances by an Asian pitcher in the U.S. (517), far ahead of Hideo Nomo’s 323 in 12 seasons. Hasegawa is included in the book, “Hall of Name: Baseball’s Most Magnificent Monikers” by D.B. Firstman (2020) with the entry: “Four short yet lyrical syllables in the first name and four more int he last. The name looks daunting to pronounce but is actually reasonably easy once you hear it a couple of times. And speaking of hearing it, no less a public speaking authority than the late Yankees public address announcer Bob Sheppard deemed Hasegawa’s name as one of his favorites to say over the P.A. system.”
Jim Brewer, Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher (1964 to 1975), California Angels pitcher (1976): Back when recording a save was much more difficult algorithm to achieve, Brewer was the franchise leader with 126 when he retired, and he needed more than 800 innings and 300 games over a 12-year span to do that. He was also on the 1973 NL All-Star team at at a time when the Dodgers used to refer to the team’s bullpen as “The Brewery.” Brewer remains in the Top 5 of the franchise save leaders.
Mack Calvin, Los Angeles Lakers guard (1976-77): The Long Beach Poly prep star went onto Long Beach City College and then showed enough at USC over two seasons to become an NBA draft pick by the hometown Lakers, albeit the 14th round in 1969. The ABA’s Los Angeles Stars looked more attractive, and that’s where Calvin landed (wearing No. 20) with coach Bill Sharman. Calvin averaged 16.8 points per game to make the ABA All-Rookie Team, and the Stars went to the ABA Finals before losing to Indiana. He had a 44-point game during the division semifinals against Dallas and averaged 15.8 points and five assists a game in the six-game finals. Over the next five seasons with Florida, Carolina and Denver, Calvin was a five-time ABA All Star. The ’76-’77 season was split between Denver, San Antonio and finally the Lakers (for 12 games) before he was dropped from the roster and sat out a year. He came back for two more NBA seasons with Utah and Cleveland. As an assistant coach with the Los Angeles Clippers, Calvin took over as head coach for two games in 1992.
Jeff Fryer, Loyola Marymount University basketball guard (1986-87 to 1989-90): The 6-foot-2 sharpshooter out of Corona Del Mar High in Newport Beach, who led the nation as a junior with 126 3-point makes out of 334 attempts, set an NCAA record with 11 3-pointers made during the Lions’ 149-115 upset over defending champion Michigan in the 1990 second-round game played at Long Beach. Fryer’s 41 points led LMU as he attempted 15 3-pointers and also shot 15 for 20 in the game. During his four years starting at LMU, 940 of Fryer’s 1, 545 shots came from 3-point range and he established an NCAA career mark of 363 made 3-pointers. He was also 26-for-26 in free throws in the NCAA Tournament.
Have you heard this story
Tony Gwinn, Long Beach Poly High basketball (1973 to 1976):
The future Baseball Hall of Famer known as “Mr. Padre” from his career in San Diego had basketball on his radar as well. As a point guard on the Jackrabbits teams that went 30-1 his junior year and won the CIF-4A title before more than 10,000 spectators at the Long Beach Sports Arena, Gwynn’s team was considered the best in the state. They also went 23-7 his senior season and lost in the playoffs trying to repeat.
Gwynn, All-CIF Southern Section second team, went on to be an All-Western Athletic Conference basketball and baseball player at San Diego State.
Milton Bradley, Los Angeles Dodgers outfielder (2004 to 2005):
“Trouble” or “Anger Management” were not products that the Milton Bradley board game company created, but they could summarize the season-and-a-half this former Long Beach Poly High standout spend with the Dodgers, one of eight teams he suited up for in 12 years.
Bradley, whose birthday of April 15 was the same day all of MLB honors as Jackie Robinson Day, once said about how he had No. 21: “That’s the number they gave me in rookie ball, so I just kind of stuck with it. You know, you can’t wear 42 anymore, so I always said, 21 is half of 42; if I can be half of the player, half of the person, Jackie Robinson was, then I will have been a success. That’s my motto.”
His first major display of his volatile nature was being handed a four-game suspension by the league for throwing a bag of balls onto the field following his ejection from a game when he argued balls and strikes. He was suspended for the last week of the regular season on ’04 when he reacted to a fan who threw a bottle at him following an error by throwing it back at the fan and yelling at him, leading to another ejection. In October of ’04, during the NL playoffs, Bradley got into a clubhouse argument with the Los Angeles Times’ beat reporter. He returned in ’05 and hit.290 in 75 games before tearing knee ligaments. That offseason, the Dodgers swapped general managers, and Ned Colletti’s first deal was to swap out Bradley to Oakland for a prospect named Andre Ethier.
While Bradley was a Dodgers’ nominee for the Roberto Clemente Award for his work with the team’s non-profit foundation, he was accused of domestic abuse in 2005 (no charges filed), and more accusations after that, to the point where he was convicted of physically attacking his wife and was sentenced to 32 months in prison. In 2018, he remarried and was again charged with spousal battery, leading to probation and counseling. “When we traded for Milton, I think we knew everything that came along with it,” former Dodgers GM Paul DePodesta once told ESPN. “We knew the past, we don’t necessarily think that everything’s going to be completely different because he came to a different place. That’s fine. I would take nine Milton Bradleys if I could get them.” Or, maybe, one Either, who would play for the Dodgers all 12 of his MLB seasons with two All Star appearances, a Silver Slugger and Gold Glove.
The Japanese star import became available at the ’17 trade deadline as his Texas Rangers’s contract was coming up. The Dodgers rented him for three prospects. Darvish finished 4-3 with a 3.44 ERA in nine starts down the stretch, including an ERA of 0.47 ERA over 19 1/3 innings in his last three starts. In the NLDS and NLCS, he posted a win against Arizona and Chicago, allowing just two runs over 11 1/3 innings while striking out 14 and allowing one walk. But in Game 3 of the World Series at Houston, Darvish fell into the Twilight Zone — he lasted just one and two-third innings as the Astros posted four runs in the bottom of the second. It was the first time he failed to get a strikeout in an outing and he managed only one swinging strike in 49 pitches. Hear any trash cans banging? (Adding insult to it all, Houston’s Yuli Gurriel made a gesture in the dugout after hitting a home run, stretching the sides of his eyes and using the slur “chinito,” and received a five-game suspension by MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred — but still allowed to play in the World Series, so the punishment came to start the 2018 season). Darvish came back to start the decisive Game 7 at Dodger Stadium, quickly trailed 2-0, and a George Springer homer in the second inning meant Darvish again was gone after 1 2/3 innings. “If you ask me if I got hit in Game 7 because they stole signs, I don’t think so,” Darvish later said. Darvish’s Game 7 start was his last with the Dodgers. He signed a six-year, $126 million contract with the Cubs that offseason. Since reports of the Astros stealing signs emerged, Darvish said he has gotten apologies from Dodgers fans who blamed him for the losses. He responded: “I’m not looking for that. I don’t want them to change their minds.”
Dominique Wilkins, Los Angeles Clippers forward (1994): The eventual Basketball Hall of Famer who spent his first 12 seasons as The Human Highlight Film in Atlanta became the star attraction of another horror genre when Clippers GM Elgin Baylor decided to make a post ’94 NBA All Star Game trade for him. The Hawks gave up him and a 1994 first-round draft pick for All-Star Danny Manning, who was six years younger. Wilkins pulled on the No. 21 tank top and played out the final 25 games for the 27-55 Clippers, averaging 29.1 points a game, and left that summer to Boston. The Clippers used that pick from Atlanta (after taking Cal’s Lamond Murray at No. 7 overall) to select Louisville guard Greg Minor at No. 25, then traded him with Mark Jackson to Indiana for rookie Eric Piatkowski, Pooh Richardson and Malik Sealy.
USC pitcher Mark Prior was the #2 player drafted in the 2001 MLB baseball draft. (Getty Images/Bob Riha, Jr.)
Mark Pryor, USC baseball pitcher (2000 to 2001): After transferring from Vanderbilt, Prior led the Trojans to the College World Series in two straight years. As a junior, his 15-1 record and 1.69 ERA, plus 202 strikeouts in 138 innings with just 18 walks, won him the Golden Spikes Award. He struck out 10 or more hitters in a game 13 times, including a 13-strikeout effort against Georgia in the College World Series. His 202 strikeouts set a single-season record for the Trojans. He was the No. 2 overall pick by the Chicago Cubs in the 2001 MLB Draft, after Minnesota took home-town favorite Joe Mauer. Prior became the Dodgers bullpen coach in 2018 and took over as pitching coach in 2020 and had been wearing the No. 99 under his blue sweatshirt.
Liz Masakayan, UCLA women’s volleyball (1980 to 1984): She played Little League baseball in Santa Monica at age 10 — the first year girls were allowed to play because of Title IX. At Santa Monica High, she was on the first girls soccer team, ran track and also tried out for volleyball. At UCLA, she won the Broderick Award as the nation’s top volleyball player after the Bruins won the 1984 NCAA championship. Segueing into beach volleyball, Masakayan paired with Karolyn Kirby as one of the most dominant women’s teams, winning 29 tournaments. She and Elaine Youngs almost qualified for the 2000 Sydney Olympics. Masakayan ended up with 47 beach tournament wins and returned to coach at UCLA. She was inducted into the UCLA Athletic Hall of Fame in 1996.
We also have
Cliff Branch, Los Angeles Raiders receiver (1982 to 1985) Ronny Turiaf, Los Angeles Lakers forward (2005-06 to 2007-08), Los Angeles Clippers forward (2012-13) Kareem Rush, Los Angeles Lakers guard (2002-03 to 2004-05), Los Angeles Clippers guard (2009-10) Eric Ball, UCLA football running back (1984 to 1988) Shon Tarver, UCLA basketball forward (1990-91 to 1993-94) Cedric Bozeman, UCLA basketball guard (2001-02 to 2005-06) Kobe Brown,Los Angeles Clippers forward (2023-24 to 2025-26)
Tommy Lasorda: Los Angeles Dodgers Kawhi Leonard: Los Angeles Clippers Derek Fisher: Los Angeles Lakers Lonzo Ball: Chino Hills High basketball, UCLA basketball, Los Angeles Lakers Morley Drury: USC football Gianna Bryant: Mamba Academy basketball
The not-so-obvious choices for No. 2:
Robert Woods: USC football, Los Angeles Rams Steve Smith: USC football Adam Kennedy: Anaheim/Los Angeles Angels Cobi Jones: UCLA soccer Shai Gilgeous-Alexander: Los Angeles Clippers
The most interesting story for No. 2:
Lonzo Ball: Chino Hills High basketball guard (2012-13 to 2015-16), UCLA basketball guard (2016-17), Los Angeles Lakers guard (2017-18 to 2018-19) Southern California map pinpoints: Anaheim, Chino, Westwood (UCLA), Los Angeles (Staples Center), plus C anoga Park, Long Beach
LaVar, LaMelo, LiAngelo and Lonzo Ball from GQ magazine, 2017.
For the sake of historical and hysterical accuracy, providing what little guardrails might be needed, an expanded bibliography here has to factor in:
The father: LaVar Ball: West L.A. College basketball (1985-86 to 1986-87), Cal State L.A. basketball (1989-90), Long Beach City College football (1991) via Westchester High and Canoga Park High (1983-86)
The mother: Tina Slatinsky: Cal State Los Angeles softball (1990)
The brothers: LiAngelo Ball: Chino Hills High basketball (2013-14 to 2016-17), UCLA basketball guard (2017-18), Los Angeles Ballers (2018) LaMelo Ball:Chino Hills High basketball (2015-16 to 2016-17), Los Angeles Ballers (2018)
The six-year run they had on a Facebook reality show called, “Ball in the Family” proved this isn’t just a 21st Century version of “My Three Sons.” It was a celebrity family affair some cared to forget. But they couldn’t. The family wouldn’t let that happen.
Especially LaVar Ball.
“Speak it into existence,” LaVar told ESPN The Magazine in 2017 about his hoop dreams for his kids. “Keep talking about it until it happens.”
We pause for station identification.
To begin this male-driven, hit-and-run version of the Kardashians, start with LaVar and Tina meeting up at Cal State L.A., marrying in 1997, living in Anaheim, moving to Chino, and parenting Lonzo, LiAngelo and LaMelo into three NBA draft picks and with various degrees of success. Some even in basketball.
A 2017 headline in the Los Angeles Daily News proclaimed: “How LaVar Ball and his 3 sons intend to change basketball forever.”
Pardon the interruption, but the Balls were on your TV, in your magazines and newspapers, fodder for podcasts and sports-talk show debate, they lived rent-free in your subconscious. They were like having tinnitus. Doctors still have no cure for that incessant ringing in your ears. You just learn to live with it.
The foundation was poured when LaVar Ball figured out he was pretty good at football and basketball at Canoga Park High in Van Nuys.
The Westchester High basketball team that won the 1991-’92 L.A. City 4A title with head coach Ed Azzam (front right) and including LaRenzo Ball (43) and LaValle Ball (34)
He was in the middle of four brothers vying for attention — LaFrance, LaValle, LaRenzo and LaShon. You can see where this name-dropping is going.
LaVar Ball (52, left) for West L.A. College vs. Harbor College (San Pedro News Pilot, Feb. 19, 1987). “LaVar Ball is the only starter we’ve had this whole time,” West L.A. coach Charles Sands says in the story above, noting team roster turnover.
LaVar played both football and basketball at various levels in college, with varied results.
From the Salem (Oregon) Statesman Journal, Feb. 14, 1988.
At West L.A. College, then at Washington State University, and back at Cal State Los Angeles for basketball to join three of his four brothers. For the 1986–1987 season at WLA, he averaged 22.2 points and 12.0 rebounds. During the 1989-1990 season, Ball averaged 15.8 points and 8.9 rebounds and was named to the All-CCAA first team at CSULA.
From the Spokane (Wash.) Chronicle, April 5, 1988.
Long Beach City College and, for two weeks, Washington State University, gave him a shot at football.
Aside from sports, Ball majored in criminal justice with hopes of being a U.S. Marshal.
He played in the NBA Summer Pro League for a free-agent team in 1992. He got to wear a New York Jets’ No. 99 jersey for one team photo as a free-agent defensive end and tight end for head coach Pete Carroll. Ball also was in a Carolina Panthers’ team photo to document he actually had an association with the NFL, albeit with the practice squad. He then played on the World League of American Football’s London Monarchs.
It produced a headline later in BleacherReport: “LaVar Ball’s Pro Football Career, According to His Teammates, Was ‘Garbage'”
All of that activity gave him a resume to further his idea that he could be a personal trainer. Especially his own family.
LaVar and Tina met at CSLA, with LaVar not hiding the fact he was attracted to her 6-foot stature.
“That’s why I married my wife … with the way I’m built, and the way she’s built, I knew I was going to have three killers,” LaVar told CBS Sportsin 2015. “So this thing was planned long ago. Because I knew if you put two basketball players together, this is what you’re going to get.”
In a story titled “Between LaVar Ball and LaVar-ology,” pops told GQ magazine in 2017: “You thought Tiger Woods’ dad was crazy. You thought Michael Jackson’s dad was crazy. Venus and Serena’s dad was crazy. I’m on the right path! If I’m not crazy, they’re not good enough.”
Lonzo, LaMelo and LiAngelo Ball after the 2016 CIF championship, wearing Nos. 2, 1 and 3.
The first was the most important because it established a Ball template.
When LaMelo Ball scored 27 points in his summer high school debut as a 13-year-old, the momentum of forming a once-in-the-lifetime team with three brothers leading the way seemed unstoppable. The brothers could play at least one season of high school together because LaVar pushed LiAngelo up a year to get in earlier.
What if this was a glimpse of an NBA future?
“Nobody has ever built a franchise around a family,” LaVar told The Association on Fox in 2021. “That’s why I’m saying, do something new. Build around the Ball boys and watch what happens.”
Lonzo, LiAngelo and LeMelo also has future USC star Onyeka Okongwu. Lonzo pushed the ball up the court, and Chino Hills averaged an astounding 98.4 points a game, going over the 100-point mark 18 times. The team was ranked No. 1 in the country.
“Their legacy was putting Chino Hills on the map during a five-month basketball run that entertained fans at a level no school has reached since,” the Los Angeles Times’ Eric Sondheimer wrote in 2025, 10 years later.
In one freshman season at UCLA, Lonzo led the nation with 7.6 assists a game, shot 72 percent from the field, averaged 14.6 points a game and was a consensus All-American. The Bruins started 13-0 and finished 31-5 when they dumped out of the Sweet 16.
The plan also seemed for all three brothers to go to UCLA. In August 2015, when he was just 13 years old, LaMelo verbally committed to UCLA, where Lonzo had played and LiAngel was attending. By 2017, both were playing for the L.A. Ballers of the newly launched Junior Basketball Association, an “alternative path” to the NBA for players bypassing college. LaVar Ball was the creator/commissioner/promoter. At this point, LaVar also had his Big Ball Brand launched, a controversial shoe company that also had other strange items for sale.
LaVar’s shtick was too irresistible for “Saturday Night Live” to parody.
The hometown Lakers had the No. 2 overall pick in the 2017 draft. Who else would they take except Lonzo Ball, to fulfill LaVar’s prophecy? Lonzo signed a multi-year contract with the Lakers and Magic Johnson Himself proclaimed the kid would break all his franchise records. Before his 20th birthday in August, Lonzo was the NBA Summer League MVP in Las Vegas. He was the youngest in NBA history to post a triple-double when the season started.
He cut off his locks so he didn’t look like Sideshow Bob, left it to others to talk up his potential, and was listening to LeBron James’ take about some possible L.A. relocation plans. ESPN used him in commercials promoting their telecasts as “the Lakers’ new face of ‘Showtime’.”
Flash forward to two seasons later, when the Lakers failed to make the playoffs two seasons in a row. LeBron James was now the de facto GM, and Lonzo was part of a complicated three-team trade involving 13 players and draft picks that ultimately brought Anthony Davis from New Orleans to the Lakers.
The Ball Family matters still matter to some, pleading for constant attention. As long as a Ball was bouncing around in the NBA, there would be social media to produce.
The update as of the summer of ’26:
== LaVar and Tina split up. LaVar revealed the news during an appearance with streamer N3on on his YouTube channel. He admitted: “I had that with her. And I found somebody else, but it is what it is.” LaVar disputed the split was a result of their health issues –Tina, a middle school athletic director, suffered a stroke in 2017, but remained a central figure in the family’s story. LaVar had had an amputation of his right leg after complications from diabetes in 2025.
== Lonzo’s NBA run — two seasons in New Orleans after his time with the Lakers, then a pivotal season in Chicago — would start to spiral as he missed all of 2022-23 and 2023-24 with a left knee injury. He tried a meniscus and cartilage transplant after two prior surgeries failed. Lonzo came back to Chicago to start 2024-25, played another 35 games, and, at age 28, found himself in Cleveland, playing another 35 games and averaging only 4.6 points, 4.0 rebounds, and 3.9 assists. He was traded to Utah with some draft picks for cash at the trade deadline, then waived by the Jazz the next day. He starts the 2026-27 season without a team. Lonzo knows that, during seven NBA seasons, he had eight career triple-doubles and single-game highs of 33 points, 16 rebounds and 17 assists.
He also bought his parents an eight-bedroom, nine-bathroom, 13,800-square-foot mansion on three acres in Chino Hills for $5.2 million. It includes a guest house, pool, and home theatre. In July 2018, Lonzo and girlfriend Denise Garcia had a daughter named Zoey. That was all made part of the family reality show storyline.
== LiAngelo Ball (aka “Gelo” on IG), born in 1998, saw his UCLA career derail less than a year after he was done at Chino Hills because of a shoplifting charge when he was with the team playing a game in China, leading to an international intervention in 2016. LaVar pulled his son out of UCLA after the school suspended him and then got into a public spat with President Donald Trump because he refused to credit Trump for negotiating the release of LiAngelo from Chinese authorizes.
His NBA pathway ended up this way: December 2, 2020: Signed an Exhibit 10 contract with the Detroit Pistons. December 14, 2020: Waived by the Detroit Pistons. October 14, 2021: Signed a contract with the Charlotte Hornets. October 15, 2021: Waived by the Charlotte Hornets. September 26, 2022: Signed a contract with the Charlotte Hornets. October 15, 2022: Waived by the Charlotte Hornets.
Somewhere in there, he averaged 4.4 points, 1.1 rebounds and 13.1 minutes in 31 NBA G League games for the Greensboro Swarm from 2021-23.
In January of 2025, LiAngelo reportedly signed a deal with Def Jam and Universal Music Group, a representative from his label Born2Ball Music Group said, what was worth as much as $13 million, with $8 million guaranteed. It gave LiAngelo full ownership of music and his own record label. Ball’s debut song was called “Tweaker.” It was noted in the ESPN story about this contract that Lonzo already had a few rap songs release, including “Zo2,” used to promote his Big Baller Brand signature shoe.
Going back to the 2017 GQ story, LiAngelo’s fate seemed to have already been sealed by his father’s prediction that he was the son who wouldn’t make it to the NBA.
“I told my boys that one of them wasn’t going to make it,” he said. “Because if you’ve got three, only one, maybe two make it to the NBA. (LiAngelo will) be taken care of either way.”
In July 2023, LiAngelo with girldfiend Nikki Mudarris had his first child, a son named LaVelo.
== LaMelo Ball, with just two seasons of high school, put up a 92-point game at Chino High at age 15. In his final high school game, his team lost in overtime, 83-80 to Mater Dei in the CIF-SS semifinals at USC’s Galen Center and finished 29-2. LaMelo had 28 points but made only eight of 33 shots (brother LiAngelo, who scored 26 points, was nine for 32). LaMelo was deemed ineligible for an NCAA scholarship after he hired an agent and accepted a shoe released by his family’s BBB brand. He had already retracted his verbal commitment to UCLA in December 2017.
Soon enough, in another bizarre twist, LaVar teammed LiAngelo and LaMelo to play professionally in Lithuania.
When LaMelo was selected No. 3 overall by Charlotte in the 2020 NBA Draft, he and Lonzo became the first brothers ever to both be drafted in the top 3. LaMelo also wore No. 2 with the Hornets and was the NBA’s 2020-21 Rookie of the Year, followed by an All-Star appearance in 2021-22 where he scored 18 points. After six seasons, averaging 20.8 points, 7.3 assists, 5.7 rebounds and shooting 36 percent from 3-point range, LeMelo, whose top single-game performances are 50 points, 17 rebounds and 15 assists with 11 triple-doubles, was part of a complicated four-team, 21-player-and-draft-pick deal and found him end up in Minnesota. This was days after he signed a contract extension with Charlotte, where he made $35 million and $37 million his previous two seasons and is slotted to make $40 million, $43 million and $46 million over the next three season.
Also in May of 2026, LeMelo and his girlfriend/model Analicia Chaves (better known as Ana Montana) told People magazine they had a child back in January.
This story is likely not LaOne and done. Stay tuned on your favorite form of volume-controlled communication device.
Who else wore No. 2 in SoCal sports history? Make a case for:
Glendale, Arizona, 2010: Tom Hoffarth with Tommy Lasorda.
Tommy Lasorda: Los Angeles Dodgers manager (1976 to 1996):
What’s your opinion of Tommy Lasorda? Curses. We have quite a few to share.
One day, after an event in downtown L.A., Lasorda grabbed me by the left forearm. There was urgency.
“We’re going to Paul’s Kitchen,” he said, referring to the historic Chinese restaurant nearby. He leaned in: “You gotta go with us.”’
He was out the door within seconds of the Sports Museum of L.A., after a 2010 press conference that had to do with Kirk Gibson’s 1988 Game 1 bat and uniform going up for auction.
My reschedule, a few years later, was a rather spectacular three-hour lunch-turned-dinner at the Dodger Stadium dining room one night prior to a game. The nudge to do this may have been a bit less obvious to him. Our newspaper editors thought we should gather fresh material on him to start compiling a biography/obit on him — in the event that he might soon leave us for the Big Dodger in the Sky.
Before a game in 2013, between slurps of split pea soup, a side of cottage cheese, a scoop of tuna and a bowl of fresh peaches – Lasorda was watching his diet at age 85 – we chewed the fat on all sorts of subjects. It would be another eight years before all this material was even needed — Lasorda died in January of 2021 at age 93 at the height of COVID.
So it was Angelus News, the Catholic news organization of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, asking if I could compile “the Catholic life of Tommy Lasorda” profile based on my interactions with him as well as my research.
We could tell the story of the man who skippered the Dodgers’ last four games of the 1976 season and lasted through 76 games of the 1996 season, covering two World Series titles, four NL pennants, eight NL West titles, 48 ejections and one win short of 1,600 in the regular season. He had, by then, already admitted his life has been full of blessings, mixed in with plenty of foul words. That was just his rough-and-tough DNA, blaming it on his Pennsylvania-Italian heritage.
Artfully enunciated, dodging all sorts of backlash.
The model Catholic? There are saints in the church’s hierarchy who have done plenty worse things and repented. It’s all up for interpretation.
If we might frame Vin Scully was an Irish Catholic who openly practiced his faith, Lasorda would be far more a cultural Italian Catholic who leaned into his religion’s traditions and history when necessary to make a point. Church attendance was a Sunday requirement. So was blowing out someone else’s candle.
We noted that Lasorda had an oversized, gold-framed portrait of Mother Teresa on the wall of his cluttered Dodger Stadium office, the latest one given to him as a special consultant to the team’s current ownership. Mother Teresa was near a portrait of Roger Mahony, the archdiocese’s Emeritus Cardinal, and one of plenty of controversy in his own time.
There was also a picture of an unassuming nun wearing a white habit.
Los Angeles was a Lasorda Believer almost from the first time it met him.
This walking contradiction, a complete unruly force of nature, comedian and philosopher, harnessed his will to earn the Dodgers winning improbable championships in 1981 and 1988. The talent they had was always decent, but hardly the best on the field at that time. If there was SABR data back then, it couldn’t measure Lasorda’s contributions in the human element department.
Included in an L.A. Times array of photos upon his death: Tommy and Jo Lasorda during introductions at Family Night at Dodger Stadium in 1987. (Mel Melcon / Los Angeles Times)
As a few of the most highly-talented, well-built Dodgers from the 2022 and ’23 seasons wilted in the first round of the National League playoffs, one couldn’t help but wonder: What Would Lasorda Have Done?
Just follow the timeline. In no particular order, a dozen more Lasorda-related stories that never go out of style and are often committed to video. Such as:
== The Kingman rant and the Bevacqua rants:
After the Dodgers absorbed a 10-7 loss to the Chicago Cubs on May 14, 1978 where Dave Kingman hit three home runs, Lasorda was asked by radio correspondent Paul Olden: “What is your opinion of Kingman’s performance?”
Four years later, on June 30, 1982, Dodgers reliever Tom Niedenfuer hit San Diego Padres batter Joe Lefebvre in the head with an 0-2 pitch after surrendering a home run. Padres player Kurt Bevacqua regarded it as intentional and charged the field. A reporter asked Lasorda about Bevacqua’s accusation.
Tommy Lasorda celebrates after Game 5 of the 1988 World Series in Oakland, with NBC’s Bob Costas acknowledges the reaction, right. Photo by John Iacono /Sports Illustrated via Getty Images
== The 1988 World Series: Lasorda finds a way to use NBC’s Bob Costas to inspire the underdog Dodgers, also known as “one of the weakest ever (teams) to take the field for a World Series,” captured in the MLB Network documentary “Only In Hollywood” (which we documented ourselves).
== The 1988 World Series L.A. City Hall celebration: Let’s Dance. (And let’s follow it up with something else years later)
== The on-field protest that led to the Dodgers having to forfeit a game after Dodger Stadium fans threw balls onto the field — did Lasorda instigate the crowd?
== An episode of ABC’s “Fantasy Island.” The first season. Actor Gary Burghoff plays Richard Delao of Chicago, an accountant who dreams of major-league stardom. Wearing a Dodgers’ No. 37 jersey, the fantasy doesn’t become real until Tommy Lasorda makes it happen (“Smiles, everyone!”) This is likely where the term “Fantasy Camp” became an idea.
== The 2001 MLB All-Star Game tumble: Lasorda is coaching third base for the National League and nearly doesn’t live to tell about it (maybe this led to them wearing helmets?)
== Lasorda claims he discovered a great young broadcaster named Al Michaels as he was managing the Dodgers’ Triple-A team during a series in Hawaii in 1968.
== The time when Lasorda went bare-chested and swam laps in the LA Police Academy pool to amuse David Letterman on “Late Night.”
== The Hall of Fame speech, which includes the story of how Lasorda claims he snuffed out Cincinnati Reds manager John McNamara’s candle in the church.
When Lasorda’s number comes up in Dodgers’ lore, there are several to pick from.
As a pitcher for the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1954, he had No. 29. He switched to No. 27 later that season, as well as through four games in ’55.
Somehow, there are photos of him wearing No. 21. And No. 64 in a shot with Duke Snider.
With the Los Angeles Angels of the Pacific Coast League in 1957, coming to Southern California a year before the Dodgers, he wore … we are still checking.
(There’s another great story to research: The time in 1948 with the Phillies’ Schenectady Blue Jays of the Canadian-American League when he struck out 25 batters pitching all 15-innings, then drove in the winning run)
As a manager in the Dodgers farm system with Triple A Spokane (1969 to ’71) and Albuquerque (1972), he wore No. 11.
In four seasons as the third-base coach for Walter Alston, Lasorda from 1973 to ’76, wore No. 52.
He changed to No. 2 for the 1977, his first full year as the Dodgers manager. (He was named to the position in September of ’76, but No. 2 was still being worn by backup catcher Ellie Rodriguez).
After Lasorda took No. 2, he kept that for the next 19 seasons, seeing it retired for him by the Dodgers. Not anyone else. Even though Lasorda said he took the number a way to honor Leo Durocher, who wore it as a Brooklyn Dodgers shortstop for six seasons spread out between 1938 to 1945, some of which overlapped with his time as a player/manager from 1939 (picked over Babe Ruth) to ’46 (skipping the ’47 season of Jackie Robinson because of a suspension) and coming back in ’48.
Durocher was also a coach for Walter Alston’s Los Angeles Dodgers from 1961 to ’64 — often playing himself in various TV shows. It led to a Hall of Fame induction in 1994 based on winning more than 2,000 games over 24 years with his “combative, swashbuckling style,” according to the words on his Cooperstown plaque.
(When Ken Gurnick put together a list of the Best Dodgers Players by Uniform Number, he gave Durocher the number 2 based on the fact he was a two-time All-Star NL shortstop wearing at the end of his playing career — which began with the 1929 New York Yankees).
There is also the fact that a players who was one of the closest to Lasorda, shortstop Bobby Valentine, wore it for the Dodgers from 1969 to ’72, having come up to the team at age 19 while still at USC.
Yet No. 2 is all Lasorda legacy.
At the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C., 2009.
A section of Interstate 5 in Fullerton, from Lincoln Avenue to Ball Road, was dedicated to “Tommy Lasorda Dodger Legend” in 2023. It was officially dedicated on opening day of the West Fullerton Little League after a bill was proposed in 2021 after his death by Assemblywoman Sharon Quirk-Silva. “He’s got an asteroid named after him, he has a portrait in the Smithsonian and he’s got sandwiches named after him, so now there is a freeway and it’s so touching,” said Laura Lasorda, the daughter of Tommy and Jo Lasorda.
In Joe Posnanski’s project, “The 50 Most Famous Baseball Players of The Last 50 Years,” the author admits to going off script and picking a manager, Lasorda, as No. 48 on his list. His justification is that under Lasorda’s watch, there were nine NL Rookie of the Year Award winners on his teams during his 21 seasons.
How could that be?
“Was there some sort of magic that Tommy Lasorda created as manager of the Dodgers, something that inspired young and raw players to step in and start playing at a high level? Lasorda never seemed to me an especially dynamic strategic manager. On the field, he was a pretty bland, old-school, set-lineup guy, stay-with-the-starter guy, bunt-’em-over guy. argue-with-the-umpire guy.
“What Lasorda did as well as anyone—hell, probably better than anyone—was create this mystique about his team. Lasorda’s Dodgers were different than any other team because he said so. Lasorda’s Dodgers were more of a family because he said so. Lasorda’s Dodgers were glamorous because he said so—and he kept bringing around Frank Sinatra and Don Rickles to emphasize the point.
“It does feel like baseball teams used to have outsized personalities in a way that’s missing today. I suppose that comes down to managers having outsized personalities in those days. Lasorda probably took that to the greatest degree. He was a showman as much as a manager. He was all hearts and hugs and rah-rahs and rage and expletives.
“In his last game as manager (in 1996), the Dodgers trailed Houston 4-1 going into the bottom of the ninth. They faced Billy Wagner, and Mike Blowers hit a home run. Then, after a single and a typically ordered Lasorda bunt, Greg Gagne singled in the tying run. In the ninth, Mike Piazza —Lasorda’s hand-picked superstar — hit a long, walk-off home run.
“Lasorda never wanted the ride to end. But if it had to end, that was the right way for it to end.”
There are several ways to toast Lasorda into perpetuity.
At the neighborhood Costco, one might come across the Lasorda Family Wines #2 Tuscan Red Blend from Paso Robles.
Lasorda Family Wines has been around awhile, and Lasorda himself used to make public appearances promoting it. The project was spearheaded by his nephew, David, who found a wine maker in Paso Robles to produce a Cabernet Sauvignon and a Chardonnay that seem to pair nicely with a lot of things, selling in the $25 range.
Lasorda apparently was introduced to wine making by his father, Sabatino, an immigrant from the small town of Tollo in the Abruzzo wine region. Tommy would “often help his father procure and press grapes before distributing the finished wine to family, friends, and neighbors,” it says on the website. “We embody Tommy’s fearless spirit and passion in our wine making, and in doing so, seek to honor and preserve his legacy as baseball’s true ambassador.”
The wine goes fine with anything on the menu at the pizza/sandwich/chili dog place called LaSorted’s, named in his honor by owner Tommy Brockert. The photo in the window gives it away.
There’s one on Sunset Blvd. and Silver Lake Blvd. about two miles north of Dodger Stadium. The other is on Broadway in Chinatown, a few blocks from one of Lasorda’s other favorite food hangouts, Little Joe’s, which closed in 1998.
Lasorda declared for many years he wanted his tombstone to read under his name: “Dodger Stadium was his address, but every ballpark was his home.” Team owner Peter O’Malley actually had someone create a piece of granite with that phrase withdroplets of painted Dodger blue blood, dripping. He gave it to Lasorda as a gag gift. Lasorda’s wish was to also have the Dodgers’ current schedule available on the stone for people to come by and see where the team was playing.
Instead, he rests at Rose Hills Memorial Park in Whittier, next to his son.
Tommy Lasorda is buried next to his son in Rose Hills Memorial Park in Whittier.
One of Lasorda’s favorite quips went this way:
““If someone came up to me and said he’s with the Padres, I would say: ‘When did you become a priest?’ If someone said he was with the Indians, I’d ask what reservation he came from. If he said he was a Twin, I’d ask, ‘Where’s your brother?’ If he said he was a Cardinal, I’d say, ‘Work hard, the next step up is to be Pope.’
“But if someone comes up to you and says he’s a Dodger, you know he’s in major league baseball.”
Just like you know you can’t spell Lasorda, or lasagna, without the first two letters L and A:
Kawhi Leonard, Los Angeles Clippers forward: (2019-20 to 2025-26):
A mural of Kawaii Leonard near Crypto.com Arena in downtown L.A., before the team moved to Inglewood.
Best known: The 6-foot-7, 225-pounder born in Los Angeles and out of Martin Luther King High in Riverside came to the Clippers with a reputation as one of the league’s most influential offensive and defensive players after winning an NBA titles in San Antonio and Toronto. After his seven seasons in L.A. included four All-Star appearances, but also missing one entire season with an injury, he was called by Los Angeles Times columnist Bill Plaschke in July of 2026 as someone who “abused an organization, alienated a fan base and basically collected $300 million of Steve Ballmer’s money and burned it … he has been injured, apathetic, entitled, disconnected and generally nothing but a pain in the backside … (he) was the worst free-agent signing in Los Angeles sports history.” As a senior in high school where he averaged 22.6 points and 13.1 rebounds a game as a senior, he found a pathway through San Diego State (where his No. 15 is retired) to become the 15th overall pick by Indiana. A three-year, $103 million contract as a free agent with the Clippers in 2019 brought him back to Southern California, and seemed to make an immediate impact when he scored 35 points with 12 rebounds in the Clippers’ 111-106 win over the Lakers on Christmas Day. He extended his Clippers deal in January of 2024 with a three-year, $153 million contract — and posted a triple double (25 points, 11 rebounds, 10 assists) in an 11-point win over the Lakers two weeks later. Leonard, represented by his uncle Dennis Roberton, was coddled by the Clippers as they used the term “load management” to keep him from overextending himself. “The Clippers basically have spent Leonard’s entire tenure being scared of him, hoping that their subservience would make him comfortable enough to lead them to a championship,” Plascke continued. “The joke has been on them.” Only twice in his time did he play as many as 65 games. The team got past the first round of the playoffs in that time twice, but Leonard injured himself in the second round in 2021. The Clippers made it to the Western Conference final for the firfst time but he sat out with a leg injury. The Clippers were sued twice over their initial attempt to sign him, and the NBA has fined the team for trying to protect him during an investigation into how Leonard was given a $28 million endorsement deal by a failed banking company called Aspiration. Not well known: His first name was something his father invented. He wanted something that sounded Hawaiian, like Kauai, one of the Hawaiian islands.
Derek Fisher, Los Angeles Lakers guard (1996-97 to 2003-04; 2007-08 to 2011-12):
Best known: The number he’s best linked to is 0.4, for his ability to catch, turn and shoot a buzzer beater to win Game 5 of the 2004 Western Conference semifinals against defending champion San Antonio (final score: 74-73). He played in more than 1,000 games for the Lakers (915 regular season, 193 post season) and was part of five title teams. He ended up as the head coach of the WNBA Los Angeles Sparks from 2019 to 2022, and then at Crespi High in Encino in 2023.
Adam Kennedy, Anaheim Angels/Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim second baseman (2000 to 2006):
Best known: The former North High of Riverside and Cal State Northridge star will be remember for his three-homer game in the decisive Game 5 of the 2002 ALCS against Minnesota, making him the series MVP. He ended up hitting seven homers that post-season after just four total in the regular season. Also wore No. 3 in his final pro season (2012 with the Dodgers).
A 2002 UCLA Athletic Hall of Fame inductee, Jones was a walk-on out of Westlake High and earned a scholarship as he moved into the starting line-up midway through his freshman year and started all four seasons. Team offensive MVP in ’89 and ’91, he helped the team to a 1990 NCAA Championship, was twice named first-team All-Far West (1990, 1991) and as a senior set a record with 18 assists. He finished UCLA with 23 goals and 37 assists.
Robert Woods, Serra High of Gardena receiver (2007 to 2009), USC football receiver (2010 to 2012), Los Angeles Rams receiver (2018 to 2021):
Best known: After wearing No. 2 as a star at Serra High in Gardena and at USC, Woods was finally able to go with No. 2 while with the Rams when the NFL changed its rules in 2021 about allowing single-digits jerseys for receivers. “Just being number 2 my whole life, always was the deuce – ‘the deuce is loose’,” said Woods at the time. “Got to jump on that opportunity to wear the 2 in the hometown. It’s a must.” Woods, who also wore No. 13 at USC in 2010, initially wore No. 17 for the Rams from 2018 to 2020 when he came back to Southern California. In high school, Woods was the 2008 Daily Breeze Football Player of the Year when he had 1,378 receiving yards on 81 receptions during a junior season that ended in a CIF Southern Section title game loss to Oaks Christian. Woods added seven interceptions as a defensive back and had six touchdown returns on kicks and punts. As a senior in 2009, Woods caught 66 passes for 1,112 yards, had five carries for 70 yards, and had 96 total tackles along with eight interceptions and a forced fumble on as his team won the CIF Northwestern Division Championship over Oaks Christian and the CIF Division III state title to finish 15-0. Woods also added three individual CIF-SS titles – in the 200 (21.43), the 400 (47.31) and in the 400 relay (41.21) to help Serra claim the Division IV team title. In three years at USC, Woods caught what remains a school-record 252 passes over 38 games for 2,930 yards (seventh-best all time) and 32 touchdowns (second-best all time). He also ran 14 times for 142 yards. With the Rams, Woods signed a five-year, $34 million contract in 2017 and finished his first with 56 receptions for a career-high 781 yards and five touchdowns in 12 games. The next year: 86 receptions for 1,219 yards and six touchdowns in 16 games, plus five receptions for 70 yards in a Super Bowl loss to New England. In 2019: 90 receptions for 1,134 yards and two touchdowns. Signing a four-year, $65 million contract extension with the Rams in 2020, Woods finished the season with 90 receptions for 936 yards and six touchdowns to go along with 24 carries for 155 yards and two touchdowns. As the Rams went to the Super Bowl LVI against Cincinnati, Woods tore an ACL in practice in November of 2021 to end the season after 45 catches for 556 yards and five TDs in nine games. After playing in Tennessee, Houston and Pittsburgh, Woods signed a one-day contract to retire with the Rams on February 17, 2026 and become a receivers coach. Not well remembered: Smith admitted in a 2008 Los Angeles Times story that his inspiration to succeed came from his memory of his sister, Olivia, who died earlier that year at age 17 from cancer before her senior year at Serra.
Steve Smith: Taft High of Los Angeles football receiver and basketball guard (1999 to 2002), USC football receiver (2003 to 2006):
Taft High retired Smith’ss No. 2 in 2023 as he was part of the CIF L.A. City Section Hall of Fame for his football and basketball talents (with Jordan Farmar). Smith set state records for most receptions (271) and yardage (4,486) in a varsity career, and led Taft to two straight City title games. At USC, Smith was voted team MVP in 2006 and caught three touchdown passes in USC’s 55-19 national championship/Orange Bowl victory over Oklahoma. Smith’s four-year total at USC saw him make 190 catches for more than 3,000 yards and 22 touchdowns. A second round pick by the New York Giants in the 2007 NFL Draft, Smith caught five passes in a Super Bowl XLII, including one for 12 yards on a third-and-11 with 45 seconds left in the game to help the Giants upset New England, 17-14.
Best known: Kawhi Leonard could take No. 2upon his arrival in L.A. because Gilgeous-Alexander, the Clippers’ All-NBA Rookie guard during his one and only season, was shipped to OKC in a deal for Paul George, who was to be Kawhi Leonard’s second half of a dynamic duo. The quick fix only paid off for the Thunder. Shaivonte Aician Gilgeous-Alexander, aka SGA, has been an NBA regular-season MVP and scoring champion (’24-’25), two-time All-NBA and three-time All Star, plus a star player for Team Canada in the 2024 Summer Olympics. The Clippers traded for him on 2018 Draft Day. Yet by July 2019, they sent him with Danilio Gallinari and five first-round draft picks, and the rights to swap two other first-round picks, to get George, a player who hung around for five seasons and made about $200 million before leaving Leonard and taking a free-agent trip to On December 22, 2019, OKC’s Gilgeous-Alexander scored a then career-high 32 points with five assists, three rebounds, and two steals in a 118–112 win over the Clippers. On December 18, 2021, Gilgeous-Alexander scored 18 points and made a game-winning three-pointer at the buzzer to lift the Thunder over the Clippers, 104–103. On November 11, 2024, Gilgeous-Alexander scored a then-career-high 45 points with nine assists, five steals and two blocks in a 134–128 win over the Clippers.
Jessica Mendoza, Camarillo High softball shortstop (1994 to 1998):
The U.S. women’s national softball star from 2004 to 2010, after being named first-team All-American in her sport at Stanford and being part of two Olympic medal-winning teams first drew attention at Camarillo High. The Los Angeles Times Player of the Year in 1998 was her school’s Female Athlete of the Year as a junior and senior, as she was also the team MVP of the girls’ basketball team as a junior and senior as well. As Mendoza got into broadcasting, she was hired as the first female commentator for a MLB game by ESPN, and soon after was doing the ESPN Sunday Night Baseball game from Dodger Stadium for a game where Chicago’s Jake Arrieta threw a no-hitter against the Dodgers. When Mendoza was on ESPN’s 2015 AL Wild Card game, she was the first female commentator in MLB postseason TV history.
Morley Drury, USC football halfback/quarterback/safety (1925 to 1927):
Why was he called “The Noblest Trojans of Them All”? Mark Kelly, a former sports editor of the Los Angeles Examiner, wrote it about him, paraphrasing a line from Shakespeare that referred to Julius Caesar as the “noblest Roman.” Coach Howard Jones, who arrived at USC at the same time as Drury and included him in his Thundering Herd offense where the tailback was in a single wing formation, called him “the greatest player I ever coached,” as Drury also played basketball, water polo and ice hockey for the school.
A Long Beach Poly grad at age 21, he worked two years in the shipyard docks as a roughneck on Signal Hill after finishing grammar school and entering high school. He led Poly to a CIF football title in 1924 and then its basketball team to a state title). As USC was 27-5-1 in his career, Drury became the Trojans’ senior captain and first All-American player. His 1,163 yards rushing in ’27 stood as a school record until Mike Garrett broke it (1,440) during his 1965 Heisman Trophy season of 1965. Drury also had a 45-carry game in ’27 (part of his 223 carries), a mark that wasn’t passed until O.J. Simpson had 47 in 1968. Drury’s legend also includes his a 180-yard, three touchdown game against Washington in his final game that, as he left the field, apparently prompted a 10-minute standing ovation by 70,000 at the Coliseum (also prompted by the public address announcer who said “Morley is coming off the field the last time, folks, give him the hand that he deserves.”) Drury later said he had just scored and Jones told him that instead of going to the dressing room he should walk across the field. “I reached the track (circling the field) and looked up at all those people … my knees got so weak even if I did feel fresh as a horse, and I bawled like a baby. The opposing team stood up. The ovation lasted until I reached the tunnel.” Elected to the College Football Hall of Fame in 1954, he was in the first USC Athletic Hall of Fame class of 1995.
Darryl Henley, UCLA football defensive back (1985 to 1988): The Damien High of La Verne star became a consensus All-American. His complete bio is in the No. 20 post, the number he wore for the Rams.
Gianna Bryant, Mamba Academy: The Lakers could still retire No. 2 — if only to honor Kobe Bryant’s daughter, who died in the 2020 helicopter crash with him and wore that number. When the Lakers honored the Bryants in the first game after the tragedy, Gianna’s No. 2 was draped over the seat in which she last sat at Staples Center next to her dad’s No. 24.
We also have:
Darren Collison, UCLA men’s basketball (2005-06 to 2008-09) Taylor Mays, USC football defensive back (2006 to 2009) Andrelton Simmons, Los Angeles Angels shortstop (2016 to 2020) Freddie Patek, California Angels second baseman (1980 to 1981) Alexei Zhitnik, Los Angeles Kings defenseman (1992-93 to 1994-95) Matt Green, Los Angeles Kings defenseman (2009-09 to2-2016- 17) Terry Harper, Los Angeles Kings center (1972-73 to 1974-’75) Zoilo Versalles, Los Angeles Dodgers shortstop (1968) Don Demeter, Los Angeles Dodgers outfielder (1959 to 1960) Also wore No. 27 in 1958 and No. 7 in 1961 Sandy Alomar, California Angels infielder (1971 to 1972) Also wore No. 4 from 1969 to ’71 and No. 24 from 1973 to ’74 Bobby Dollas, Mighty Ducks of Anaheim defenseman (1993-94 to 1997-98) Cam Fowler, Anaheim Ducks defenseman (2011-12 to 2023-24) Also wore No. 54 in 2010-11. John McNamara, California Angels manager (1983 to ’84, 1996) Cookie Rojas, California Angels manager (1998)
Jack Snow, Los Angeles Rams Jerry Robinson, UCLA football Bob Klein, USC football Charlie Weaver, USC football Shaun Cody, USC football
The not-so-obvious choices for No. 84:
Andy Robustelli, Los Angeles Rams Paul Maguire, Los Angeles Chargers
The most interesting story for No. 84: Jack Snow, Los Angeles Rams receiver (1965 to 1975) via St. Anthony High in Long Beach J.T. Snow, California Angels first baseman (1993 to 1996) via Los Alamitos High Southern California map pinpoints: Long Beach, Los Alamitos, Los Angeles (Coliseum), Anaheim
Jack Snow, left, and his son, J.T., in the family Long Beach den, circa 1986. (Long Beach Press-Telegram archives)
Whatever joy came from hearing about a “snow day” for kids going to school is pretty much lost for anyone growing up in Southern California.
The closest thing anyone could make of that term was that, if you followed the Los Angeles Rams in the ’60s and ’70s, it meant Jack Snow had himself quite a day.
Ironically, and for what it’s worth, Jack Snow’s aversion to snow was what kept him L.A. bound.
The Long Beach native from St. Anthony High gave the Minnesota Vikings the cold shoulder after they picked him in the third round of the 1965 NFL Draft, following a season where he set several school records at the University of Notre Dame — a place where rain and snow and gloom of chilly nights in South Bend, Indiana were rather common.
On the bright side, Show was also picked in the ’65 AFL Draft by the San Diego Chargers. At that time, the rival leagues could bargain with players. Alabama quarterback Joe Namath was a prime example.
When the Los Angeles Rams engineered a trade with Minnesota to get the rights to Snow, it turned out that greater Southern California was all the greater for it.
Soon would come a California Angels sure-handed first baseman who earned an MLB Gold Glove. Maybe not such a surprise as he was a chip off the block coming from a sure-handed NFL Pro Bowl wide receiver.
There’s your weather update on what a real SoCal “Snow day” looked like.
Jack Snow, Class of ’61, was inducted into the St. Anthony High inaugural Hall of Fame ceremony in 2013, five years after he had passed away. He was 62, and was taken down by tragic complications from a staph infection.
His son, Jack Thomas Snow, better known as J.T., admits he didn’t know his father’s true athletic ability until it was too late to really nail him down on it.
J.T. had retired from a 16-year MLB career — four of them as the Angels’ first baseman, after enjoying three-sport stardom at Los Alamitos High — and was talking to a Long Beach Press-Telegram reporter about how he found out more about pop’s legacy. It came from just hanging around with his dad’s former teammates, coaches and friends at the funeral.
Jack Snow is presented a game ball after the Los Angeles Rams’ 35-23 win over the St. Louis Cardinals in the Dec. 27, 1975 NFC Divisional Playoff victory at the Coliseum, Snow’s final game at the Rams’ home field. (Robert Lachman/Los Angeles Times/Getty Images)
“Every one of them came up to me and said, ‘Your dad was probably one of the best athletes in Long Beach at the time, if not of all time.’ And I was like, ‘You’re kidding me. He never said that.’
“They said, of course, he was a hell of a football player, he was a great baseball player, he could have played basketball or ran track. I got a big smile on my face because he never let on to me about that. He just said he was someone who had to work really hard and give all he had.”
J.T. had always seen a different side.
A father who was demanding, tough and strict. Just as his father was.
For two years, Jack and J.T. didn’t even speak to each other — overlapping a period where Merry Carole, Jack’s wife and J.T.’s mother, was undergoing cancer treatment that eventually took her life.
That dynamic was difficult for everyone in the family. Now, J.T. had a time to reflect on it all.
“He was just an old-school guy who was very black and white; not a lot of gray,” said J.T. “He stuck to his word and he expected the best out of all of us whether it was school or sports. Until we were all grown and had kids, then he had grandkids, he softened up a lot. But I don’t think I could have ever made it to where I got without him. I think if he would have been easier on me, like a lot of parents, there is no way I would have gotten to where I got.
“He was a great father.”
The background
Oct. 3, 1964: Notre Dame quarterback John Huarte (7) throws deep to receiver Jack Snow (85) in a game against Purdue. (Notre Dame Archives)
St. Anthony High honored Jack Snow with 10 varsity letters– all-state in football where he played offensive and defensive end, all-city and all-league in baseball where he had a .458 batting average and was captain of the 1960 Catholic League title team. Jack’s father instructed him to stay in shape by going to the local YMCA every day after school to work out.
A scholarship offer to Snow from the University of Notre Dame appealed to his religious upbringing, and as a mecca of college football at that time, Snow made that initial journey to the Midwest.
By his senior season, Snow was on a 9-1 Irish team ranked No. 3 ranked in the polls. He had become not just an All American receiver, but also fifth in the Heisman Trophy voting after he led the nation and set school records with 60 catches for 1,114 yards and nine touchdowns, with an 18.6 yard-per-catch clip in just 10 games.
Snow had spent the first two years there in near obscurity. As a senior, the breakthrough was that he had passes thrown to him by eventual Heisman winning quarterback John Huarte, the former Mater Dei High of Santa Ana star and a SoCal high school rival. Snow accounted for more than half of Huarte’s individual passing stats of 114 completions for 2,062 yards and 16 TDs that season.
The Rams might have been primed to take Snow in a star-studded 1965 NFL Draft — they had the No. 9 overall choice — but Minneosta blocked them out by snatching him away with the No. 8 pick. The Rams settled on Washington State defensive back Clancy Williams.
A chill must have gone down Snow’s spine.
Snow dreaded the idea of playing in snow, frigid, dreary Metropolitan Stadium. The Vikings head coach was former Rams legend Norm Van Brocklin, and their quarterback was a 25-year-old Fran Tarkenton, coming off his first Pro Bowl season.
For Snow, it was a mater of practicality and survival. And the fact the San Diego Chargers plowed through its own ’65 American Football League Draft and figured out that all it would cost them for the rights to Snow was a modest seventh-round choice/No. 57 overall.
And, the AFL had juice at the time.
Namath would reject the NFL — the St. Louis Cardinal’s first-round, No. 12 overall pick — and take up residence and financial gain in the AFL as the New York Jets’ first pick, No. 2 overall. Another future Pro Football Hall of Famer, receiver Fred Biletnioff, also took the AFL (Oakland, second round, No. 11 overall) over the NFL (Detroit, third round, No. 39 overall).
Snow had leverage to shovel out of whatever snow bank he felt was burying him.
Since the Vikings feared they would lose Snow straight out for nothing, their people started talking to the Rams’ people. The Vikings worked a deal for Snow’s right, receiving Red Phillips, the Rams’ three-time All-Pro flanker who by then had lost his starting role, and reserve second-year defensive lineman Gary Larsen, who would have two Pro Bowl seasons with Minnesota in ’69 and ’70.
“It’s a question of values,” Rams president and principal owner Dan Reeves told the New York Times, after he had also help orchestrate trades during that time with general manager Elroy Hirsch to acquire former All Pro linebacker Dan Currie and former All-Pro flanker Tommy McDonald from other teams.
“You know exactly what you’re giving away, but you don’t know what you’re getting in return. Every trade is a gamble. Sometimes a trade may open up a new horizon for a player. But you can never count on that happening.”
Snow’s track record also left some questions. At Notre Dame, he had just 10 receptions in his sophomore and junior years, listed as a hybrid fullback. He was moved to split end by new head coach Ara Parseghian during his senior season and lost 15 pounds to be more effective in that position.
Could he make it in the NFL with that body frame? Was his success due in most part to his partnership with Huarte?
As a 22-year-old rookie in 1965, on what would be a 4-10 team, Snow was immediately put in the Rams’ starting lineup at left end and had 38 receptions for 559 yards and three touchdowns. McDonald, at flanker, more than doubled those stats, and the 1966 season was similar.
But in 1967, Snow’s first and only Pro Bowl season coincided with the emergence of Roman Gabriel as the Rams’ starting quarterback, George Allen figuring things out during his second year as the head coach, and Howard Schnellenberger coming inn as the Rams’ receivers coach. The team had an 11-1-2 finish to win the NFC Coastal Division.
While Rams flanker Bernie Casey was also a Pro Bowl pick, making 53 receptions for 871 yards and eight TDs, Snow did more with less.
Los Angeles Rams receiver Jack Snow (84), during his two-touchdown game at Baltimore’s Memorial Stadium against the Colts on Oct. 15, 1967 (Walter Iooss Jr. /Sports Illustrated via Getty Images)
His 735 yards came on just 28 receptions, creating a league-best 26.3 yards per catch. Two of his eight TD catches that season came in a noteworthy 24-24 tie at Baltimore in Week 5, where he had a 53-yard scoring reception in the first quarter and 80-yarder in the third quarter, both from Gabriel. Snow had just three catches in that game for 151 yards.
For that ’67 season, Gabriel also made the Pro Bowl, along with halfback Les Josephson (800 yards rushing, 400 yards receiving, eight total TDs). The Rams were flying.
Insert here that during the 1967 off season, in February of ’68, J.T. Snow was born in Long Beach.
Even though the Rams build a 10-3-1 record in 1968, Snow somehow remained a bit under the radar, a third option behind tight end Billy Truax and flanker Casey. His 29 catches for 500 yards amounted to 17.2 a catch, with a long of 54 yards.
Snow didn’t lead the Rams in balls caught until 1969 — 49 for for 734 yards (15.0 per catch, a long of 74 yards) and six touchdowns during an 11-3 season. Snow followed that up a team-best 51 catches for 859 yards and seven TDs (16.8 per catch, a long of 71 yards) during a 9-4-1 season in 1970.
Jack Snow and Elizabeth Montgomery on a 1969 episode of ABC’s “Bewitched.”
More comfortable in his own skin, Snow also took his cue from other Rams teammates and tried to see what he could do in movies and TV. There’s an uncredited Snow reference in the 1969 space flick “Marooned” with Gregory Peck and Gene Hackman, playing the role of a NASA space flight control center screen-watcher. He looked the part as a clean-cut, rugged man of knowledge. Snow is also the 1971 movie “Doctors’ Wives,” uncredited as an orderly.
Snow was in an ’69 episode of the popular TV series “Bewitched” – Season 5, Episode 29, “Samatha’s Shopping Spree,” playing himself as a store manikin come to life when Samatha’s cousin and mother played a practical joke on her.
The most realistic thing he did came after his retirement — playing a version of himself, a Rams’ player named “Cassidy,” in the 1978 “Heaven Can Wait” with Warren Beatty. It features the Rams playing Pittsburgh in the Super Bowl. Look fast for a shot of Snow in a locker room scene.
In 1971 and ’72, as Tommy Prothro took over Rams’ teams hovering around the .500 mark, the franchise was in some limbo for a new buyer after Reeves’ death. With Allen gone, Prothro’s offense relied more on a diverse crew of receivers. Snow still had a team-best 666 yards receiving and five TDs in ’71 (18.0 per catch, long of 68), plus 590 yards receiving and four TDs in ’72 (19.7 yards per catch, long of 57).
Jack Snow pulls in a pass from Roman Garbriel during a Los Angeles Rams preseason camp at Long Beach State in August of 1972. (Bob Riha, Jr./Getty Images)
Chuck Knox’s arrival as head coach came in 1973, and an NFC West title with a 12-2 record came with Carroll Rosenbloom as the new owner saw change. John Hadl was the quarterback. Harold Jackson was the new top big-yard receiver (coming to L.A. from Philadelphia in exchange for Gabriel). Snow, at age 30, had just 16 catches for 252 yards and two TDs. Fullback Jim Bertelsen actually had more catches (19) and yards (267) to go with 854 yards rushing, even his key role was blocking for 1,000-yard rusher Lawrence McCutheon.
Part of the 1973 pop culture of the day: A Jack Snow 7-Eleven Slurpee collectable cup.
Snow had 24 catches for 397 yards (16.5 per catch) during the Rams’ 10-4 season of 1974, with James Harris the primary QB. The Rams won the NFC West but lost the conference title to Minnesota. That was the beginning of the end.
By 1975, Snow found himself not starting a game for the first time in his career. He had just four catches for 86 yards and a TD. Jackson and Ron Jessie were primary targets for Harris on Knox’s 12-2 team that lost in the NFC title game.
Snow’s career ended with him second all-time in Rams’ history with 6,012 yards and 45 touchdowns, and third with 340 receptions. He missed only one start in his career prior to that ’75 season — 139 starts in 150 games. His 17.7 yards-per-reception average is third behind tight end Bob Boyd (20.5) and Elroy Hirsch (18.4) for Rams players with more than 3,500 total career yards.
At the end of the 2025 season — 50 years after he retired — Snow remained seventh all-time in Rams’ games played, sixth in reception yards and touchdowns, 11th in receptions, and 10th in the ProFootballReference.com Approximate Value with 76.
J.T. Snow was 6 years old when his father was done with professional sports.
After trying the real estate business in Newport Beach, Jack Snow came back as Ray Malavasi’s receivers coach for the Rams in 1982. The team finished 2-7 and Malavasi was replaced by John Robinson for the ’83 season.
Los Angeles Times: June 18, 1992
By 1992, Snow found a new audience as the Rams’ radio game analyst for KMPC-AM (710). That started with the team’s final three years in Anaheim, and he moved with the franchise to St. Louis to continue.
Snow’s former offensive coordinator coach at Notre Dame, Tom Panga, had never doubted Snow could be a good broadcaster.
“He understood the game,” Panga told the South Bend Tribune. “Many announcers don’t. They fake their way through and give you hackneyed expressions they’ve used for a thousand years. Jack was on top of it. He knew what he was talking about. He was fair and clean.”
California Angels first baseman J.T. Snow, in a game against the New York Yankees at Yankee Stadium in 1993. (Focus on Sport/Getty Images)
By 1992, J.T. Snow debuted as a 24 year old first baseman with the New York Yankees. A season later, he was sent to the Angels in a trade for pitcher Jim Abbott.
The Angels valued him for the four seasons, but with Terry Collins as the new manager in 1997, they wanted to move young center fielder Darrin Erstad to start at first base. The Angels dealt Snow to the San Francisco Giants before that ’97 season for some help at the top half of the starting rotation, left-hander Allen Watson. He gave up an AL-league high 37 homers in his 35 starts and finished 12-12, leaving for free agency after his second year.
That time frame also marked the high-tension Snow family split. Years of Jack’s hypercritical approach to J.T.’s career seemed to have worn thin on his son, who was upset that while he was playing in Anaheim, his dad decided to stay with the Rams when they left Southern California at a time when Merry Carole started cancer treatments. J.T. and Jack Snow didn’t talk for more than two years, starting in ’96.
In J.T. Snow’s first spring training with the Giants, on March 11, 1997, during an exhibition game in Scottsdale, Ariz., he was hit in the eye by a fastball from Seattle’s Randy Johnson, a pitch that had ricocheted off his wrist. Doctors worried about long-term effects.
Merry Carole, named so because she was born on Christmas Day 1943, died in 1998. She and Jack, her high school sweetheart, had been married for 34 years.
“I got my sports, my drive and mentality and work ethic from my dad; I got my personality from my mom,” said J.T.
As for resolving the family issues, J.T. has also remarked: “It says more about people who can turn things around than to just sweep them under the carpet. My dad did a lot to provide for our family by going out every Sunday and getting his body beat up, and I’ll always be grateful for that. My mom was the calming influence in the family. He was a tough guy who demanded a lot from me and my sisters. If I was struggling, I called mom and she always put things into perspective.”
J.T. Snow’s most memorable play from the 2002 World Series: Grabbing Giants batboy Darren Baker out of harm’s way during Game 4 of the World Series on Oct. 23, 2002 at Pacific Bell Park, while Angels catcher Bengie Molina waits for a throw. (Brian Bahr/Getty Images)
As J.T. played for the Giants in 2002 against the Angels during the World Series, Jack Snow added his take on it: “I played in two NFC championship games and neither one compares to watching your son in the World Series. … There comes a time when every son gets made at his dad, only you don’t hear about the other ones. What we went through was very normal. But we’re through it now.”
The wear and tear of his NFL career led to Jack Snow needed double hip replacement surgery in the spring of 2005. By Thanksgiving of that year, Snow developed a staph infection that started as a sinus infection but entered his bloodstream and seeped into his artificial hip joints.
He died at Barnes-Jewish Hospital in St. Louis after two months of battling infections. He was just shy of his 63rd birthday.
Boston Red Sox first baseman J.T. Snow dives after a ball hit by Texas’ Brad Wilkerson in the first inning of a game in Arlington, Tex., on April 5, 2006. (Matt Stone/MediaNews Group/Boston Herald via Getty Images)
J.T. Snow, then 37, had finished nine seasons with the Giants, and that winter he wanted to come back for one last full season as a DH and first baseman with Boston in 2006. It also gave him the opportunity to wear No. 84 in his dad’s honor.
“It’s not a typical baseball number, but it’s to honor him because I wouldn’t be here without his support and upbringing,” Snow said, recorded in the book, “Red Sox By the Numbers.” “He knew I was going to sign with Red Sox and he know I was going to wear his number. I think he felt good about it.”
Roman Gabriel told USA Today: “To me, J.T. wearing his father’s number is the most exceptional honor a son can bestow upon his father. Jack deserves such an honor.”
Fort Myers (Fla.) News-Press, March 29, 2006.
Jack Snow had once coached J.T.’s Seal Beach Little League teams. He brought him into the Rams’ locker room in the 1970s when J.T. was still in grade school. J.T. saw what professional athletes looked like and did on a regular basis.
J.T. said he remembered how his dad never let him quit the Los Alamitos High baseball team when he wanted to focus on football and basketball. That determination led to J.T. going to the University of Arizona to play baseball and become a New York Yankees draft pick.
J.T. Snow told the Fort Myers News Press that when he once was thinking of quitting baseball, “we sat down and he said if there was one sport (for me) it would be baseball because he thought I had a future in the game.”
Rewind to Jack Snow’s career at Notre Dame. He considered leaving the school before his senior year. Then-head coach Joe Kuharich and assistant Hugh Devore had limited him to just 128 receiving yards prior.
Huarte said that when he attended Snow’s funeral, he met Snow’s St. Anthony High coach, who said Snow confided in him that he wanted to transfer.
“His coach said, ‘No, you stay there’,” said Huarte in the South Bend Tribune. “You got get a quarterback who’ll throw to you and spend time with you. Run the patterns.’ Basically encouraged Jack to do exactly what he did (with me) — work on patters and catching the ball.”
Huarte also told the paper: “You look back and it’s a precious experience. I was lucky to go to Notre Dame. And so much of my success was related to Jack Snow.”
Sacramento Bee, Sept. 28, 2008.
J.T. Snow, who hit .205 in 44 at bats for the Red Sox in 2006, was done with playing baseball when he took a job in the Giants’ front office in ’07 and also did some broadcasting — like his father. There came an idea eventually that he could sign a one-day contract, make one last more appearance with the Giants — Sept. 27, 2008 against the Dodgers at AT&T Park — and officially finish his career.
On that day, the Giants put Snow in the starting lineup and allowed him to take the field and throw infield practice from first base. He then came off the field as Travis Ishikawa replaced him.
J.T. Snow’s career totals reflect a .268 batting average, with a career-best .327 in 107 games for the Giants in 2004. He hit 189 home runs, drove in 877, and had six straight Gold Gloves from 1995 to 2000.
His best statistical season with the Angels came in 1995: 24 homers, 102 RBIs and a .289 average.
San Francisco Chronicle, Jan. 11, 2006.
Embedded in an obituary that appeared in the New York Times in January of 2006, Jack Snow was remembered as a reliable link on five division championships, bridging the time of Gabriel-to-Hadl-to-Harris.
“He was one of the few guys we had that would go across the middle and catch that football,” Rams star Deacon Jones told The Associated Press. “He was tough, tough as nails. Jack had the greatest hands in that time period. You won’t talk about his speed, but his speed was deceiving. He would catch that slant pattern over the middle, and I’ve seen him outrun some guys that we thought were fast.”
Added McCutcheon, a five-time Pro Bowl running back who stayed in contact with Snow: “I’ve always thought of him as a no-nonsense guy who took life by the horns. He enjoyed life, enjoyed his kids and was very proud of them.”
San Francisco Chronicle, Nov. 2, 2008.
The Associated Press reporting also brought up how Snow’s fate mirrored other contagious infections that had plagued the Rams after their move to St. Louis in 1995. In 2003, five players developed drug-resistant infections after suffering turf burns, and two or three San Francisco 49ers developed infections after playing the Rams early that season. The outbreak was the subject of an article in the New England Journal of Medicine. In August of 2005, then-linebackers coach Joe Vitt was hospitalized three days with a staph infection in his left hand. Vitt took over as head coach of the Rams in October, when Mike Martz was found to have endocarditis, a bacterial infection of the heart’s lining.
At All Soul’s Cemetery in Long Beach
The legacy
Back to the 2013 induction in the St. Anthony’s Athletic Hall of Fame: A story came up about how Jack Snow was once helping Jeff Severson, a seven-year NFL defensive back out of Long Beach Wilson High and Long Beach State, do some play-by-play work on his alma mater 49ers football games by acting as his game analyst.
Severson said he reminded Snow of a reception he made in that epic game against Baltimore, calling it “one of the most unbelievable catches of all time. … Roman Gabriel threw him a pass. The ball comes own at a point … was out of reach, but Jack caught the back half of the ball, which is like impossible because it’s like catching a bar of soap. And I would always kid Jack. I’d say, ‘Jack, I know you don’t remember this story, but I remember you catching a ball against the Colts.’
“He’d go, ‘No, I don’t remember … but it was against Lenny Lyles and the Colts and it was third down and 6.’ ”
Severson, who eventually turned to acting after an NFL career with Washington, Houston and Denver overlapped Snow’s last four seasons, recalled how after he was drafted by Washington and getting ready to play for George Allen, Snow invited him to sit down at the Elks Lodge in Long Beach and strategize.
“I thought that was very thoughtful because he kind of filled me in on what to expect next,” said Severson, who had set an NCAA record with 15 interceptions in 1970 while with Long Beach State. “When Jack and I sat down to have a beer, it connected me. It made me feel really good.”
J.T. Snow remembered again in 2013: “I have played a lot of celebrity golf tournaments where there are guys that played against my dad. And the one thing they all say is that he was just a good guy and a great teammate. Those are the things you like to hear.”
In the meantime, The Jack and J.T. Snow Scientific Research Foundation, also known as The Snow Foundation, was established in 2011 to benefit those suffering from Wolfram Syndrome, a genetic disorder. Jack’s granddaughter, Raquel Gebel, born to his daughter Stephanie, has the condition when she was born in 2005, nine months before Jack Snow died.
June 15, 2014: J.T. Snow, second from left, with Mattew Nolan, Robin Lopez and Hunter Pence as they participate in a fundraiser for the Snowman Classic to raise money for Wolfram Syndrome in San Francisco. (Trisha Leeper/WireImage)
There are currently no drug therapies or cures that exist for Wolfram syndrome, which appears as Type 1 diabetes but leads to vision and hearing loss and cognitive decline. As a result, more than 60 percent of Wolfram patients die before age 30.
In a story former Kansas City Star reporter Randy Covitz wrote for the Snow Foundation website, it was noted that during Jack Snow’s playing career, he represented several charitable causes, including the Susan G. Komen Foundation for breast cancer, the Epilepsy Foundation and Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation. Snow’s other daughter, Michelle, has a son, Jacob, first afflicted with diabetes as a young child.
“We got this thing rolling,” said J.T. of the foundation. “We need to raise a lot more money to make sure people like Raquel are going to be taken care of. We’re kind of bummed out that my dad’s not around because he would have taken this and would have gotten a lot of attention for it. He would get people to buy in and to get into their checkbooks and help us raise money for these doctors who are studying Wolfram syndrome.”
Adds Stephanie about her father: “He was an out-of-the-norm athlete. He would go out and publicly speak and give his fee to the Rams’ charitable foundation. He was always doing things for people, and he never expected anything in return.”
Who else wore No. 84 in SoCal sports history? Make a case for:
Jerry Robinson, UCLA football linebacker (1975 to 1978):
Best known: UCLA’s first three-time first-team consensus All American (safety Kenny Easley is the other), and the first in the country since the 1940s, Robinson was thought of enough to finish 10th in the 1978 Heisman voting as he ended his college career with a then-school record 468 tackles. A 1996 College Football Hall of Fame inductee, Robinson was also the first UCLA player to score three defensive touchdowns on interceptions returns, averaging 78.6 yards in return for those 18 points. He added one more pick returned for 26 yards as a senior. When the Associated Press named its All-Time All American team in 2025, Robinson was in the company of fellow linebackers Lawrence Taylor (North Carolina), Brian Bosworth (Oklahoma), Dick Butkus (Illinois), Derrick Thomas (Alabama) and Chris Spielman (Ohio State). On ESPN’s list of the Top 150 players in the 150 years of college football, Robinson rated No. 89, ahead Spielman (No. 143) as well as before USC’s Junior Seau (No. 105), Baylor’s Mike Singletary (No. 108), Florida State’s Derrick Brooks (No. 115) and Miami’s Warren Sapp (No. 122) at the linebacker position. In 1999, Sports Illustrated included him on its All-Century Team for college football. Drafted in the first round by the Philadelphia Eagles in 1979, Robinson played the final seven years of his 13 year NFL career with the Los Angeles Raiders, wearing No. 57. UCLA retired his No. 84 and inducted him into its Athletic Hall of Fame in 1991.
Not well known: Robinson came to UCLA from Cardinal Newman in Santa Rosa also as a star 100-yard sprinter and high jumper, and was pegged as a tight end by head coach Pepper Rodgers’ staff. But when Dick Vermeil took over as head coach, he persuaded Robinson to move to inside linebacker — just before the Rose Bowl against Ohio State, at the end of Robinson’s freshman campaign. Eventual new head coach Terry Donahue would help shaped Robinson into the position with the help of heralded linebacker assistant coach Jed Hughes.
USC Trojans receiver Bob Klein (84) goes up for a pass during a 51-0 loss to Notre Dame on November 26, 1966. (University of Southern California/WireImage)
Best known: Born in South Gate, the 6-foot-5, 235 pounder out of St. Monica High in Santa Monica started on USC’s 1967 national title team. After his senior year, he was picked 21st overall by the Los Angeles Rams (wearing No. 80, from 1969 to 1976). In a 1985 vote of the fans, Klein was named as the tight end on the Los Angeles Rams’ 40th Anniversary Team.
Charlie Weaver, USC football defensive lineman (1969 to 1970):
Best known: A junior college transfer from Arizona Western, Weaver was part of USC’s “Wild Bunch” in with Al Cowlings, Jimmy Gunn, Tody Smith and Bubba Scott, ending up 1970 All-American and first-team All-Pac-8 honors as well as USC’s Most Inspirational Player that season. Detroit picked him in the second round of the 1971 NFL Draft and he lasted 10 seasons in the league. He was inducted into the USC Athletic Hall of Fame in 2018.
Shaun Cody, USC football defensive tackle (2001 to 2004):
Best known: The 6-foot-4, 307-pounder was a freshman at Damien High in La Verne before moving over to Los Altos High in Hacienda Heights and helping the team to a 14-0 record and CIF Division VII title. USA Today named him its All-USC Defensive Most Valuable Player in 2000. At USC, Cody started the final eight games of his freshman season and was first-team Freshman All-American. A consensus All-American and Pac-10 Defensive Player of the Year by his senior season, he had a career-best 45 tackles, 10 sacks, two forced fumbles, two fumble recoveries and three pass deflections. The Detroit Lions made him the 37th overall pick/second round in the 2005 NFL Draft and he spent eight seasons in the NFL, starting 68 of 112 games. Cody became a USC radio game analyst starting in 2019, having spent the prior five years on the broadcast’s post-game show.
Have you heard this story:
Andy Robustelli, Los Angeles Rams right defensive end (1951 to 1955):
Best known: For someone picked 228th overall and buried in the 19th round out of the now-defunct Arnold College during the 1951 NFL Draft, and then ending up in the Pro Football Hall of Fame, it seems rather preposterous. But Robustelli, a 6-foot-1, 230-pounder, did it after playing the first five of 14 NFL seasons with the Rams, who had to convince him not to sign a pro baseball contract with the New York Giants. In that time, Robustelli was in two Pro Bowls, made first-team All-AP twice, and was on the second AP team two more times. A two-way end in college, where he played after serving in the Navy during World War II, Robustelli returned the only two interceptions he had in his Rams career for touchdowns in 1952 and ’55. The Stamford, Conn., was done with L.A. when he was traded by the Rams to the New York Giants in 1956, and during his nine seasons, he had a larger spotlight winning in an NFL championship game his first season, playing in the title game five more times, and being named the 1962 winner of the Bert Bell Award at age 37 as the best player in the NFL, a rarity among defensive players when he recorded 12 sacks. He played in 174 NFL games, missing only one, and had the NFL record with 22 fumble recoveries when he retired, 13 of them coming with the Rams. Robustelli maintained a high profile in the NFL as the Giants first general manger in 1973 when he took over day-to-day control of the team from owner Wellington Mara. Not well known: In the final game of the 1954 season, a 35-27 win at the Coliseum against Green Bay, Robustelli, who started as usual as right defensive end, lined up wide on the punt team during a fourth-down snap. Norm Van Brocklin faked the punt, pitched it 10 yards to Robustelli, and he bullied his way past defenders for a 49 yard touchdown. It was the only catch he had in his Rams’ career. So in the Rams’ all-time statistical leaders, he remains the leader in yards per reception according to ProFootballReference.com.
Paul Maguire, Los Angeles Chargers linebacker/punter (1960):
Assembling a roster their inaugural season of 1960, the Los Angeles Chargers of the American Football League took the 22-year-old Maguire out of The Citadel and gave him the job of right-side linebacker. But they needed his talents as a coffin-corner kick punter more. Maguire led the AFL that year with 40.5 yards a punt, but that would only rank ninth-best in his 11-season career. Moving with the team to San Diego, Maguire was in three AFL title games, became a Pro Bowl pick in ’62 when he led the AFL with 79 punts and 3,289 yards, and then it was off to play in Buffalo in 1964. In that year’s AFL title game, Maguire nailed a 78-yard punt that went out of bounds at the Chargers’ 2 yard line with two minutes left that sealed the Bills’ victory. Done with a pro football career at 33 in 1970, Maguire created a stellar career as a TV analyst, starting first with NBC, then going to the upstart ESPN to do college football in 1979. He became part of NBC’s No. 1 NFL team in 1995 with Dick Enberg and Phil Simms, and was in the network booth for Super Bowls XXX and XXXII in ’96 and ‘98. He did college game broadcasts through 2008.
The final post of 2026 new baseball book reflections, in a lineup posted between April 1 and June 16 covering more than 40 titles and leaving even more uncovered.
It leads us into this temptation to deliver baseball from its many evils. Instead of stewing, we read about its history, its culture, it’s pull on our psyche.
A few closing thoughts from a wanna-be set-up man and/or innings-eater who starts his day in the bullpen:
Facebook post, May 24, 2026
== Father’s Day gifts don’t always have to be the newest and shiniest books.
Ten years ago, Pete Drier pulled together what he believed to “The 51 Greatest Baseball Books of All Time” for the now-defunct Huffington Post. “These books will provide baseball fans with great enjoyment and food for thought,” the subhead read. “But readers with little interest in baseball will also discover much they didn’t know about American society through the lens of this fascinating sport.”
What books would I add to this list, if asked?
First, add a well-placed “0” to that “51,” and you’ve got Ron Kaplan’s “501 Baseball Books Fans Must Read before They Die,” released in 2013. It still has an impeccable shelf life, although Kaplan admits it’s worthy of a refresh. You go Ron. And thanks for the connection 13 years ago. Visit to his website, and he’ll send you an Excel checklist of all 501 books for you to knock out.
Admittedly, the newest releases keep us fresh on historical perspective, cultural trends, humanity, rules, trivia, Hall of Fame reconsideration. But our topics of interest keep evolving as well. I might do better now re-reading books I once reviewed. It’s healthy to see what we read years ago resonates differently now. It’s a newly-turned 65-year-old grandfather approach, I suppose. What do I want to pass along to the next generation? Start with kids titles, eh?
Reading, and writing reviews, and posting them with no charge is an honor. They are extended social media posts.
“Only yesterday, it seems, nearly every American newspaper, dozens and dozens of them, even in midsize cities, ran book reviews by local critics. The alternative weeklies (I wrote for many of these) had feisty and clamorous and occasionally nutty book sections. “Sometimes an off-the-wall review,” Norman Mailer said, “can be as nourishing as a wild game dinner” . . . The recent shutting of The Washington Post’s Book World, one of the nation’s last free-standing books sections, feels like the end of something larger. It marks an inflection point in America’s literature, which can’t thrive without serious, fervent and quick-witted criticism: public talk, back and forth, between competing voices, in something like real time. The thin crust of American intellectual life, long flaking, has begun to show bald patches.”
From that came a response from the astute writer Craig Calcaterra: “It’s never been a mystery to me why newspapers and other outlets don’t really run substantive book reviews anymore. But it’s still a shame. There’s honor, utility and, sometimes, literary and intellectual merit in a well-written book review. A good book review is something that can nourish and inform readers in ways that a hell of a lot of stuff in the newspaper can only dream of providing. But there’s no money in it for the newspapers. And, honestly, not enough people care.”
I care. I feel a duty. I have a need. I also have no real data to back any of it up, except an occasional comment or email. Certainly, no data to show any consistent readings of these posts. It’s faith and a baseball community I hope generates some circulation. These are therapeutic to do in a set period of time at a point in time when some people just seem to be “settling.”
I sense a gradual erosion of mining the most accurate information, because it takes extra effort. Put in the work. Take the journey. Don’t AI this stuff.
In fact, curate a list like Ted Giola did here with “The Honest Broker.” It’s “A Reading List for the End of Civilization.” It’s a response to The Atlantic pinning him as “the ultimate source on the death of civilization.”
Don’t kill the messenger.
If you’re in search of a Father’s Day gift-gifting list, consider this 2026 spring selections, in order of enjoyment — and if the title is from the University of Nebraska, which eloquently provided the platform for “Perfect Eloquence: An Appreciation of Vin Scully” in ’24, the publisher is offering a 50 percent discount on its titles through July 31 with the 6SUMM26 discount code at the finish line. (Please, order them straight from the website and avoid the Amazon shitshow, even if it promises to deliver the order at 3 a.m.)
And before the next round of reviews: Could someone just make the typeface a little bigger?
Top of the lineup:
Day 15: “The Ballpark and Beyond:An Illustrated Celebration ofBaseball’s Rich History” by Todd Radom (Sports Publishing/Skyhorse/Simon & Schuster, released May 26, ’26). Also celebrated: “Art But Make It Sports: Where Art and Sports Collide,” by LJ Radar (Chronicle Books, released March 16, ’26.)
Day 18:“Crossroads: A Memoir in Baseball and Life” by Dusty Baker (Crown Publishing/Penguin Random House, released June 9, ‘26)
Day 19: The Magical Game: The Spirit and History of Baseball’s Superstitions, Rituals, and Curses” by Addy Baird (St. Martin’s Press/MacMillian, released June 2, ‘26)
Day 16:“Nolan: The Singular Lifeof an American Original” by Tim Brown (Grand Central Publishing/Hachette, released May 19, ’26) and “So Young, So Great:Bob Feller ElectrifiesBaseball and America” by Jim Ingraham (University of Nebraska Press, released June 1, ’26). Also mentioned: “Baseball As It Was: Building Champions Before Free Agency Changed Everything,” by John Ferling (Tatra Press, released April 26, ’26; $32)
Day 4:“Death in the Strike Zone:The Mystery of America’s First Baseball Hero” by Thomas W. Gilbert (David R. Godine Publishing, released March 24, ’26)
Heavy hitters:
Day 14: “Bleacher Seats andLuxury Suites:Democracy and Division at theTwentieth-Century Ballpark” by Seth S. Tannenbaum, Ph.D. (University of Illinois Press, released March 31, ’26)
Day 13: “How Retrosheet Saved Baseball” by Jay Wigley (Wiglesius Press/self published, released April 3, ‘26) Also celebrated: “Out of the Ballpark: How to Think About Baseball” by David L. Henkin (Oxford University Press, released March 16, ’26)
Day 6:“Kings and Pawns:Jackie Robinson and Paul Robeson in America” by Howard Bryant (Mariner Books/HarperCollins, released Jan. 20, ’26) and “Royal Treatment:Jackie Robinson, Montreal,and the Breaking of Baseball’s Color Barrier” by Sean J. McLaughlin/cover design by Gary Cieradkowski (University of Nebraska Press, released April 1, ’26) Also celebrated: “Integration at Second Base: Jackie Robinson and the Quest for Black Citizenship” by Peter Eisenstadt (University of Virginia Press, released April 15, ’26); “Opening the Door for Jackie: The Untold Story of Baseball’s Integration” by Keith Evan Crook (McFarland, released Nov. 26, ’25); “Black Baseball’s Heyday: Capturing an Era in Art and Words,” by Denny Dressman; illustration by Anthony High (McFarland, released Dec. 4, ’25); “Simulating Satchel: A What-If History of Integrated Major League Baseball in 1934,” by John Graf (McFarland, released March 5, ’26)
Protecting the heart of the order:
Day 12: “The Universal Baseball Association, Inc.,J. Henry Waugh, Prop.,” by Robert Coover, new introduction by Ben Marcus (NYRB Classics, originally released in 1968; re-release March 17, ‘26) Also celebrated: “Out of the Ballpark: How to Think About Baseball” by David L. Henkin (Oxford University Press, released March 16, ’26)
Day 3: “Before They Wore Dodger Blue: Tommy LasordaAnd the Greatest Draft Class in Baseball History” by Eric Vickrey (August Publications, released Dec. 7, ’25) Also celebrated: “The Gifts We Take from Baseball: A Dodger Photographer Memoir,” by Richard Kee (Taylor Publishing, published Nov. 8, 2025); “The Ross Porter Chronicles: Vol. 1: The Dodgers Years,” by Ross Porter (with Mike Kunert, Halcyon Street Press, released Oct. 13, 2025)
Day 11: “Ford Frick: Baseball’s Third CommissionerAnd His Four Decades of Shaping the Game” by Dave Bohmer (University of Nebraska Press, released April 1, ’26) and “A League of His Own:A. G. Spalding andThe Business of Baseball” by Mark A. Stein (Lyons Press, released Jan. 6, ’26) Also celebrated: “Make Me Commissioner: I Know What’s Wrong with Baseball and How to Fix It,” by Jane Leavy (Grand Central Publishing/Hachette, released Sept. 9, ’25)
Day 10: “The First All -Star Game:Babe Ruth, FDR, andAmerica at the Crossroads” by Randall Sullivan (Grove Atlantic, released June 2, ’26)
Role players:
Day 1: “Decoy Saves Opening Day” by Shohei Ohtani and Michael Blank/Illustrated by Fanny Liem (HarperCollins,released Feb. 3, ’26) and “Shohei Ohtani: A Little Golden Book Biography” by Nicole de las Heras/Illustrated by Toshiki Nakamura (Little Golden Book Biographies/Penguin/Random House, released March 3, ’26)
From 1912, published by Forbes and Company, “Baseballogy,” which can fetch up to $3,500 in the used book market, can be rediscovered in Leonard Skonecki’s “Baseballisms” almost 115 years later.
Day 9: “Baseball’s Most OutrageousPromotions: From Wedlock and Headlock Dayto Disco Demolition Night” by Joseph Natalicchio (McFarland, released Dec. 4, ‘26)
Day 8:“Baseballisms: A Murders’ Rowof Metaphors and Idioms” by Leonard Skonecki (McFarland, released May 22, ’26)
Day 2:“The Finest in the Field®:A History of Baseball Through 50 Iconic Gloves” by Ed Wheatley (Rizzoli USA Publishing, released March 24, ‘26)
Motion with the cupped hands over the ears …
Day 17: “The Complete Book ofBaseball Trivia:Test Your Knowledgewith 750 Questions” by Matt Chandler (Sourcebooks/Callisto publishing, released March 3, ‘26)
Day 7: “Unhittable: How Technology, Mavericks and Innovators Engineered Baseball’s New Era ofPitching Dominance” by Rob Freidman/aka Pitching Ninja (HarperCollins, released March 24, ‘26)
Day 5: “Metropolitans: New York Baseball, Class Struggle, and the People’s Team” by A.M. Gittlitz (Astra House, released March 31, ’26); “Willie, Duke, and Mickey: New York City Baseball’s Golden Age Amid Integration” by Robert Cottrell (Bloomsbury Academic, released Feb. 5, ’26); “The Subway Series: New York City’s Illustrious Baseball Tradition” by Rick Laughland (Lyons/Globe Pequot, released Feb. 3, ’26); “Mickey & Billy: The Glory and Tragedy of a Yankee Friendship” by Tony Castro (Diversion Books/Simon & Shuster, released Feb. 24, ’26); “7 Swings at 7: Mickey Mantle — Legend and Victim of American Culture” by Robert E. Weir (Summer Game Books, released November of ’25); “The Bosses of the Bronx: The Endless Drama of the Yankees Under the House of Steinbrenner” by Mike Vaccaro (HarperCollins, released March 24, ’26); “Hot Foot: My Hijinks and Upside-Down Life with the 1986 World Champion New York Mets” by Roger McDowell (with Doug Feldmann, Triumph Books, released March 24, ’26); “The 50 Greatest Players in New York Mets History” by Robert W. Cohen (Lyons Press/Globe Pequot,released March 3, 2026).
Reading the room going forward:
Regrets for those authors whose titles we haven’t been able to carve the time or attention to absorb in a way that’s up to our standards, but are worthy to post here for further research and consider as they sit atop the pile of next-up:
Available in English and Spanish. A wonderful piece of art and collectable for Dodgers’ fans. Young and young at heart. We still struggle to accept he’s gone. He’s the heart of our SoCal Sports History 101 bio project when it comes to sizing up No. 34. Astra Publishing House even has a download to print out a Valenzuela book coloring page. Alonso is a Cuban American bilingual writer and journalist working as a reporter and producer at MLB.com’s Spanish-language sister site, MLB Español. She also did “Call Me Roberto! Roberto Clemente Goes to Bat for Latinos.” Parra’s work includes “Frida Kahlo and Her Animalitos,” which drew a New York Times Best Illustrated Children’s Book Award.
The review we pulled together on Curtis Pride’s 2025 book, “I Felt the Cheers: The Remarkable Silent Life of Curtis Pride” gave us a better window into this subject, as Pride described his connection to these players. The remarkable event is Hoy and Taylor once played against each other, in 1902. Here’s more from the SABR bio projects of Hoy and of Taylor. There a movement to get Hoy consideration for the Baseball Hall of Fame — Gallaudet University named its baseball field for him, he’s been the subject of two recent films, a documentary, at least three children’s books. Now, this. Taylor made.
One of our favorite modern-day baseball historians — as we wrote about his 2023 epic, “Baseball: The Turbulent Midcentury Years,” which held our attention for 624 pages — so there’s a trust established. The Korean War came up on baseball as it was still trying to re-calibrate after World War II, so the seasons of 1950, ’51, ’52, and ’53 are now in the cross hairs. From our historic lens, that’s also when we got the debut of Sports Illustrated in 1954, sporting a cover that highlighted baseball. Gietschier notes that this period produced the Philadelphia Phillies’ Whiz Kids in 1950, the “Shot Heard ‘Round the World” in 1951, the debuts of Willie Mays and Mickey Mantle, and the final days of Bill Veeck owning the St. Louis Browns. How much could America, and baseball, afford to give to this conflict? It’s a conflicting time.
Side note I: Gietschier closed the 2024 NINE symposium of baseball writers in Arizona with a remark he said was once told to him and classmates by Father Ray Schroth, SJ: “Go forth in peace. Have courage. Hold on to what’s good.”
Side note II: Gietschier posted this recently on Facebook that resonated with us as well:
Former MLB umpire Dale Scott eventually responded: “It is ridiculous that the official rule book shows up when the season is halfway over. One of my biggest complaints when I worked for MLB.”
Check it out: Author Jay Jaffe recently posted on Facebook that Clair “is more passionate about international baseball than anyone else I know — his colleagues at MLB even gave him an award to that affect.” Jaffe calls this book “a great and touching account” about how the Czech Republic figured out a way to make it to the 2023 World Baseball Classic (the one that ended with Ohtani striking out Trout to win the title for Japan). The Czech team, making its WBC debut, had to scramble out of a preliminary tournament against Panama, Great Britain and Nicaragua to make it Pool B in Tokyo. The Czechs then outlasted China, 8-5, in its opener lasting nearly four hours, then lost to host Japan (10-2), South Korea (7-3) and Australia (8-3). Here is an excerpt of the book as well as a sample of what he does for the MLB.com International Beat Newsletter. One more plus for Clair: He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and plays in the punk band, The Subway Ghosts.
Aside from a beautiful cover illustration/image by Laura Boyle, the chapters Gallagher devotes to Davis as the lead to his latest Expos history project aren’t a real comfortable read. Our Davis infatuation stems from seeing him in the 1971 MLB All Star Game in Detroit, his first, and the lone Dodger represented in a contest better remembered for Reggie Jackson’s home run nearly leaving Tiger Stadium and the fact there were 22 future Hall of Famers (plus Pete Rose, and three more HOF managers and coaches) participating. That could have bode well for Davis. It didn’t. Davis came into that game in the bottom of the fourth to replace Willie Mays in center field — the game also included Willie McCovey and Willie Stargell — and Davis singled in his only at bat off Jim Palmer in the top of the fifth. We also snuck in a look at Davis’ Strat-O-Matic and ABPA cards from the board games from our youth in the mid 1960s during our recent review of “The Universal Baseball Association Inc.” reboot. We also did his obit for the L.A. Daily News in 2010 when he was 69. We included the graph about his financial issues in the piece with this quote: “I spent it as soon as I got it because I always knew there would be more,” Davis once told the Montreal Gazette. “I spent it on women, clothes, cars …”
“Destitute Darlings,” by Mel Proctor (self published, 91 pages, $15, released April 17, ’26).
A chapter in his 2013 book titled “I Love the Work But I Hate the Business” gave the former Los Angeles Clippers’ play-by-play radio broadcaster a chance to explain that time in his life when he called games for the San Diego Padres’ Triple-A Hawaiian Islanders. This edition offers a stand-alone version of the team that in 1975 and 1976 that won back-to-back Pacific Coast League titles despite searching for a solid home base, essentially kicked out of the league, and buried in debt. There hasn’t been a team that can survive in Honolulu since the Islanders went under water in 1987 and moved to the mainland. “Destitute Darlings” was the name Proctor stamped on those teams, and this one might feel more like a magazine story inserted into a yearbook-sized publication to accommodate the new cover illustration.
“Sacred Grounds,” by Robby Incmikowski with Kyle Fager (self published, 200 pages, $55): A lot of landscape to cover, and well done in this case. It’s just kind of an expensive whim purchase. Ah, what the heck. It’s dad we’re thinking about here:
If you had a chance to see the two of them recently in Hermosa Beach — their only West Coast appearance in an abbreviated run — or heard them as guests on Mason & Ireland/KSPN-AM (710), that was enough to whet the appetite. The baseball hook to this: “How Is This Even Possible? Shohei Ohtani, Rocket Launcher,” starting on page 55, which explains the fandom related to the Dodgers’ two-way unicorn and the homer he hit over the right field roof at Dodger Stadium on July 21, 2024. Schur put in 12 miles of the 82,490 for that visit. With the notation: “Since the method of transportation is “driving to Dodger Stadium,” it takes like three hours.” Schur writes: “What has stuck with me the most about that home run – besides learning in that moment that the laws of gravity are mutable – was how it slightly changed my concept of fandom. A guy on the opposing team (he’s a Red Sox fan) hitting a monstrous home run ins generally thought of as ‘bad.’ But in that instant, I was happy. I was a Shohei Ohtani fan, a baseball fan, and I felt what fans always hope to feel at sporting events: joy, awe, reverence, the thrill of watching an athletic genius do what he does, as well as it can be done.” One more note: Pages 371-391 are reserved for a chapter called “The Great Mookie Hug Caper,” where they try to figure out a way to measure the greatness of getting a hug from Mookie Betts. Awwwwww. Are you sure you want to do this, Schur? There’s also this nice review in America magazine, so if the Jesuits find joy in it, this has to be working on many levels. More from NPR’s Scott Simon, AwfulAnnouncing.com, Kirkus and “Late Night with Seth Meyers” below:
Henig let us know that he was able to make it to Los Angeles for the Baseball Reliquary’s Shrine of the Eternals induction last fall, as it included the celebration of LeFlore, who appeared despite some health challenges. “I finally got to meet Ron in-person, after speaking with him only by phone for the last five years,” Henig said. “It was a surreal experience.” It would have to be. The Detroit MetroTimes allowed Henig to promote the release of his book with this piece. In Kirkus Reviews, it notes that “Henig, an industrious author of books on Black history … has a solid biography” of a man LeVar Burton once portrayed in a 1978 TV movie called “One in A Million” after serving a three-years plus in a Michigan prison for armed robbery. The film was made as LeFlore, who led the AL with 68 stolen bases in ’78, topped that with 78 in ’79, and then led the NL with 97 during his only year in Montreal, was still amidst his nine-year career that started at age 26.
If you wonder about overlap with “Your Detroit Tigers”: A book that breaks the franchise down into the top 258 hitters and 142 pitchers slots LeFlore at No. 41 among the hitters, in between Bob Fothergill and three-time AL All-Star Pinky Higgins, and a bit ahead of Rocky Colavito. Every team should have a book like this one done on its history — and the Tigers, celebrating their 125th season this year, is prime for a roaring tribute. Longtime writer Tom Gage, who also did “Big 50: The Men And Moments That Made The Detroit Tigers” for Triumph Books in 2017, and “Joy in Tiger Town: A Determined Team, a Resilient City, and our Magical Run to the 1968 World Series,” for Triumph in 2017, screates 14 performance metrics for hitters and eight for pitchers before settling on this 400. So, where does Ernie Harwell land?
We found this listed in an advertisement amidst the May 28, 2026 issue of The New York Review of Books, featuring a publisher blurb about how Faflik “erases the lines between politics and sport, which routinely blurred in a city suffused with an anti-Black racism that was both deceptively subtle and fiercely overt.” However, says a review in Publishers Weekly: “Frequent instances in which ordinary objects are freighted with heavy racial symbolism — most notably the Red Sox’s official hot dog, the Fenway Frank, which the author says ‘became as deeply implicated in Boston’s contest over racial equality as any other aspect of the club’ — feel like a stretch. The result is more of a lofty thought experiment than a successful argument.” We also put trust in Charlie Beavis for BevisBaseballResearch.com when he concludes: “This is a solid foundation for future research (and book sequel) to follow-up on the book’s sub-title ‘the making of Red Sox Nation’ and Faflik’s conclusion that ‘the White haven that was the Boston Red Sox’ home stadium of Fenway Park in the 1970s proved to be as difficult to racially desegregate as the city’s schools.’ : Otherwise, Beavis calls this “a ground-breaking, illuminating examination of the intertwining of sport and society in Boston during the 1970s.”
Misc.:
“One Splendid Season:” Baseball and America in 1912,” by Phil Rosenzweig (PMR Books, $32.50): The kind of publication best enjoyed with a nice glass of scotch and a Macanudo. The Hassan Triplefolder Set of baseball cards are here in a nice glossy presentation — the American Tobacco Company designed that famous 1911 T205 set and added another dimension to it that fit in a pack of Hassan Cork Tip Cigarettes. It includes Ty Cobb, Walter Johnson, Christy Mathewson, Tris Speaker, Napoleon Lajoie and Shoeless Joe Jackson.
“The Land of Sand and Cotton: Texas, Workingmen, and Professional Baseball in 1888,” by Bill Brewster (University of Nebraska Press, 336 pages, $39.95, released April 1, ’26): Austin was just branded the capital of Texas when it joined Galveston, Houston, Dallas, Fort Worth and San Antonio, and Austin, where the new state capitol building had just opened when the Texas League was created. Enter cowboys, gunfighters, longhorns and wagon trains. Maybe even the first sighting of Nolan Ryan.
“Spitballer: Stan Coveleski and the 1920 Cleveland Indians,” by William C. Kashatus (University of Nebraska Press, 256 pages, $36.95, released May 1, ’26): Lickety split. Do we trust a Facebook post that someone named Edward Paul Gardner did for the Baseball Books platform: “(Spitballer) is solid and a quick read, but there wasn’t much to Coveleski outside of baseball. I recall his quote from ‘The Glory of Their Times’ (‘Baseball is a worrying thing’) and he’s a Hall of Famer who won a World Series in 1920, was grandfathered in to use the spitball. … Indians/Guardians fans will probably want to be sure it’s part of their library, but Coveleski’s SABR bio (written by Dan Levitt) will probably tell you as much as you need to know about him.” Thanks Ed.
“Baseball’s Imposters: The Dark Side of Fandom” by Rob Sheinkopf (self published, 160 pages, $24.99, released March 26, ’26): It’s a nice idea, a fun one to bounce around in a group of baseball fans, probably worthy of an expanded magazine piece. Dig into what W.P. Kinsella once called “The Eddie Scissons Syndrome,” inspired by a character in his novel “Shoeless Joe,” which inspired the film “Field of Dreams.” Probably worth half as many pages devoted to this topic — or just the 53 pages he dedicated to a master’s thesis on the topic in 1985. The LA84 digital library also offers this document scanned.
“Cape Cod Baseball League: From College Stars to Big League Futures,” (SABR publications, edited by Mike Richard and Bill Nowlin, associate editors Len Levin and Carl Riechers, forward by Peter Gammons, $29.95, released June 1, ’26): Formed in 1923, with roots back to 1885, the CCBL featuring top college players launched last week with 10 teams. Living more off the motto “Where the stars of tomorrow shine tonight,” there’s a SABR gang of 25 members wanted its own interpretation with analytical and historical pieces essays, plus biographies on players and teams. Editor Richard has been a CCBL historian since 2018.
Later this year:
“Shoeless: The Life and Times of Joe Jackson, 25th Anniversary Revised Edition,“ by David L. Fleitz (McFarland, $39.95, to be released August, ’26). “Shoeless Joe’s” posthumous reinstatement to baseball’s good graces in 2025 warrants this re-issue as those who will clamor for his induction into the Baseball Hall of Fame, in spite of whatever part he had in the 1919 Black Sox Scandal that led to his expulsion.
“You Gotta Love These Guys: Fifth Years of Seattle Mariners Baseball,” by David M. Schmidt (University of Nebraska Press, 456 pages, $39.95, to be released Nov. 1, ’26): Schmitz is a history chair emeritus at Whitman College in Walla Walla Washington who did bios about FDR and Richard Nixon in the past.
Tom Hoffarth's The Drill: More Farther Off the Wall 