"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/
Gary Zimmermann, Los Angeles Express Jarrod Washburn, Anaheim Angels/Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim Doug Smith, Los Angeles Rams The not-so-obvious choices for No. 56:
Hong-Chih Kuo, Los Angeles Dodgers Pedro Astacio, Los Angeles Dodgers
The most interesting story for No. 56: Rick Dempsey, Los Angeles Dodgers catcher (1988 to 1990), via Crespi High of Encino Southern California map pinpoints: Woodland Hills, Canoga Park, Encino, Los Angeles (Dodger Stadium)
Topps Baseball Cards was guilty of some kind of crime — identify theft? — when it came to printing up Rick Dempsey’s cardboard resume prior to the 1989 season.
Above is Exhibit A. The Dipper, wearing No. 56.
Dempsey had just played his 21st MLB season at this point. He was on the cover of Sports Illustrated, acting as a human pedestal for Orel Hershiser after the Los Angeles Dodgers’ improbable 1988 World Series win. Dempsey is wearing his familiar No. 17.
That No. 56 Dempsey character looks more as if he’s in adult fantasy camp. Sure, he wore it, but just a brief few weeks at spring training in Vero Beach, Fla., as a non-roster player. Trying to catch on. Dempsey beat out Alex Trevino for the backup catcher job, despite Trevino’s guaranteed $300,000 salary.
But when the ’89 season started, Topps had a season’s worth of action photos with Dempsey wearing No. 17. It somehow failed.
He has been wearing an MLB uniform since age 19 in 1969, just two years out of Crespi Carmelite High in Encino.
Five seasons earlier, he was the World Series MVP for his performance with the champion Baltimore Orioles over the Pittsburgh Pirates. Already forgotten?
The Los Angeles Police Department set of 1989 Dodgers cards at least had Rick Dempsey with the correct number.
Once groomed as Thurman Munson’s backup with the New York Yankees in the 1970s, Dempsey went full-time with Baltimore in ’77 and on a nightly basis corralled one of the best starting pitching rotations in the game.
Coming back to Southern California, Dempsey would posted a career best 129 OPS+ with 13 doubles and seven homers in a modest 198 plate appearances in 1988.
The Dodgers saw value in his experience, his his sense of humor, and his presence.
Because, as crazy as it sounds, Dempsey had seen plenty by the time he was back in L.A. He could re-tell the story with a new set of listeners about the time he was a kid growing up in the San Fernando Valley and it turned out his baseball coach was a certified bank robber.
Eric Dickerson: Los Angeles Rams and Los Angeles Raiders Rod Carew: California Angels Adrian Beltre: Los Angeles Dodgers Tarik Skubal: Los Angeles Dodgers
The not-so-obvious choices for No. 29:
Eric Turner: UCLA football Bobby Knopp: Los Angeles/California Angels Harold Jackson: Los Angeles Rams Billy Smith: Los Angeles Kings
The most interesting story for No. 29: Jay Johnstone: Seattle Mariners leadoff hitter in the film “The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad!” (1988), California Angels outfielder (1966 to 1970), Los Angeles Dodgers outfielder (1980 to ’82, 1985), via Edgewood High in West Covina. Southern California map pinpoints: Arcadia, West Covina, Anaheim, Los Angeles, Hollywood, Granada Hills, San Gabriel
The second Jay Johnson stepped up to the plate at Dodger Stadium wearing No. 29 for the Seattle Mariners, the unraveling daffiness was just beginning.
Aside from the fact the Mariners were not one of the eight MLB teams Johnson suited up for during his 20 Major League Baseball seasons, which started as a member of the Angels of Los Angeles in the mid-1960s and ended with the Dodgers of Los Angeles in the middle of the 1980s. Or that of the seven jersey numbers he wore, No. 29 wasn’t one of them.
The most noticeable tell — Johnson was digging into the right-handed batter’s box, a place he never ventured as a natural left-handed swinger that he was, and didn’t seem to know how to hold his hands on the wood — could have been a reason for the umpire to check his bat to makes it wasn’t full of confetti.
But it wasn’t just any home-plate ump sizing up this player with a generic oversized Little League helmet. It was Leslie Nielsen.
There may be no better package deal to best unpack Johnstone’s contribution to baseball — an ability to laugh at his own expense, by someone who was Type A in aspirational absurdity, and understood how to the jock in jocularity, and the player in playfulness. His absurd but credible role in “The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad!” from 1988 will be around now forever.
Whether or not he followed the script, at least he tried to just be himself. His improv, as he once explained, might have actually improved the scene had the director just kept the cameras rolling.
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 Larry Robinson: 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 for anyone needing verification: Will Ferrell, age 48, started and ended his Major League Baseball career as a player on March 12, 2015.
He was, for all intents and purposes, an pure exhibitionist.
In a No. 19 jersey, Ferrall set out to play all 10 positions (including DH) in five Cactus League exhibition games around Arizona. In one day. The campy stunt was a way to pay homage to Bert Campaneris, who, some 50 years earlier in September of 1965, agreed to a promotional stunt by Kansas City Athletics owner Charles O. Finley. In a real game against the visiting Los Angeles Angels, 23-year-old Campaneris played all nine positions and even pitched both right- and left-handed in the eighth inning. Campaneris wore No. 19 during all but one of his 19 seasons in the major leagues, including a time as a California Angels shortstop from 1979 to 1981.
If Ferrell did any due diligence, he may have read that the end to “Campy Campaneris Night” came in the top of the ninth when he finally yielded to playing catcher. The Angels’ Ed Kirkpatrick leveled him trying to score from third base on a passed ball. Then the A’s lost in extra innings.
Personal glory sometimes supersedes team outcomes if it sells a few extra tickets.
Bert Campaneris and Will Ferrell share a laugh before the Oakland-Seattle spring training game on March 12, 2015. (Brad Mangin /Sports Illustrated via Getty Images)
The Hollywood angle to all this was creating an HBO special, “Ferrell Takes the Field,” and Ferrell took it by storm. A lesser thespian/comic could have been derailed early on, not just by a sideways ad-lip script but by a pure failure to handle it all without pulling a groin. One has to be able to pull it off as a player without the audience groaning and booing. Ferrell, even at twice the age of Campaneris, had the tools.
The schedule went: 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)
First, Ferrell notably played shortstop for Oakland to start the day, to honor Campaneris. Then, decked out in his all-red Angels’ jersey — the franchise he followed most growing up in Orange County — Ferrell went cross town and trotted onto the field and subbed in for Mike Trout as the center fielder in the top of the third. Who else gets to do that? Right away, he was forced to cleanly handle a line-drive hit at him by the Chicago Cubs’ Wellington Castro and hold him to a single.
Will Ferrell and Mike Trout laugh in the Angels’ dugout on March 12, 2015 at Tempe Diablo Stadium in Tempe., Ariz. (Robert Huskey/Angels Baseball LP/Getty Images)
“He was trying to make people laugh the whole time,” Trout said.
Ferrell then switched uniforms, became the Cubs’ third-base coach and held up signs — actual, written signs, on cardboard. One said: “Swing as hard as you can.” Another read: “Remember, these games don’t count.”
It was also time for Ferrell to take a bat and hit. During a four-run inning for the Cubs, Angels manager Mike Scioscia came to the mound to remove pitcher Frank Herrmann and bring in minor-league right-hander Zach Stewart to face Ferrell. Three pitches, three strikes. The last one, swinging.
“I just threw heaters,” Stewart said. “I tried to blow his doors off. … It would’ve been cool if he had come out in character as Ron Burgundy, though.”
Will Ferrell talks to San Francisco Giants manager Bruce Bochy as he plays catcher in their March 12, 2015 game against the Chicago White Sox in Glendale, Arizona, at Camelback Ranch. (Ron Vesely/MLB Photos via Getty Images)
Later that afternoon, Ferrell also struck out later in an appearance for Chicago’s other team, the White Sox, as their DH. He managed to foul off a 92-mph pitch from the Giants’ Jean Machi. Again in a jersey swap, Ferrell played catcher for the Giants. Why not? He came out somehow injury free.
Above: Will Ferrell finds out Dodgers manager Don Mattingly is taking him out of the game in the seventh inning after he pitched to one batter at Peoria Stadium on March 12, 2015. Below: Ferrell acknowledges the crowd. (Kelly Gavin and Jason Wise/MLB via Getty Images)
In the finale of his helicopter shuttle, Ferrell landed at the Peoria Sports Complex that night in time to play a relief pitcher for the Dodgers in the seventh inning. The Padres’ Rico Noel was sly. He tried to bunt. Ferrell deftly fielded it and threw him out. Dodgers manager Don Mattingly then came out and replaced him to cheers.
Ferrell’s final performance was playing right field for the Padres as a tribute to Tony Gwynn, and not wearing Gwynn’s No. 19, but switching out to No. 20. Yet, the Dodgers had allowed him to wear the No. 19 that they had retired years ago for Jim Gilliam.
Farrell’s entrance and farewell as an MLB player included a set of Topps baseball cards to prove it happened.
This all was on brand with Ferrell. His improv nature. His athletic foundation. He had done some of this already in a half-dozen films he made that involved sports themes and his need to perform to some credibility.
All of it goes back to playgrounds of Orange County and the locker rooms at University High in Irvine.
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.
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 hysterical accuracy, perhaps seeking what little guardrails that might be left, add to this biographical sketch:
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)
During a six-year run of a Facebook reality show called “Ball in the Family,” there was proof that this was not simply 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.
The male-driven, hit-and-run version of the Kardashians starts 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.
