fartheroffthewall

No. 28: Jack Robinson

July 18, 2024October 21, 2026 fartheroffthewall

This post is part of a media project called 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 consider the list of athletes attached to it. Who wore it best? Or, what’s the most compelling story linked to it? Any person, place or thing is in play with Southern California connections. Star power, transformational achievement, longevity, notoriety and quirkiness all factor in. Whatever leads to a lively discussion and interpretation.

The most obvious choices for No. 28:

Anthony Davis: USC football, Southern California Sun, Los Angeles Rams and Los Angeles Express via San Fernando High School
Jack Robinson: UCLA football
Bert Blyleven: California Angels
Albie Pearson: Los Angeles/California Angels
Wes Parker: Los Angeles Dodgers
Pedro Guerrero: Los Angeles Dodgers

The not-so-obvious choices for No. 28:

Mike Marshall: Los Angeles Dodgers
Rui Hachimura: Los Angeles Lakers, Los Angeles Clippers

The most interesting story for No. 28:
Jack Robinson: UCLA football running back/defensive back (1939 to 1941) via Pasadena High and Pasadena City College
Southern California map pinpoints:
Pasadena, L.A. Coliseum, Westwood

Reference books on the subject:
“The Black Bruins: The Remarkable Lives of UCLA’s Jackie Robinson, Woody Strode, Tom Bradley, Kenny Washington, and Ray Bartlett,” by James W. Johnson, 2018
“I Never Had It Made: An Autobiography,” by Jackie Robinson as told to Alfred Duckett, 1972
“Jackie Robinson: A Biography,” by Arnold Rampersad, 1991
“Baseball’s Great Experiment: Jackie Robinson and His Legacy,” by Jules Tygiel, 1983

Jackie Robinson and the No. 42 are inseparable by now. The number randomly handed to him when he joined the Brooklyn Dodgers to make his Major League Baseball debut in 1947 — regrettably, never to be worn as a Los Angeles Dodger.

Forty-two has been codified to represent him as well as anyone who believes in social justice reform.

The thing is, Robinson wouldn’t have been in that position had he not made a name for himself as an athlete — going by his given first name of Jack — and putting on No. 28 as a star football player for a brief time at UCLA.

A multi-sided plaque sits on the curb at the property where 121 Pepper Street in Pasadena would have been Jack and Mack Robinson’s home growing up, from 1922 to 1946. The home site is less than two miles away from the Rose Bowl.

A four-sport athlete at John Muir High in Pasadena, Robinson first made his way to Pasadena City College. When he joined UCLA’s baseball team for his only season in 1940, what number did he wear? No one can definitely come up with anything — not No. 42, or anything else. This appears to be the only photo of him in a Bruins baseball jersey, as part of a team shot, back row, far left. Keeping a bit of distance from the others.

At Pasadena City College, according to the California Community Colleges website, Robinson batted .417 with 43 runs scored in 24 games in 1938. UCLA records say Robinson posted a .097 batting average in 1940, which included getting four hits and stealing home twice among four bases stolen in one game. He also reportedly stole home 19 times.

A Robinson UCLA replica football jersey sells at Ebbets Field Flannels (of all company names) for $350.

He also wore No. 18 as a UCLA All-Conference basketball player. But it was in football where the headlines came.

First, at PCC, Robinson wore No. 55 — that’s what he’s wearing on a statue outside the Rose Bowl honoring that part of his life. Robinson still owns a school record for the longest run from scrimmage, 99 yards.

But for the two years he played football at UCLA, here is a summary that Andy Wittry of NCAA.com pieced it together in 2024 through newspaper clippings:

Jackie Robinson is given his No. 28 jersey prior to the 1939 season. (Photo: UCLA Faculty Association Blogspot).

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No. 25: Tommy John and Dr. Frank Jobe (and Steve Busby)

July 17, 2024October 23, 2026 fartheroffthewall

The most obvious choices for No. 25:

Gail Goodrich: UCLA basketball and Los Angeles Lakers
Tommy John: Los Angeles Dodgers
Jim Abbott: California Angels
Troy Glaus: UCLA baseball and Anaheim Angels
Norm Van Brocklin: Los Angeles Rams

The not-so-obvious choices for No. 25:

Rafer Johnson: UCLA basketball
Paul Westphal: Aviation High of Manhattan Beach, USC basketball
JK McKay: USC football
Frank Howard: Los Angeles Dodgers

The most interesting story for No. 25:
Tommy John: Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher (1972-74, 1976-78), California Angels pitcher (1982 to 1985)
Southern California map pinpoints:
Inglewood (The Kerlan-Jobe Orthopaedic Clinic at Centinela Hospital, known today as the Cedars Sinai Kerlan-Jobe Institute in Santa Monica); Downey (Rancho Los Amigos Hospital); Los Angeles (Dodger Stadium), Anaheim (Angels Stadium)

Reference books on the subject:
“The Tommy John Story,” by Tommy and Sally John, with Joe Musser, 1978
“The Sally and Tommy John Story: Our Life in Baseball,” by Tommy and Sally John, 1983
“T. J.: My 26 Years in Baseball,” by Tommy John, with Dan Valenti, 1991
“Athletic Forever: The Kerlan-Jobe Orthopaedic Clinic Plan for Lifetime Fitness,” by Frank Jobe, 1999
“The Arm: Inside the Billion-Dollar Mystery of the Most Valuable Commodity in Sports,” by Jeff Passan, 2016
“Minimize Injury, Maximize Performance: A Sports Parent’s Survival Guide,” by Dr. Tommy John with Myatt Murphy, 2018
“The Tommy John Protocol: How to Rebuild Your Arm, Your Mind, and Your Faith,” by Tejay Antone, 2026

Tommy John is interviewed by NBC’s Tony Kubek as the Dodgers start the 1974 World Series against Oakland without their ace, who shows off the long cast that had been put onto his left arm by Dr. Frank Jobe just weeks earlier.

When Tommy John’s 26-season career totals as a Major League Baseball pitcher between 1963 and 1989 unravel like a sales receipt from CVS, there’s a breaking point. Scrunched into a Baseball Reference website template, and splits into two distinct hemispheres, the 1975 midway line/equator clearly reads: “Did not play – injured (Eponymous Surgical Procedure).”

Something is eponymous if a person, place or thing is named after someone. In the world of eponymics, Tommy John Surgery is right there in baseball lore with Lou Gehrig’s Disease, the Pesky Pole, the Mendoza Line or the Cy Young Award.

Since 2019, Merriam-Webster dictionary defined it, along with the proper phonetics:

The restoration hardware needed to rebuild the integrity of a Ulnar Collateral Ligament has declared Tommy John to be Patient Zero. Someone had, either out of desperation or a sense of adventure, to trust a doctor’s creative mind, and then be brave enough to try something unorthodox. Maybe it felt like a Thelma-and-Louise moment with their careers pointed toward the Grand Canyon.

All in all, what did Tommy John have to lose?

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No. 71: John Ferraro

July 17, 2024October 23, 2026 fartheroffthewall

The most obvious choices for No. 71:

Brad Budde: USC football
Tony Boselli: USC football
Kris Farris: UCLA football
Joe Scibelli: Los Angeles Rams

The not-so-obvious choices for No. 71:
John Ferraro: USC football
Randy Meadows: Downey High football

The most interesting story for No. 71:
John Ferraro: USC football offensive lineman (1943-1944, 1946-1947)
Southern California map pinpoints:
Cudahy, L.A. Coliseum, Los Angeles City Hall

For two bits, college football fans who got their hands on the 1946 Street & Smith’s Football Pictorial Yearbook got their money’s worth alone from John Ferraro’s fierce million-dollar glare.

A small caption off his right shoulder that reads “FERRARO U.S.C.” gives the only hint of who we see. Inside, the table of contents lists his full name appears along with the photographer who made special use of a new film material called Kodachrome.

As a USC All-American tackle in ’43 and ’44, coming back to play after military duty during World War II in 1945, Ferraro was among some of the game’s greats at the time in history. Army’s Glenn Davis, “Mr. Outside” out of Bonita High in La Verne, just finished second in the Heisman Trophy in ’44 and ’45. Teammate Doc Blanchard, “Mr. Inside,” won the Heisman in ’45.

Yet for this cover, the publishers picked Ferraro.

“If any tackle in this land of ours has ever played better ball, he must be Superman and Hercules rolled into one,” Braven Dyer bravely once wrote for Los Angeles Times in 1944 after Ferraro pushed the Trojans to a 28-21 victory at the Coliseum over the San Diego Naval Training Station Bluejackets. “When Big John goes to work, he’s dynamite.”

Hyperbole aside, the quip holds true today. Any Los Angeles civic leader tenacious enough to accomplish something for the good of the town, they can measure themselves up against John Ferraro, a Rose Bowl legend and U.S. Navy vet rolled into one, who starting a heritage of USC standout linemen who sported the No. 71 and became a legendary political figure that helped shape the dreams of the city.

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No. 98: Parnelli Jones (and J.C. Agajanian)

July 16, 2024August 11, 2026 fartheroffthewall

The most obvious choices for No. 98:

Tom Harmon: Los Angeles Rams halfback
Kevin Cogan: Indianapolis 500 driver

The most interesting story for No. 98:
Parnelli Jones, race car driver (1949 to 1973)
Southern California map pinpoints:
San Pedro, Torrance, Palos Verdes Estates, Rolling Hills, Gardena (Ascot Park)

Reference books on the subject:
“As A Matter of Fact, I Am Parnelli Jones,” by Parnelli Jones with Bones Bourcier, 2012
“Parnelli: A Story of Auto Racing,” by Bill Libby, 1969

Parnelli Jones shows off his memoir in 2012. (Photo by The Daily Breeze).

In the preface to his 2012 memoir, Parnelli Jones recalls a time where he didn’t really fight the law, and the law didn’t win either. It just made for a fantastic encounter.

This goes back to 1964 and, as he wrote, “my name had really gotten around. I’d won the Indianapolis 500 in ’63, which earned me a lot of attention in the media. That was true pretty much everywhere, especially in Southern California because from the time I’d started racing I listed Torrance as my hometown.”

He admitted he was “honking down” the Long Beach Freeway, the 710, in a Ford Fairlane given to him by stock car owner Vel Miletich, someone who would be his partner in a chain of tire stores and car dealerships as well as engineer vehicles for his career. That would be Vels’ Parnelli Jones Racing team.

“This Fairlane had a souped-up engine with three carburetors,” Jones continued. “Vel said it would pass anything on the road; I told him in passed everything but a gas station.”

Admitting to “cruising along pretty fast,” Jones saw the blue lights of a California Highway Patrol car in his rear-view mirror. As he dug around for his license and registration, Jones said he had the documents ready for when the patrolman came up to his driver’s side door.

” ‘You were going pretty fast,’ he said. ‘Who do you think you are, Parnelli Jones?’

“Later on, I had a few incidents similar to that one, but there’s nothing like hearing a line like that for the first time. It was such a kick that for a moment I wasn’t even mad at myself for getting stopped. I handed the cop my papers and said, ‘As a matter of face, I am Parnelli Jones.'”

Jones’ book, and its likeable title, was released 50 years after that ’63 Indy win when he commandeered the No. 98 Willard Battery Special roadster owned by J.C. Agajanian. It may have been leaking oil but it slid past the competition for another piece of lore in The Greatest Spectacle in Racing.

That also opened the eyes and ears of car-crazy Southern California.

His surname may have been fairly common, even for a someone who uncommonly raced everything from old jalopies at Carrell Speedway in Gardena, NASCAR four-door stocks in Daytona, won Trans-Am titles, and even claimed a dune buggy championship in the Baja 1000.

It was that nickname catapulting him forward.

Most knew him by his first name, Rufus. Parnell was his middle name. His mother, Dovie, named him after Rufus Parnell, a judge who she worked for in Arkansas.

When he was 17 and legally too young to race cars, he and his friends came up with a name to get past track officials that wouldn’t be too recognizable. His friend Billy Calder would tease him that a girl in school named Nellie really liked him, so somehow Calder took Jones’ middle name and started call him “Parnellie.” In 1951, Calder was also in charge of lettering the race car. Painting the driver’s name on the door, next to their No. 66, Calder came up with the alias “Parnellie Jones.”

“We lost the ‘e’ somewhere along the way,” Jones adds in the book preface, “but I’ve been ‘Parnelli’ every since.”

He made quick work of it.

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No. 52: Keith Wilkes / Jamaal Wilkes

July 16, 2024July 22, 2026 fartheroffthewall

The most obvious choices for No. 52:

Keith Wilkes: UCLA basketball
Jamaal Wilkes: Los Angeles Lakers/Clippers
Marv Goux: USC football
Jack Del Rio: USC football
Khalil Mack: Los Angeles Chargers

The not-so-obvious choices for No. 52:

Happy Hairston: Los Angeles Lakers
Burr Baldwin: Los Angeles Dons
Eddie Piatkowski: Los Anglees Clippers

The most interesting story for No. 52:
Keith Wilkes: UCLA basketball forward (1971-72 to 1973-74)
Jamaal Wilkes: Los Angeles Lakers forward (1977-78 to 1984-85); Los Angeles Clippers forward (1985-86)
Southern California map pinpoints:
Santa Barbara; Westwood (UCLA); Inglewood (Forum)

Reference books on the subject:
“Jamaal Wilkes: Memoirs of the Original Smooth as Silk,” with Edward Reynolds Davis Jr., 2015

Jerry West, James Worthy, Jamaal Wilkes, Elgin Baylor, and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar pose during the jersey retirement ceremony of Jamaal Wilkes at Staples Center on December 28, 2012 (Photo by Andrew D. Bernstein/NBAE via Getty Images)

Before he was Jamaal, he was Keith. And before that, Jackie.

Before he was smooth as “Silk,” he was a little corny as “Cornbread.”

Two weeks before Keith Wilkes’ UCLA No. 52 was retired at Pauley Pavilion in January 2013, Jamaal Wilkes’ Lakers’ No. 52 was put up on the wall at Crypto.com Arena in December of 2012. It’s understandable that the No. 52 he wore for the Clippers in the waning days before his retirement from the NBA wasn’t put in the rafters.

Eighteen years before he was inducted into Springfield’s Basketball Hall of Fame in 2012, he was already assigned a spot in Westwood’s UCLA Athletic Hall of Fame.

For the most part, it was his poetic ability to master a deadly side-winding shot that looked as if he was flyfishing, and resulted in Lakers broadcaster Chick Hearn referring to it as another “20-foot layup.”

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