Author: fartheroffthewall

This is the latest post for an ongoing media project — SoCal Sports History 101: The Prime Numbers from 00 to 99 that Uniformly, Uniquely and Unapologetically Reveal The Narrative of Our Region’s Athletic Heritage.  Pick a number and highlight an athlete — person, place or thing — most obviously connected to it by fame and fortune, someone who isn’t so obvious, and then take a deeper dive into the most interesting story tied to it. It’s a combination of star power, achievement, longevity, notoriety, and, above all, what makes that athlete so Southern California. Quirkiness and notoriety factor in. And it should open itself to more discussion and debate — which is what sports is best at doing.

The most obvious choices for No. 99:

= Wayne Gretzky, Los Angeles Kings
= Aaron Donald, Los Angeles Rams
= Manny Ramirez, Los Angeles Dodgers

The not-so-obvious choices for No. 99:

= Hyun Jin Ryu, Los Angeles Dodgers
= Denis Bouanga, LAFC

The most interesting story for No. 99:
Charlie Sheen, as Ricky “Wild Thing” Vaughn, Cleveland Indians relief pitcher (1989) in the movie “Major League.”
Southern California map pinpoints:
Santa Monica, Malibu, Hollywood

Carlos Estévez, Charlie Sheen and Ricky Vaughn walk into a bar …

The hope is at least one of them comes out alive.

This also seems to add up to more than just two-and-a-half men. The algebra and physics are far more complicated.

Carlos Estévez, as known to his friends when he grew up playing in Malibu Little League, the Pony-Colt transition, and then on the Santa Monica High baseball team, was good ol’ Charlie. His true center.

Charlie Sheen is the Hollywood flip-side, best explained in a 2025 Netflix documentary appropriately titled, “aka Charlie Sheen.” Good time Charlie. You know him to some degree, and then you don’t.

Ricky Vaughn, a role Sheen played as the steel-focused wild-child relief pitcher in the 1989 film “Major League,” amplified his Hollywood persona. It would have a notable ripple effect within the culture of Major League Baseball bullpens. Art reflecting life reflecting relief artists. All the way down to wearing No. 99 for some psychological advantage when staring down a tepid hitter in the late innings.

Meanwhile, there is an art to understanding this “concept” of the Estévez/Sheen/Vaughn triumvirate.

“I think there’s so many stories and many ingrained images in people’s minds about the concept of me,” Sheen says in the documentary, sipping something from a coffee cup while seated in a booth at Chips Restaurant, one of the last iconic Googie diners across the street from a Catholic church in Hawthorne where Sheen is making his confession.

“(People don’t even) think of me as a person. They think of me as a concept or a specific moment in time.”

As this SoCal sports project hits the far end of numbers — starting at 00 and ending here — it seems obvous we found our closer. Ricky “Wild Thing” Vaughn is called in to provide the Hollywood ending.

Charlie “Wild Man” Estévez/Sheen will get credit for the save. A tip of the coffee cup for those in his circle who’ve saved him time after time.

Grab a beverage and we’ll see where it leads.

Baseball is the connective tissue ultimately in the Estévez/Sheen/Vaughn concept. It become evident sorting through film, TV, tabloids, depositions, affidavits and general convoluted hearsay. Whenever Estévez/Sheen needed the serenity, security and sweet spot of baseball, troubles became secondary.

There’s the famous Jim Bouton quote: “You spend a good piece of your life gripping a baseball and in the end it turns out that it was the other way around all the time.”

Estévez/Sheen might relate to that in a different way.

This is the latest post for an ongoing media project — SoCal Sports History 101: The Prime Numbers from 00 to 99 that Uniformly, Uniquely and Unapologetically Reveal The Narrative of Our Region’s Athletic Heritage.  Pick a number and highlight an athlete — person, place or thing — most obviously connected to it by fame and fortune, someone who isn’t so obvious, and then take a deeper dive into the most interesting story tied to it. It’s a combination of star power, achievement, longevity, notoriety, and, above all, what makes that athlete so Southern California. Quirkiness and notoriety factor in. And it should open itself to more discussion and debate — which is what sports is best at doing.

The most obvious choices for No. 69:

= Sebastian Joseph-Day, Los Angeles Rams and Los Angeles Chargers

The not-so-obvious choices for No. 69:

= Chase De Leo, Anaheim Ducks
= Al Barry, Los Angeles Chargers (via USC)

The most interesting story for No. 69:
Chase De Leo, Anaheim Ducks center (2023-24)
Southern California map pinpoints:
La Mirada, Norwalk, Whittier, Anaheim

The preamble

Jerry Seinfeld has a rooting interest in the bizarro ways a fan will root for his or her favorite team.

His own fandom not withstanding aligned with the teams of New York — especially the Mets — Seinfield famously has a bit in the evolution of his his comedy career that covers all the bases when it comes to people who are essentially just “rooting for laundry.”

In his 2020 book “Is This Anything?”, which clears out his joke files to examine the evolution of material, that one is covered. So it an observation he once made about the time in our existence when, before caller ID became a thing, we had to punch in *69 — called Star-69 — if we were curious about who just rang us up and we somehow missed it.

Seinfeld’s riff:

“I thought it was a little hostile to the calling party. Someone calls. They hang up. You hit that *69. ‘Nice try, creep. Oh, I know all about your little call. …’

“And 69?

“That’s the number they pick for this thing?

“So that means there isn’t one person at the phone company that went to junior high school? How did that slip through an entire organization?

“If you worked at the phone company, and you heard they were doing this … wouldn’t you walk into the meeting and go, ’69? Are you kidding me? That’s the number you guys came up for the new feature? What the hell is going on here?’

“ ‘We’re the phone company. We can pick any number we want. 68. 70.’

” ‘I can’t wait to hear what you got for 3-Way Calling’.”

In the grand scheme of everything, what does 69 have to do with anything? It’s a callback to immature double entendre. The ding-dong-ditch statement of a world where “Beavis and Butthead” exist. We’d argue that some can only think of it as a single entendre.

Especially outside the ying/yang conundrum, how does it, or not, fit into a non-sexual connotation in sports?

In the entire history of Southern California sports, only a handful of athletes have dared to wear No. 69. You figure many have asked for it. They just didn’t get it. On several levels.

Some may have pulled it off better than others, but in sports, there’s no real star No. 69. It’s more an asterisk. Who’s trying to be the biggest asshat?

Maybe it’s just a call-back to the days we finally stopped using a rotary phone and embraced the push-button technology. To access a voice message. To try to win tickets on a radio station. To try to create a song with the new techno tones.

This is the latest post for an ongoing media project — SoCal Sports History 101: The Prime Numbers from 00 to 99 that Uniformly, Uniquely and Unapologetically Reveal The Narrative of Our Region’s Athletic Heritage.  Pick a number and highlight an athlete — person, place or thing — most obviously connected to it by fame and fortune, someone who isn’t so obvious, and then take a deeper dive into the most interesting story tied to it. It’s a combination of star power, achievement, longevity, notoriety, and, above all, what makes that athlete so Southern California. Quirkiness and notoriety factor in. And it should open itself to more discussion and debate — which is what sports is best at doing.

The most obvious choices for No. 63:

= Booker Brown, USC football
= Joe Carollo, Los Angeles Rams
= Jim Brown, UCLA football

The not-so-obvious choices for No. 63:

= Mike McDonald, Los Angeles Rams
= Greg Horton, Los Angeles Rams
= Corey Linsley, Los Angeles Chargers

The most interesting story for No. 63:
Jim Brown, UCLA football offensive lineman via L.A. Loyola High (1954 to 1955)
Southern California map pinpoints:
Los Angeles, Westwood, Glendale

Jim Brown helped make history, perhaps by accident, or by good fortune, as part of UCLA’s most unique 1954 national championship football team.

Decades later, Brown tackled an idea on how to preserve the team’s history, for the good fortune of those who came decades later.

A 6-foot, 204-pound right guard on an explosive line that paved the way for coach Red Sanders’ Single-Wing offense, Brown capped off a two-year run with the Bruins as an All-American in 1955. The teams he was on during his time went 18-2 and won two Pacific Coast Conference titles.

Sanders once referred to Brown as “one of the best football players we have had at UCLA. He has never played a poor game. As an all-around guard, he doesn’t back up from anyone. I haven’t seen anyone whip him yet across the scrimmage line. … In addition, you’ve never heard (Brown) complain or alibi or explain. He just goes out and gives his team the best he has.”

When Brown was inducted into the UCLA Athletic Hall of Fame in 2001, it was noted that he also played rugby for the Bruins and was part of its ROTC program. Instead of signing with the NFL’s Chicago Cardinals, who drafted him in 1956, Brown went to the U.S. Army and became commissioned as a Second Lieutenant.

When Brown died at his home in Glendale in 2022 at age 87, survived by his wife of 66 years, Merrilyn, who was a UCLA song girl when they married in 1956, he took pride in having five children, 12 grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.

Brown left not just his own life story, but those of his teammates from that Bruin era.

This is the latest post for an ongoing media project — SoCal Sports History 101: The Prime Numbers from 00 to 99 that Uniformly, Uniquely and Unapologetically Reveal The Narrative of Our Region’s Athletic Heritage.  Pick a number and highlight an athlete — person, place or thing — most obviously connected to it by fame and fortune, someone who isn’t so obvious, and then take a deeper dive into the most interesting story tied to it. It’s a combination of star power, achievement, longevity, notoriety, and, above all, what makes that athlete so Southern California. Quirkiness and notoriety factor in. And it should open itself to more discussion and debate — which is what sports is best at doing.

The most obvious choices for No. 59:

= Evan Phillips, Los Angeles Dodgers
= Ismail Valdez, Los Angeles Dodgers

The not-so-obvious choices for No. 59:

= Mario Celotto, USC football
= Loek Van Mil, Los Angeles Angels

The most interesting stories for No. 59:
Collin Ashton, USC football linebacker (2002 to 2005)
Lou Ferrigno Jr., USC football linebacker (2006 to 2007)
Southern California map pinpoints:
Mission Viejo, Sherman Oaks, Hollywood, Los Angeles (Coliseum)

Walk in the cleats of a college football walk-on.

It’s a fantasy football experience. Sometimes. Pay to play can be an expensive fantasy.

Some get movies made about them. Their “true underdog” experience.” At least one ended up being known as the “O-Dog.” He got wrapped up in nefarious escapades that were somehow worthy of a video screaming docuseries.

Two pendulum swing of the walk-on experiment from USC’s annals happened during the Pete Carroll Era of fame and fortune in the 2000s. Both were given No. 59:

= Collin Ashton, a kid from Mission Viejo who never missed a Trojans football since the day he was born, had four generations before him attend the school, and was just hoping he could be used a long-snapper. He ended up starting a few games at linebacker as a senior because they needed healthy bodies. All the way to a national title game.

= Lou Ferrigno Jr., the son of a Hollywood star/acclaimed body builder, knew his DNA alone wouldn’t be enough to get him a shot. He came, he tried, he got injured. He begrudgingly got into acting. He made a career out of that.

If a walk-on can act if he/she belongs, that’s half the battle.  

Past performance doesn’t guarantee future results. Sometimes, it’s just worth taking a shot. If not for a teachable moment, it’s a fabulous barroom conversation of those glory days decades later.

This is the latest post for an ongoing media project — SoCal Sports History 101: The Prime Numbers from 00 to 99 that Uniformly, Uniquely and Unapologetically Reveal The Narrative of Our Region’s Athletic Heritage.  Pick a number and highlight an athlete — person, place or thing — most obviously connected to it by fame and fortune, someone who isn’t so obvious, and then take a deeper dive into the most interesting story tied to it. It’s a combination of star power, achievement, longevity, notoriety, and, above all, what makes that athlete so Southern California. Quirkiness and notoriety factor in. And it should open itself to more discussion and debate — which is what sports is best at doing.

The most obvious choices for No. 56:

= 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
= Kole Calhoun, Los Angeles Angels
= Dennis Johnson, USC football
= Morgan Fox, Los Angeles Chargers

The most interesting story for No. 56:
Gary Zimmerman, Los Angeles Express (1984 to 1985)
Southern California map pinpoints:
Fullerton, Walnut, Manhattan Beach, Long Beach, Los Angeles (Coliseum)

Gary Zimmerman had Steve Young’s back.

And in the 1980s, as a right tackle on the offensive line protecting a very mobile and ultra-valuable left-handed scrambling quarterback, that’s what blind-side mattered most for the insatiable Los Angeles Express of the equally mercenary United States Football League.

The Express gave soldier-of-fortune Zimmerman an X-factor platform to show his talents. It was career move that would reward the Fullerton-born, Walnut High standout who just finished a sparkling career at the University of Oregon with a chance, on paper, to earn millions while he figured out his life’s true ambitions.

There was risk to the reward — unnecessary injury, professional ridicule, growing-pain drama. But the fact Zimmerman ended up in the Pro Football Hall of Fame with a bronze bust after all was done gives that USFL/Express experience an exclamation point.

That crazy spring league wasn’t a bust for him.                                           

The United States Football League had a name that seemed to demand a sense of duty to country and capitalism for any able-body college player wanting to serve a greater purpose. Specifically in the calendar months between Presidents Day and the Fourth of July — and you gotta work on Easter Sunday.

The Express was one of its original dozen teams to capitalize on this opportunity when the USFL sprung up as a spring league in 1983. It would go away ingloriously in 1985, buried in court documents.

The USFL, in the end, may have seemed to be a few vowels short of being really useful. But it actually was for guys like Zimmerman.