Blog

No. 12: Richard Nixon

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. 12:

= Vlade Divac, Los Angeles Lakers
= Charles White: USC football
= Dusty Baker: Los Angeles Dodgers
= Tommy Davis: Los Angeles Dodgers
= James Harris: Los Angeles Rams
= Juju Watkins: USC women’s basketball
= Dwight Howard: Los Angeles Lakers
= Todd Marinovich: Los Angeles Raiders, Los Angeles Avengers

The not-so-obvious choices for No. 12:
= Pat Riley: Los Angeles Lakers
= Gerrit Cole: UCLA baseball
= Denise Curry: UCLA women’s basketball
= Joe Namath: Los Angeles Rams
= Randall Cunningham: Santa Barbara High football
= Jeff Kent: Los Angeles Dodgers

The most interesting story for No. 12:
Richard Nixon: Whittier College football offensive tackle (1930 to 1933)
Southern California map pinpoints:
Yorba Linda, Fullerton, Whittier, San Clemente

The (Clarksville, Tenn.) Leaf-Chronicle, Jan. 20, 1969

From Richard Milhous Nixon’s perspective of own his life and legacy, victories were unimpeachable.

History notes he did lose the 1960 Presidential Election (even it was by just 0.17 points in the popular vote). And he lost the 1962 California governor’s race by five points. But that wasn’t going to define him — or let anyone kick him around in the public arena.

His greatest comeback was the 1968 election to become the 37th President of the United States. It was followed up by a landslide re-election in 1972, winning by nearly 18 million votes.

Nixon went into his “V” formation, both hands flashing triumph for all it was worth.

During those four-plus years as the commander in chief, Nixon was also obsessed with not being the one pinned with losing the Vietnam War.

But then there’s the old sports adage: If you’re not cheating, you’re not trying.

That line of demarcation for sportsmanship led to him forfeiting the most powerful position in the world. A devastating defeat that became the lede to his obituary.

Where did the win-at-all-costs philosophy come from?

Consider the frustrated athletic career he had first at Fullerton High and Whittier High, leading into a highly influential period on the Whittier College football team, capped off by wearing No. 12 his senior year.

Nixon believed in the words and actions by a football coach known as “Chief,” a commanding voice that taught him all about the importance of how the games are played, how to win, and also even lessons on how to take a loss and make it a teachable moment.

Nixon hated losing. Perhaps, to his determent. Sports played a part in that journey.

Born on a lemon ranch in Yorba Linda in 1913, Richard (given the name by his parents after Richard the Lionheart) was 12 years old when a spot was found on his lung and there was a family history of tuberculosis — an older and younger brother died from it.

Richard Nixon was told not to play sports. Even thought the spot turned out to be scar tissue from an early bout of pneumonia.

Growing up among those Nixon would eventually refer to as “forgotten Americans” and the “silent majority” of hard-working church folks just chasing a dream, he was drawn to try out for JV football at Fullerton High. When he then transferred closer to home at Whittier High at the start of his junior year, he ended up as a student manager for the athletic teams. At Whittier High, he ran for class president but lost to a candidate he would describe as “an athlete and personality boy.”

With the start of the Great Depression in 1930, Nixon didn’t pursue college at Harvard or Yale, but stayed closer to home at Whittier College, pursing a history degree. While he played basketball and football, and also tried out for track and baseball, his victories were celebrated on the debate team.

Continue reading “No. 12: Richard Nixon” →

No. 7: Todd Marinovich

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 factor sin. And it should open itself to more discussion and debate — which is what sports is best at doing.

The most obvious choices for No. 7:

= Bob Waterfield: UCLA football; Los Angeles Rams
= Lamar Odom: Los Angeles Clippers; Los Angeles Lakers
= Matt Barkley: USC football
= Julio Urias: Los Angeles Dodgers
= Don Rogers: UCLA football
= Steve Yeager: Los Angeles Dodgers
= Mark Carrier, USC football

The not-so-obvious choices for No. 7:

= Todd Marinovich: Mater Dei High football, Capistrano Valley High football
= Mark Harmon: UCLA football
= Jay Schroeder: UCLA football
= Frankie Kelleher: Hollywood Stars baseball
= Dennis Thurman: USC football

The most interesting story for No. 7:
Todd Marinovich, Santa Ana Mater Dei High School and Capistrano Valley High football quarterback (1985 to 1989), USC football quarterback (1988 to 1990), Los Angeles Raiders quarterback (1991 to 1992), Los Angeles Avengers quarterback (2000 to 2001)
Southern California map pinpoints:
Mission Viejo, Santa Ana, Los Angeles (Coliseum, Staples Center), Newport Beach, Irvine, Indio

Proceed with caution if you decide to use Todd Marinovich as sports’ poster boy for the ultimate “cautionary tale.” It’s old news in this case.

The label can still a bit addicting for journalists who think they’ve accurately reported on his creation story, going back to his time as a high school quarterback in Orange County setting California state high school passing records. They then observed his personal and playing career arch reveal extreme highs and lows at USC, the NFL’s Los Angeles Raiders, circling back to Los Angeles for a run with an Arena League team to support a drug habit, and eventually landing on a Palm Springs football field near the age of 50 still trying to find himself.

Tale as old as time, but one that needs a fresh angle every now and then.

In a 2019 piece for the Chicago Tribune by Rick Telander, the “cautionary tale” reference got its latest rewind when dissecting Team Marinovich and the mess it seemed to make in the public eye:

Todd Marinovich at Capistrano Valley High School in 1987. (George Rose/Getty Images)

“You’ll recall that Todd was the young man manipulated from birth (actually pre-birth) by his father to be the best, purist, greatest quarterback the world had ever seen. Marv had played football at USC, and he wanted, for reasons buried deep within his own inadequacies, to create a boy who would have the sporting genetics for quarterbacking and be trained incessantly, focused unfailingly and driven like a sled dog toward the apex of the country’s most popular game.”

Telander dragged that trope out because he just read something in Sports Illustrated by Michael Rosenberg, titled “Learning To Be Human Again.” As if Marinovich was emancipated from some reverse metamorphic process.

Rosenberg’s launching point was actually a purposeful revisit of that 1988 Sports Illustrated spread Doug Looney laid out titled “Bred to be a Superstar” that likely started the whole social science shebang on judging the Marinovich Parental Method and its doomed-to-fail, real-world predictions.

Before that piece, California magazine dropped one with the headline “Robo QB: The Making of the Perfect Athlete.” Then came a People magazine profile in 1987.

That was the fragile framework created for Todd Marinovich, no matter where he went from there. The poor kid, readers could easily conclude. Talented, kind-hearted, fun-loving, well mannered. Able bodied.

Call Child Protective Services.

We seem to have the idea that one who is abused and manipulated as a kid is set up to abuse himself later in life and continue a genetic pattern of human frailty. Unless that person figures things out with help, counseling and avoiding some sort of tragic ending.

Maybe the “worst sports father” adjective just won’t go away years later. Even if his father literally went away.

But Todd Marinovich can explain better how it happened with him as a willing participant, trying to navigate the life of a high school kid in full media spotlight, and how it really turned out.

Todd Marinovich as a Mater Dei High School quarterback in 1986 in San Juan Capistrano. (Paul Harris/Getty Images)

That Todd Marinovich was born on the Fourth of July in 1969 may have added to the storyline that started with him on a All-American pathway.

He played a lot of sports, perhaps exceeding most in basketball, but football would be the real test. First were the years at Mater Dei High in Santa Ana, a football factory that had produced Heisman Trophy winners before and after Marinovich’s brief appearance there. That was followed by a surprise transfer to Capistrano Valley in Mission Viejo.

The switch to Capo Valley by his father Marv would be one of things listed on his parents’ separation filing in the courts. Todd has no say in it. He would live with his dad an an in-law quarters at the house of head coach Dick Enright, likely a CIF violation.

While wearing No. 7, Marinovich went up against rival quarterback Bret Johnson in 1987 when ESPN televised its first-ever high school game, between Capo Valley and El Toro.

Continue reading “No. 7: Todd Marinovich” →

No. 90: Andrei Voinea

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. 90:

= Larry Brooks, Los Angeles Rams
= Mike Wise, Los Angeles Raiders

The most interesting story for No. 90:

Andrei Voinea, California School of the Deaf Riverside football center, offensive lineman, tight end (2021 to 2022)
Southern California map pinpoints:
Riverside, Burbank

In the 2022 team photo of the California School of the Deaf Riverside high school football squad, No. 90 Andrei Voinea is front and center.

The starting center on the offensive line by season’s end, Voinea may not have been the most athletic or talented of a team that would go on to win a championship, but he was the biggest and perhaps the quickest learner, with a computer science mind and newfound appreciation for how he could converse with classmates.

The position of center who starts the play is vital, not only in an eight-man football alignment where the line works harder on protection after the snap. But, as the name of the school indicates, unique communicate is needed before and after the snap. It’s a skill set that starts in the school’s classrooms, social networking, and transfers to the football team’s collective success.

That photo also shows Trevin Adams, No. 4, the team’s quarterback/linebacker captain, next to Voinea. Adams is the son of the head coach, Keith Adams, up there in the back row, five in from the left. Trevin’s younger brother, freshman Kaden, was his backup at quarterback.

California School For The Deaf Riverside head coach Keith Adams explains a strategy to the team during a game against the Florida School For The Deaf and Blind on Saturday, Sept. 24, 2022, in Riverside. (Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)

Jory Valencia, No. 3, is next to Adams, the team’s 6-foot-3 senior captain at wide receiver and cornerback. His grandfather Seymour Bernstein came to the school in 1958 and coached football. His parents, Jeremias and Scarlett, both attended CSDR and excelled in sports, as did his older brother Noah and his uncles Joshua Valencia, Jonathan Valencia, Steve-Valencia-Biskupiak and Ethan Bernstein.

Next to Valencia is Felix Gonzales, No. 1, the team’s most outstanding player and another senior captain. By the end of the season, Gonzales was recovering from a leg injury and couldn’t make the team picture. The school deftly edited him in digitally for this team shot.

All of them and more make up the central casting of the 2024 book, “The Boys of Riveside: A Deaf Football Team And a Quest for Glory.” Note on the cover: Voinea, fourth in from the left, linking arms with teammates.

New York Times writer Thomas Fuller introduces Voinea and his teammates who, coming out of a COVID confusion that shutdown all the school’s sports, happened to be at the right place at the right time to make California School of the Deaf Riverside a rather improbable California Intercollegiate Federation (CIF) Southern Section champion.

“It was so quintessentially American,” Fuller, struck by the students’ perseverance, eventually described it to People Magazine. “A team that had endured seven decades of losing seasons was now beating the pants off of all their opponents.”

Listen as these Cubs roar.

Above: Jory Valencia (3) sits in the middle of the locker room with CSDR teammates in a New York Times photo.
On the wall behind them are posters of players’ names and numbers. One of them is “Andrei 12.”
Voinea wore No. 12 as a junior (as well as when the team was on the road and needed a white jersey) because “Tom Brady was my favorite player in the NFL,” he said.
He wore No. 90 more in his senior year, admitting “it sounds bigger and more fitting for my size, considering most of the big guys in the NFL chose higher jersey numbers.”
Below: A photo of Voinea wearing No. 12 during a game at Avalon High on Catalina Island.

A year earlier, in 2021, the Cubs made noise as the first in the school’s 68-year history to advance to a section championship game. Scores of local and national media outlets came along for the ride and a storyline that was too good to pass on — a team of deaf players, at a school with more than 50 years of losing seasons, rose up out of COVID and did something remarkable.

Even though CSDR lost that title game, 74-22, to Faith Baptist of Canoga Park, the 2022 team went all the way on a 12-0 run, avenging the defeat with a convincing 80-26 win over the same Faith Baptist program.

Continue reading “No. 90: Andrei Voinea” →

No. 99: Carlos Estéves, Charlie Sheen, and Ricky Vaughn

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.

Part of the minimalist art collection of S. Preston at his gallery. This one is currently sold out.

“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.

Continue reading “No. 99: Carlos Estéves, Charlie Sheen, and Ricky Vaughn” →

No. 69: Chase de Leo

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. 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.

Continue reading “No. 69: Chase de Leo” →