What if we told you the history of Southern California sports can be explained by 101 numbers that have been worn on the front, back, or elsewhere on a jersey or uniform by some of the most influential athletes over the last, say, 101 years?
If that’s a bit too dramatic, we’ll dial it back.
In telling the story of how Southern California sports has come into existence and continues to dominate much of our attention, adoration and advertising dollars, we’ve found a common denominator.
From 00 to 0 to 50 to 99, and everything digit in between, it can be examined, appreciated and played forward.
Unlock the combinations and see where we get.
There are a couple of layers on this wedding cake to cut through. Knives out.
One approach: Call out a jersey number, and then link to it the first name you think about in Southern California sports history.
If it’s 22, 13 and 44, it’s Elgin Baylor, Wilt Chamberlain and Jerry West. Laker royalty.
Unless it’s Clayton Kershaw, Caleb Williams and Darryl Strawberry. Then we have to have a discussion. Let the superlatives commence.
What number represents the greatest collection of athletes in L.A.-O.C. history?
It’s likely No. 32 – Magic Johnson, Sandy Koufax, Bill Walton, Marcus Allen, Orenthal James Simpson, Jonathan Quick … that’s just the top layer of cheese in the French Onion soup bowl. So who owned it best?
There’s no wrong answer. Unless you follow the logic we lay out at a future date.
George Steinbrenner got into a scuffle with the two Dodgers fans in an elevator at the Hyatt Wilshire Hotel in Los Angeles during the 1981 World Series.
Broke his land. Left the two lads cowering and running away. The fans were razzing him because his Yankees, after winning the first two games of the series in New York, were just swept in three games at Dodger Stadium and heading back to the Bronx wounded.
At least that’s the story the late Yankees owner took to his grave.
So …….. Did it happen?
United Press International, a major wire service at the time, wrote it up, crediting a source for its information. (The source: Steinbrenner). The New York Times seemed a bit more skeptical when it reported that “cheerful” Steinbrenner “summoned a group of reporters to his hotel suite at 11:30 last night to explain what had happened and display his wounds — a bump on the head, a swollen lip, a right hand with a bandage over his cuts and an apparently broken left hand with a bandage over the cast.”
The news George Steinbrenner makes is only part of the fun. We get more laughs trying to figure out what really happened.
Hotel security and L.A. police said Steinbrenner made no report of the incident.
Maybe it happened exactly the way Steinbrenner told it.
Reporters went to other Yankee pugilists for comment yesterday. At the L.A. airport, Reggie Jackson said, “I don’t know anything about it. Don’t ask me.” Relief pitcher Rich Gossage, who sprained his thumb in a clubhouse scuffle two seasons ago, laughed and said of Steinbrenner’s broken hand in its cast, “George wouldn’t punch anyone . . . He must have caught it in an elevator.”
In 2004, the New York Times’ Murray Chass revisited it. Again with a lack of conviction, since there were no convictions:
Joe Louis? Rocky Marciano? Sugar Ray Robinson? They apparently had nothing on Steinbrenner.
Steinbrenner, 51 years old at the time, said that in rapid succession he threw three punches — two rights and a left. Down went the first miscreant; down went the second.
Muhammad Ali? He might have stung like a bee, but Steinbrenner said he swung a sledgehammer.
”I clocked them,” Steinbrenner told reporters just before midnight in a news conference he called in his hotel suite. ”There are two guys in this town looking for their teeth and two guys who will probably sue me.”
Bizarre as it might have been, the story of the fight remains part of the lore of the Steinbrenner years. What other owner could have engaged in such an episode? Peter O’Malley? Carl Pohlad? Bud Selig? Marge Schott?
No, this is one of those things that makes Steinbrenner special. He won’t be around forever, but this tale will be.
Steinbrenner died in 2010 at age 80. Still the undisputed champion of owner brawls during a World Series.
Crack open this collection of 18 stories that happened during baseball’s “glory” time of October, this would have been the time for a new revelation: The guys who did it have fessed up. The hotel security camera footage has been revealed. Hal Steinbrenner unsealed his father’s confessions that it was all a ruse — there was an elevator malfunction and he tried to punch himself out of the roof because he was claustrophobic but it just caused more damage.
Alas, this story isn’t included. A swing-and-a-missed opportunity.
But it’s not like it’s going away. During the 2023 World Series, a site called the BroBible in a piece by someone named deputy editor Connor Toole retooled it.
“If the entire thing was, in fact, an elaborate ruse, it didn’t have the intended effect, as the Yankees ended up losing the World Series by falling to the Dodgers in Game 6.”
The lede was buried. Down went Steinbrenner. Down went the Yankees. The Boss’ split lip didn’t help resolve this Split Season mess.
Nevertheless, there was some other things worth revisiting.
Mike Andrews, Oakland A’s reserve second baseman, 1973 World Series, when owner Charlie Finley tried to get his medical team to declare him unfit for duty (after he made a couple of costly errors during an extra-inning lost), and the team threatened to boycott the rest of the series against the Mets.
Rube Marquard, the Brooklyn Robins pitcher busted for trying to scalp tickets before Game 4 of the 1920 World Series. Then his wife divorced him. He still made it into Baseball’s Hall of Fame with a record of 201-177 and 3.08 ERA as “probably the worst starting pitcher” ever allowed into Cooperstown according to Bill James, most of his fame based on three very good years for the New York Giants from 1911 to ’13, and a 19-win season for Brooklyn.
Tom Browning, who disappeared during Game 2 of the 1990 World Series when Cincinnati Reds manager Lou Pinella went looking for him as a game was going into extra innings. Browning’s wife went into labor. He left the park without telling anyone. The team sent word through the TV broadcast that he was needed back as the game was going long.
Bill Bevens, the New York Yankees pitcher who was one out from a no-hitter in Game 4 of the 1947 World Series against the Brooklyn Dodgers, lost it, pitched 2 2/3 more inning of relief in Game 7 and never pitched another game again because of a bad arm.
Brian Doyle, not the Yankees’ 1978 World Series MVP in their win over the Dodgers, but he could have been based on his two three-hit games in Games 5 and 6, finishing the series with a .438 average, and never hit .200 in a season after that.
And on, and on …
How it goes in the scorebook
Lots of great topic ideas. Not a lot of fulfilling execution.Only seven people were interviewed for this … and a couple, it seems, just to get blurbs.
There’s also a lot of extraneous background material on the Series itself before we get to the prime suspect of the chapter. Some of it is great to know. But too many details muck things up. Publishers’ Weekly backs this up: “Though the anecdotes occasionally amuse, they’re bogged down by a surfeit of background. Only die-hard baseball fans need apply.”
Circle back in October and maybe this will feel more relevant.
For now, kinda trivial. Unless you got new info on Steinbrenner and the two dudes from L.A. …
Daniel Bard prepares to pitch in the ninth inning for the Boston Red Sox against the Houston Astros on April 25, 2013. Two days later, he was sent to the minors, his career seemingly over. (AP Photo/Michael Dwyer)
The Major League Baseball odyssey of pitcher Daniel Bard continues to play out like a Shakespeare soliloquy.
Bard’s first act, five seasons from 2009 to 2013 with Boston, and his second act, five more seasons from ’20 to this calendar year with Colorado, had an eight-year intermission.
Can he explain this 2,600-plus day gap in his resume.
Yup. He had the yips.
In ’23, a season where he spent three stints on the injury list for the Rockies, he pitched a game against his former team at Fenway Park. And got the win. Ten years after he departed from the team under a storm cloud in his mind.
New Yorker magazine made note of this achievement, and explained his plight:
Everyone figured that Bard would become a star. Instead, he lost control of his pitches. He missed spots by inches, then by feet. The ball would leave his hand traveling 97 mph, then bounce in the dirt, or sail toward the backstop, or drill the batter’s shoulder. Each time, he had to get back on the rubber to throw another pitch, with no idea where it would go. He blew leads. He bruised batters. He stood on the lonely island of the mound, engulfed by jeers. He was sent to the minors, where he spent five years trying to relearn what had once felt automatic. Finally, in 2017, he quit.
There are other cases, in baseball history, of players who suddenly couldn’t pitch or throw. It’s an affliction so dreaded that players sometimes refer to it as a disease or a monster — if they’re willing to talk about it at all. But Bard came to realize the necessity of facing it. Two years after retiring, he returned to baseball and became one of the most dominant relievers in the game. It was a remarkable and unprecedented comeback. It wouldn’t be his last.
Bard told the Boston Herald: “It’s wild, man. It’s definitely a little bit surreal, in a good way. I always wanted to come take my kids to a game here when they got a little older, I didn’t think I’d be playing in it, I thought I’d just be taking them as a fan.”
Wild indeed.
Bard’s last appearance in Boston: April 27, 2013. Two walks and allowing a run without recording an out in a 8-4 loss to Houston. He was sent to the minor leagues, released, and it looked like it was done.
But after a break, Bard proclaimed in 2018 he would try again. He signed a minor-league deal with Colorado in 2020. He made the opening day roster in the pandemic-shortened season. By ’22, he was one of the league’s top closers with 34 saves and a 1.79 ERA.
“It’s crazy, it’s wild that I’m here,” he said again.
In ’23, he started the season on the 15-day injured list, missing three weeks. He made the courageous declaration that it had to do with anxiety issues. It made sense. While pitching for Team USA in the 2023 World Baseball Classic, during a March 18 game against Venezuela, Bard faced four batters. All reached base, including Jose Altuve, who Bard hit with a pitch that left the Astros star with a broken thumb, needing surgery and forcing the Astros’ All Star him to miss the season’s first 43 games.
By the end of ’23, Bard had two more IL stints, with right forearm fatigue, and finally at the end with a right forearm flexor strain. But as the 38-year-old enters the final year of a two-year, $19 million contract, he is back on the 60-day IL to start the 2024 season. In spring training, he tore the meniscus in his left knee while playing catch. Then it was discovered he needs surgery to repair the flexor tendon in his right elbow and will not pitch again in ’24.
“My tendency is to rush things back. If I could be pitching at even 80 percent. I’m going to find a way to be out there,” Bard told MLB.com last February from his home in Greenville, S.C. “This forces me to pull the reins back and just take things a little slower. It’ll be a good thing in the end.”
The Bard of Avon, William Shakespeare, wrote in Act II of his play “As You Like It”:
“Sweet are the uses of adversity, which, like the toad, ugly and venomous, wears yet a precious jewel in his head; and this our life, exempt from public haunt, finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in every thing.”
It’s been noted that in Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet,” two star-crossed lovers are faced with great adversity, hiding their romance from their feuding families. As we recall from our high school honors English class, it didn’t end well.
As for Shakespeare lines above, however, there are many interpretations of what that actually means. One writer spelled out what it has meant to her:
Adversity builds character: Going through tough times can teach us important lessons about resilience, determination, and perseverance. When we overcome challenges, we become stronger and more capable of facing future obstacles.
Adversity fosters creativity: When we’re forced to think outside the box in order to solve problems, we can come up with innovative solutions that we might not have otherwise considered.
Adversity promotes growth: Facing adversity can force us to confront our weaknesses and limitations, and can push us to improve ourselves in order to meet the challenges ahead.
We’re almost positive the Bard of Colorado, Daniel, could relate to this. Just don’t go Willy Loman on us at this point of the journey.
If we check our Spark Notes, it reads: Between 1595 and 1600 Shakespeare faced a series of adversities that no doubt affected him profoundly, even as he continued to produce first-rate plays at a blistering pace. Many of the adversities that arose during this time related to the precariousness of the theater. In 1595 the Lord Chamberlain’s Men were preparing to move into a new theater in the Blackfriars district of London, when the Countess Elizabeth intervened. … Another patron adopted the players, but also because the company underwent a restructuring that involved the actors themselves, Shakespeare included, taking a financial stake in the company. The construction of the famous Globe Theater in 1599 ensured the company’s survival into the next century. Perhaps the greatest adversity Shakespeare faced during this period was the death of his only son, Hamnet (a twin, with a sister Judith). Scholars speculate that though Shakespeare no doubt grieved Hamnet’s death at the time, this grief would not find expression in his writing until around 1600, when he wrote the play that bears his dead son’s name—“Hamnet” and “Hamlet” were synonymous at the time. If this is true, then Shakespeare’s expression of grief takes an unexpected form in the play. Instead of the central grief being that of a beloved son’s death, the play centers on the murder of a cherished father.
If you’ve made this far, how about a reminder about This Date in Baseball: April 23, 2022: Detroit’s future Hall of Famer Miguel Cabrera collected his 3,000th hit.
And, This Date in Global History: April 23, 1564: William Shakespeare is born, 460 years ago, in Stratford-upon-Avon, England. Although his official date of birth is unknown, this is when it is observed, since records show he was baptized three days later. Where exactly was he born? Depends on who you ask.
And, April 23, 1616, at age 52, William Shakespeare died, in Stratford-upon-Avon. His final resting place is in that city’s Church of the Holy Trinity. His headstone reads:
Good friend, for Jesus’ sake forbear, To dig the dust enclosed here. Blessed be the man that spares these stones, And cursed be he that moves my bones.
Cabrera was 39 when he reached his 3,000th hit. It is said Shakespeare’s number of dramatic works were about 39. Scholars debate that, as well as which ones were comedies, tragedies or dramas. That can add to the drama.
Samuel Crowl, an international Shakespeare scholar and fan of the Detroit Tigers, loves to make delicious connections between his two passions in this hymnal of a book project, a memoir that allows us to stretch our creative minds and find another way baseball permeates our belief that the play’s the thing we all embrace.
Crowl, awarded an Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters at Ohio University in 2015 and was its commencement speaker, writes he made his first Bard-Tiger connection in the summer of 1950. As a 10-year-old, he admired Detroit pitcher Hal Newhouser as he outlasted the Chicago White Sox in the first game Crowl attended. “Prince Hal,” as Newhouser was known, was the name of Shakespeare character given to Henry V of England in two plays, “Henry IV, Part 1” and “Henry IV, Part 2,” a term Falstaff uses to describe the lad who would ascend to the throne.
The first Shakespeare play Crowl was at age 12 — Alec Guinness as Richard III in nearby Ontario, Canada. His parents took him on repeated summer trips to Stratford, “where Shakespeare established his power on my imagination.”
Once you sense the overlap from Alec Guinness to Al Kaline, from Ian McKellen to Kirk Gibson, or Simon Russell Beale to Sparky Anderson, you can’t help yourself, finding some comfort in watching the Tigers’ ups and downs and going sideways over the years as the city of Detroit continues to have its own social growing pains, and Crowl views it from his residence in Bloomington, Indiana and lately from Athens, Ohio.
The third element of Crowl’s project is also how he used the first two elements to connect to his family, especially when writing letters to his children to update them on the Tigers’ progress as they were away at school. He could find himself at a Shakespeare Association of America convention with access to Fenway Park where his Tigers happened to be playing the Red Sox on Opening Day 1988 — Kirk Gibson had just departed to the Dodgers, and now it’s Alan Trammell, batting cleanup as the shortstop, hitting a two-run homer in the 10th inning to win the game for Jack Morris, triumphing over Roger Clemens. Yes, on Opening Day, both Morris (nine Ks, three earned runs) and Clemens (11 Ks, three earned runs) went the first nine innings. Morris got the win as he was still the pitcher of record. Red Sox reliever Lee Smith took the loss. And that ’88 season ended with the Red Sox winning the AL East by one game over the Tigers.
“This little book has three bases and a longing for home,” Crowl writes at the start.
Besides, as Crowl continues, “baseball is the writer’s game. Poets, novelists, essayists, biographers, historians and even Shakespeareans have found the game irresistible. Writers love the pace and grace of the game and the way it invites history to seep into the watching of any individual encounter. What other game has its own national anthem (played not at the beginning, but as the game reaches its climax), an Iowa field of dreams, and mock-epic poem?”
You can’t help but keep going stanza after stanza.
How it goes in the scorebook
Poetic in that we rose today, finished reading this, produced the review, and felt as if we actually seized the day, as they say. Mostly, seized the date — Four-twenty-three-twenty four could be just the right combination for a comedy of eras.
It’s time to settle once and for all the debate over the first references in print to the game of baseball. The earliest references to baseball occur in the plays of William Shakespeare and include the following:
“And so I shall catch the fly” (“Henry V,” Act V, scene ii). “I’ll catch it ere it come to ground” (“Macbeth,” III, v). “A hit, a very palpable hit!” (“Hamlet,” V, ii). “You may go walk” (“Taming of the Shrew,” II, i). “Strike!” (“Richard III,” I, iv). “For this relief much thanks” (“Hamlet,” I, i). “You have scarce time to steal” (“Henry VIII,” III, ii). “O hateful error” (“Julius Caesar,” V, i). “Run, run, O run!” (“King Lear,” V, iii). “Fair is foul and foul is fair” (“Macbeth,” I, i). “My arm is sore” (“Antony and Cleopatra,” II, v). “I have no joy in this contract” (“Romeo and Juliet,” II, ii).
I trust that the question of who first wrote about baseball is now finally settled. = Earl L. Dachslager, The Woodlands, Tex.
If Angel Hernandez is the only umpire you know by name currently working MLB games, heaven help us.
If he is showing some bedeviling trending on social media at any moment, be sure there’s hell to pay.
His most recent career arch has been, from every vantage point, detrimental for the game’s credibility. And it is amplified even more because of those in the sports wagering business fully engaged in the MLB’s revenue stream and demanding more accuracy in all outcomes. As a result, human error is no longer tolerated. Human incompetence and arrogance make it even more cringe-worthy.
Today’s MLB — following the lead of the NFL — has expanded its video replay system to get as many calls “right” as possible. It compromises the game’s ebb and flow, stopping the action as various moments of suspense to make fans and players await an outcome that, right or wrong, at least allows the game to continue. Soon enough, the unrefinement of robotic umpires, currently testing out in the minor leagues, are in the on-deck circle for MLB usage.
If the future of robo-calls ever come to pass in the MLB, Angel Hernandez will likely be blamed for it.
Loud boos at Dodger Stadium when tonight's second base umpire (Angel Hernández) was announced
Since he came into the National League umpire ranks in 1991 and then was part of the merger of the league’s crews in 2000, Hernandez has now got his Wikipedia page that clearly has a red-flag warning: “Hernandez has been involved in several controversial incidents and has been widely criticized by players, coaches, and fans throughout his career.”
The 63-year-old, by the way, has not worked a World Series since 2002, or a championship series since 2005. It caused him to file a federal discrimination lawsuit in 2017 claiming he’s been wronged. The court action failed. Yet, he keeps working. Because he’s such a nice guy and has a strong union behind him? That seems to be the case.
I understand that the legal process necessary to terminate Angel Hernandez would be painful, but at this point I think it needs to be said that MLB is disrespecting the fans by not doing it. No one SEEMS to be doing anything about a situation that is an ongoing embarrassment.
His work on the basepaths are one thing. He’s had plenty of those safe-out calls overturned by replay. Yet some of his balls-and-strike calls behind the plate come out above average. Not always, but when he does blow it, he does it spectacularly. To be fair, he did a pretty fair job behind the plate during the Dodgers-Mets game on Sunday at Dodger Stadium. A 95 percent overall accuracy and 95 percent overall consistency in a 10-0 game is considered nice and clean:
However, the game before that one looked more like a Rorschach test with an 85 percent called-strike accuracy — 11 of 72 called strikes were actually balls.
And then there’s this chart 2023, said to be the lowest single-game accuracy rate any MLB umpire over the previous five years. Almost one of every three called strikes was actually a ball. In a 2-0 game, that’s pretty huge:
When Hunter Wendelstedt was behind the place for an April 22 game between the New York Yankees and Oakland Athletics, and ended up ejecting Yankees manager Aaron Boone five pitches in, it was the start of a long day for the ump. His called strike accuracy was only 68 percent.
Which leads us now to the overall question for an arbitrator:
When did umpires come about, why were they actually needed, how were they trained, what is their evolution and … is it still the best-case scenario if fans never get to know their names?
In this moment of time, veteran umpire researcher and University of Utah history professor Larry Gerlach has called our attention to a gem of a project.
In his introduction, the author of the 1980 book, “The Men in Blue: Conversations with Umpires” (originally published by Viking Press, with a 1994 version updated by University of Nebraska Press — and Hernandez is not included in the new material) dials it back to the life and times of someone once referred to as “Blind Bob” Emslie.
It was also a book Gerlach said he didn’t intend to write. He knew nothing about Emslie until March 2019 when heard about him in a baseball history symposium. He decided “an Emslie biography would not only address a void in baseball literature but also amplify baseball’s pursuit to legitimize the modern game and track the umpiring’s transition from “a contentious temporary job to an esteemed professional career.”
Because of Gerlach extensive research — in today’s world, that means having access to many more pieces of game stories and box scores than in the past — it’s not out of the question that Emslie will end up on some future Baseball Hall of Fame Veterans Committee ballots, joining the lonesome 10 already inducted over the last 80-plus years for their outstanding work.
This rare phototype drawing from the 1890 Sporting Life sells for $75 on eBay.
Before setting records for longevity as an umpire, Emslie, born in 1859, was a darn-good player — Canadian born, left-handed pitcher for three seasons for the Baltimore Orioles of the American Association (44-40, 3.08 ERA, 82 complete games in 86 starts). His most amazing stats: Posting a 32-17 record in ’84 with a 2.74 ERA in 50 starts, and 50 complete games, logging 455 1/3 innings. He pitched four more games for the AA’s Philadelphia Athletics before he was done with a sore arm in 1885.
Three years later, he entered the umpire profession, somewhat by accident because one was needed at a game he was attending. First, in the minor leagues, then in the American Association by 1890, then with the National League starting in 1891.
Players could get on him for many reasons but one nickname that stuck was “Wig” because of a receding hairline (he actually wore a toupee during his playing career).
The other night, my wife fell into a deep New York state of mind.
It had nothing to do with New York’s Mets (and hotshot Pete Alonzo) coming into L.A. to face the Dodgers. Or anticipating New York’s Yankees (and hotshot Alex Verdugo) coming to Orange County in about a month and trying to arrange for tickets behind the dugout.
It was all because of that Billy Joel TV concert special, and he started playing “New York State of Mind.”
Mind you, tears actually welled in her eyes as she sang along, all those sappy lyrics. She couldn’t help herself. While California born and reared, she lived for a time as a working adult on Long Island, and felt a real connection to the New York lifestyle — high energy, fast moving, get the hell out of my way if you’re not ready to order your bagel.
Everything this ballad isn’t by the way.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the queen-sized bed — if it matters, I’m more a “King of Queens” guy — this was all a distraction. I was trying to cry my way through “The New York Game: Baseball and the Rise of a New City.”
All those people in Madison Square Garden singing along to the song made me want to hop a flight to Hollywood. And I wasn’t even there.
That post season journey included witnessing the Nats dissemble the 106-win Dodgers, going the distance in a best-of-five National League Divisional Series. The last win was executed at Dodger Stadium. There was heck to pay.
That NL East wild-card team had the “Baby Shark” power. And Anthony Rendon’s idiotic stats (34 HRs, 126 RBIs, 117 runs, .319 average). And rookie Juan Soto’s muscle. And Trea Turner’s speed. And veteran Howie Kendrick’s grand-slam gumption. And veteran Kurt Suzkuki’s intelligence. And the arms of Stephen Stasburg and Max Scherzer and do-nothing Sean Doolittle. And a year removed from Bryce Harper.
“You have a great year, and you can run into a buzz saw,” Strasburg told Dougherty after the team advanced to the World Series. “Maybe this year we’re the buzz saw.”
These weren’t your recycled Montreal Expo who started 19-31 and ended up with the District’s first title in 95 years. We enjoyed the book as something that needed to be reassembled for our disbelief.
Because, in a way, even if we watch today’s Washington Nationals play at the Dodger Stadium, we’re still a bit history challenged.
At our last count, 17 major professional baseball franchises have called Washington D.C. their home. Many shared the same nickname. Or switched midway.
The place better known for housing the Bill of Rights may have had the right idea, but often a wrong outcome.
Tom Hoffarth's The Drill: More Farther Off the Wall 