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. 6:
= Steve Garvey: Los Angeles Dodgers
= Mark Sanchez: USC football, Mission Viejo High football
= Eddie Jones: Los Angeles Lakers
= Bronny James: USC basketball
= Carl Furrillo: Los Angeles Dodgers
= Sue Enquist: UCLA softball
= Joe Torre: Los Angeles Dodgers manager
The not-so-obvious choices for No. 6:
= Marc Wilson: Los Angeles Raiders
= Anthony Rendon: Los Angeles Angels
= Ron Fairly: Los Angeles Dodgers/California Angels via USC
= Adam Morrison: Los Angeles Lakers
The most interesting story for No. 6:
Steve Garvey: Los Angeles Dodgers third baseman/first baseman (1969 to 1982)
Southern California map pinpoints:
Los Angeles (Dodger Stadium); Palm Springs
Steve Garvey’ offered a modest proposal in the fall of 2023. It had nothing to do with him pitching another reverse mortgage plan, some hair restoration, weight-loss supplements or switching to a brand of particular dog food.
At the website for his U.S. Seanate run campaign, a popup asked California voters if they were willing to “give $6 for #6.” It would happen all very painlessly through something called efund.
Ah, the joy of six.
“Our campaign is focused on quality-of-life issues, public safety, and education. As a U.S. Senator, I will serve with commonsense, compassion, and will work to build consensus to benefit all of the people of California,” the script said quoting one of the Los Angeles Dodgers’ most popular and productive players in the 1970s and ’80s.
The CEO of Team Garvey said he needed a lot support as a Republican in a very Democratic state for the March 5, 2024 primaries.
None of this really came out of the blue.
During his baseball career, he had been planting seeds about his next career in some type of high-profile public office. For those who made a connection to the red No. 6 on the front of his Dodgers’ jersey — which he also carried onto a few more seasons in San Diego — the nostalgia was thick and the opportunity ripe as a controversial Republican president was somehow circling back to the pulpit and gaining momentum on a campaign of anti-blue sentiment.
The twist in all this — the California primaries reward the top two vote-getters regardless of party moved onto the Nov. 5 general election. In this wrestling match to finally get the seat once held by Diane Feinstein, Democratic candidate Adam Schiff was an early favorite but he created a campaign strategy targeting Garvey as his main competitor — inciting more Republican support for Garvey — because Democrat Katie Porter provided a far-more serious threat to Schiff.
As a result, Schiff manipulated it so he and Garvey finished 1-2 in the primaries with nearly the same number of votes.
Now there were eight months left of campaigning for a spot that really wasn’t that close.
Back in February of 2024, a Los Angeles Times story tried to layout the contradictory “family values” life Garvey has led coming to this point — including a disassociation with one of his daughters and his grandson. He has seven children. Not all keep in touch.
That can’t help with garnering votes.
By June of ’24, Michael Weinreb, a San Francisco Bay-Area screen writer, put up on his Substack account called “Throwbacks: A Newsletter about Sports History and Culture:”
“Dozens of ex-athletes have attempted to transition into politics, some of them driven by noble aims. But what sets Garvey’s Senate run apart from all the others is that I’m not sure what it is about at all. In fact, it seems entirely devoid of a purpose beyond the name of the candidate himself.
“It’s not just that Garvey is running as a Republican in a deep-blue state in perhaps the most polarized era in modern American history; it’s that he doesn’t even seem to be trying. He speaks in aphorisms that mean absolutely nothing; he won’t even express a definitive opinion about the standard-bearer of his own party. It’s as if he’s running just to say he ran, because this is what he always appeared destined to do when he was younger. It’s as if he’s trying to fill out the gaps in his own story.
“There’s something kind of sad about this. But it also feels like a telling metaphor for modern American politics at a moment when celebrity has outweighed substance. Best as I can tell, Steve Garvey is running for office because of his own hollow conception of fame. …
“For a while, it appeared Garvey stood above it all, and then his own hypocrisy rendered him a punchline. Maybe it’s cynicism; maybe it’s naivete. But either way, it’s as if he’s trying one last time to will into truth his own hollow fiction.”
At the website Sons of Steve Garvey, billed as “random rantings and ravings about the Los Angeles Dodgers, written by a small consortium of rabid Dodger fans,” there was never a Garvey endorsement of his political aspiration.
We had a flashback to 1998 when we caught up with Garvey at a North Hollywood baseball card shop named Porky’s. At the time, Jessie “The Body” Ventura had just won the governorship Minnesota. Garvey told us that Barbara Boxer, who had just been re-elected California state senior, “could have been had” if another Republican — like him? — had stepped up to get that spot.
Even then, he said he had his eye on Feinstein, whose six-year term was coming up in 2000. But he knew he wasn’t getting any younger.
“You know, I’m going to be 50- in December,” he told me than (and he just had a two-week old daughter born).
So now, in 2024, the 75-year-old Garv thought he could change the narrative of a “man of the people” journey.
Mailers to constituents tried to make his case through a mock up of a baseball card. Another mailer tried to make sure that even if he has supported Donald Trump in previous presidential elections, he would like to be thought of more as someone aligned with former president Ronald Reagan — sending out a 1984 photo of the two once together in San Diego.
Garvey tried to use a new-age baseball stat — Wins Above Replacement — as a way to show how Schiff’s shortcomings could be best measured.
“He just doesn’t need to be replaced. He needs to be defeated,” Garvey wrote.
Even though a story in The Nation projected that Garvey could not be underestimated, it all played out as suspected. Photo ops on Skid Row in L.A. and a trip to Israel in the middle of a war to try to see for himself what was going on weren’t effective.
The fact remains that, by early November, Schiff easily send Garvey to the showers with a 59-41 percent victory that was called by an Associated Press projection about one minute after the California voting precincts closed.
Garvey (who goes with the social media handle of @SteveGarvey6) used even more twisted numerical logic in his November election-night remarks in Rancho Mirage, which occurred just days after the Dodgers’ 2024 World Series triumph, to make it appear he achieved something (by fact that California is the most populated state and likewise produces the most voters):
In baseball, like in many professional sports, there’s a tradition of members of the opposing team to congratulate the winners. Often times with a handshake on the field or even a visit to the opponent’s clubhouse. In that same spirit I congratulate Congressman Adam Schiff on his victory. Using their enormous power the voters have elected him the next U.S. Senator from California. And I respect that and wish him good choices for all of the people in the years to come. I want you to know that despite the outcome that when the counting is over we will have gotten the fourth-most number of votes in the country. This means that everyone in California does have a voice. And it will only grow louder and louder. ….
I fell in love with California since my first day when I arrived on September 1,1969, when I was a rookie with the Los Angeles Dodgers. And want it to once again be the heartbeat of America. And I want the American Dream to live on and thrive. Because as the great Ronald Reagan once said — “As long as that dream lives, as long as we continue to defend it, America has a future, and all mankind has reason to hope.” Thank you again. God bless you and God Bless America.
Citizen Garvey’s politicking was done.
Why, again, had it even started?
Continue reading “No. 6: Steve Garvey”
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