Take a look at what could very well be the greatest baseball team ever assembled.
Fifty-five years ago, the 1970 Aviation Little League’s Colt .45s were drawn together as one the most well-intentioned and ill-informed 9-and 10-year olds from the Del Aire adjacent neighborhoods of Hawthorne, California.
It was the first organized baseball team that allowed me to be included. It was the greatest.
So maybe the last vestige of evidential proof of our existence has the coaches’ heads cropped off at the top and another kid aced out on the left side. Not sure how that happened. But I made the cut — second from right, back row, wearing brown hiking boots because my family was heading on a camping trip and delaying it to meet up at the ballfield for this team shot couldn’t have ended soon enough to beat the out-of-town traffic on a Saturday morning.
The author:Gabe Lerman, with Shane Barclay The details: Independently published, 160 pages, $29, released Dec. 22, 2024; best available at JapanBall.com
“A Baseball Gaijin: Chasing A Dream to Japan and Back”
Three-hundred sixty five days later comes the fragile launch of the 2025 new book baseball review parade, aligned with the Dodgers’ trip to Tokyo, Japan, to open the season with a pair of games against Chicago’s Cubs. Again 16 hours ahead.
We’re told both contests start very early on Tuesday and Wednesday — 3:10 a.m. Pacific Daylight Time — meaning again we aren’t sure if we spring ahead 48 hours, fall back to realigned with the Ides of March or just check in with Greenland’s department of defense for proper synchronization of All Things Involving Islands.
According to the chirping of USA Today hipster/longtime baseball badass writer Bob Nightengale, this trip will be like the Beatles touring the United States in the ‘60s … like Michael Jordan and the Dream Team playing at the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona … like Beyonce and Taylor Swift performing on stage together on a world tour.
You think Ohtanimania is something in Glendale, Ariz.?
MLB Network Radio’s Steve Phillips has said that with the Dodgers’ Yoshinobu Yamamoto facing the Cubs’ Shota Imanaga in the first game, and the Dodgers sending Roki Sasaki in the second game, “I don’t think that everybody here in North America appreciates how big this is going to be in Japan for baseball fans.”
Still, this trip nearly didn’t happen, from what we were hearing.
Back by somewhat unpopular demand — maybe query a few authors whose books in the recent past I might have ended up splaying with an intent to de-boned, all in the name of honest criticism — the 2025 version of the newest spring/summer baseball book reviews returns for another attempt at education and entertainment.
It coincides with the start of the Dodgers-Cubs series leading off the ’25 MLB season in Japan. The clocks are being adjusted as we try to spin forward.
Here, as we have done since 2011*, reviews are more an exercise in empathy for those who open their veins to write these things in the first place, along with our attempt at explaining how the subject matter connects in our universe. Then, there’s an efficiency trying to cover more than a couple dozen new titles that have come into the marketplace since the end of the ’24 season.
This whole thing, initially focused on the insane premise of posting 30 reviews once day over the 30 days in a row in April, challenges us to stay current while also adding some context.
*Our memory is fading and we weren’t actually sure, but that’s the best guess, since we’ve got The Wayback Machine to find things we’ve posted going to the InsideSoCal.com platform that started in 2006.
This ’25 baseball book review project again deviates a bit from its original calisthenics stress test. We can’t do 30 in a row, but the target remains at least 30 reviews. All done by summer.
There’s also a new stipulation: No more links to purchasing books on the website named after a river in South America and empties into the Atlantic. Reviews are no longer posted on the social media site once known as Twitter.
Resistance isn’t futile. It’s long overdue.
Consider this: A book called “How To Resist Amazon And Why: Updated and Expanded — The Fight For Local Economies, Data Privacy, Fair Labor, Independent Bookstores and a People-Powered Future” by Danny Caine, owner of the Lawrence, Kansas-based Raven Book Store, sells for a reasonable $14.95 on the Microcosm Publishers’ website. As well as on Caine’s store site, a zine version for $3.
The website in question, meanwhile, not only offers this book that meticulously besmirches its existence, but has it at 40 percent off for those looking to prove everything the book points out.
From our storage unit, here’s what we plan to cover in ’25:
= “I Felt the Cheers: The Remarkable Silent Life of Curtis Pride,” by the former Angels outfielder who also played for Montreal, Detroit, Atlanta, Boston and the Yankees, and was a coach at Gallaudet, the world’s leading university for deaf and hard of hearing students and was also named Major League Baseball’s Ambassador for Inclusion.
The point it to let readers know these works exist, should you be tempted to pick them up for purchase without knowing their caveats. It’s also a way to uncover projects that otherwise might be off the radar. No fees attached. Enjoy.
Before the first reviews, a short Q&A:
Seinäjoki Library in Seinäjoki, Finland.
Q: What happens to all the baseball books collected during the course of the year to review?
A: Pay it forward, if that’s still a phrase. As in, donate them to the local library.
The 144-page book by Howard Liss released by Random House aimed at school kids interested in sports-related bios was first published in 1971.
Chuck Hildebrandt, a 63-year-old retired digital marketing exec living in Chicago, explained to the Detroit Free Press that he purposefully visited the public library in the Detroit suburb of Warren, Mich., while in town visiting family for Thanksgiving. The reason was to bring back a copy of “Baseball’s Zaniest Stars,” which he recalls borrowing from the city’s Walt Whitman Branch on Dec. 4, 1974, when he was a 13-year-old.
He had forgotten to return it. Fifty years later, he sought some closure.
Hildebrant said he came across it on his bookshelf about five years ago, noticed the Dewey decimal library sticker on the spine, and figured out what happened.
In December of 2024, he tried to give it back. The library declined.
“Some people never come back to face the music,” said library director Oksana Urban. “But there was really no music to face, because he and the book were erased from our system.”
Still, what would the fine have been for a return this late? More than $4,500 according to Hildebrant’s math. To be precise, it was $4,563.75 to be precise, if he had been charged the normal fees.
“I am still somewhat embarrassed so I want to make good on it in some way,” Hildebrant wrote on a social media post.
Hildebrant decided to start a GoFundMe.com fundraiser to see if he could match that $4,564 projected fine, and then donate it to Reading Is Fundamental, the nation’s leading children’s literacy non-profit since the 1960s that so many of us Boomer-types remember from our childhood as well.
To date, the effort raised more than $5,300 with more than 100 donations.
Maybe we can keep contributing. Or …
This book looked familiar, and my recollection must have been finding it at my own library when I was in middle school. The cover illustration of Casey Stengel taking off his cap and having a sparrow he kept hidden in his suddenly fly out was something I wouldn’t have forgotten.
In the book, it explains how Stengel, just traded from Wilbert Robinson’s Brooklyn Robins (pre-Dodgers) to the Pittsburgh Pirates in 1918, was back for the first time at Ebbets Field in Brooklyn, playing right field. He noticed in the Brooklyn bullpen that former teammate Leon Cadore was able to scoop up a sparrow that landed. On his way to the dugout at the end of the inning, Stengel asked Cadore to give him the sparrow. When Stengel went to bat that inning, the fans gave him a rousing ovation. He stepped into the batter’s box, dropped his bat, bowed low and raised his cap — and the sparrow fluttered a moment and flew off.
“I always knew that Stengel had birds in his top story,” Robinson was reported to have said.
After reading the story about Hildebrandt — and realizing we are about the same age — I tracked down a New Jersey used book store called Between the Covers listed on AbeBooks.com (the one-stop used book store repository) and picked up a nice copy of “Baseball’s Zaniest Stars.”
It went for $20 (plus $5 shipping). I really did enjoy re-reading it from cover to cover this past winter. Simultaneously, I had been reading Andrew Forbes’ latest piece of fiction, “McCurdle’s Arm,” a 108-page novella released in August of ’24 by Invisible Publishing, and the two seemed joined at the spine.
Forbes’ ultra-creative use of 1890s quirky baseball prose told the story of Robert James McCurdle, who could have been a character in “Baseball’s Zaniest Stars,” along with Stengel, Bobo Newsom, Dizzy Dean, Babe Herman and Rabbit Maranville.
Re-reading that review recently was again somewhat as therapeutic as it was writing it four years ago. The cover illustrations were spectacular as well.
Armed with “McCurdle’s Arm” and star struck again by “Baseball’s Zaniest Stars,” I felt as if I was thrust back in time. No hurry for anyone to come to my emotional rescue.
So, with the start of this ’25 review, “McCurdle’s Arm” goes back on my shelf for safe keeping, and “Baseball’s Zaniest Stars” will go next to it, or I’ll deliver it to my local library with all the other books set to be donated this time around.
The hope is that everything will be fine, and there are no fines attached to anyone’s future enjoyment. And a RIF donation is forthcoming.
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. 54:
= Marques Johnson, UCLA basketball = Larry Farmer, UCLA basketball = Edgar Lacy, UCLA basketball = Kenny Fields, UCLA basketball
The not-so-obvious choices for No. 54:
= Horace Grant, Los Angeles Lakers = Tim Leary, Los Angeles Dodgers
The most interesting story for No. 54: Marques Johnson, UCLA basketball forward (1973-74 to 1976-77) Including Crenshaw High (1970 to 1973) and the Los Angeles Clippers (1984-85 to 1986-87) Kris Johnson, UCLA basketball forward (1994-95 to 1997-98) Josiah Johnson, UCLA basketball forward (2001-02 to 2004-05) Southern California map pinpoints: Inglewood, Windsor Hills, Crenshaw, Westwood (Pauley Pavilion), Los Angeles (Sports Arena), Hollywood
The play was the thing at every big stage of Marques Johnson’s career.
On his Internet Movie Database profile, there is a confluence of links, notes and anecdotes about how Johnson picked and rolled his way into TV and movie work. A big assist to the roles he had on the basketball courts of Los Angeles — Crenshaw city legend, Westwood warlock and a scalawag Clipper.
Do not overlook that Johnson, the inaugural John R. Wooden Award winner as college basketball’s top player, graduated from UCLA with a Theater Arts major degree.
Now, look up the 1992 classic “White Men Can’t Jump,” which came out just a couple years after Johnson’s 11-year NBA career was officially over.
Who better to assume the role of a hoodlum hoopster named Raymond in the Ron Shelton movie?
Marques Johnson, left, with Wesley Snipes in a scene from “White Men Can’t Jump.” The inner-city basketball court is located at the Catholic Charities of L.A. El Santo Nino Community Center playground at 22nd Street and Trinity Street, with a view of downtown L.A. to the north.
Action: Johnson deftly pulls out a switch blade on Wesley Snipes and Woody Harrelson. When that that doesn’t do enough to put the fear of God into them, the script calls for him to run to his car and threaten to get a gun. Paranoia ensues.
For all those times the casting crew couldn’t get his name spelled correctly — sometimes, the credits show him as “Marcus” — there were more Johnson cameos with TV shows like “Hangin’ With Mr. Cooper,” “The Sinbad Show,” “Baywatch” and “Castle.” If only “Space Jam” could have come earlier.
Our interest was piqued on the movie site’s bio for Johnson that attributes a quote to him — one that has nothing to do with show business. It’s more relatable to how he was directed by Wooden at UCLA and that magical Pyramid of Success philosophy.
Said Johnson: “At the time it was like, Pyramid Shmyramid, Where’s the party at? Where are the girls at? I didn’t want to hear anything about principles and living a life of integrity at that time. But as you get older, and you have kids, and you try to pass on life lessons, now it becomes a great learning tool.”
In the same piece, Johnson added about Wooden: “He was almost a mystical figure by the time I got to UCLA. I couldn’t really sit down and have a conversation with him about real things just because I had so much reverence for him — for who he was and what he had accomplished. … He never gave that perception that was the way he wanted you to treat him, but it was just how it was.”
Johnson’s IMDb.com credits include executive producer for a 2011 short film called “The Wooden Effect.” His sons, Kris and Josiah, are also listed as producers. Josiah directed it. It makes sense. Wooden had that kind of halo effect on the Johnson basketball lineage. It produced its own pyramid of family pride.
Marques Johnson (54) goes for a rebound against Louisville in the NCAA semifinal game at San Diego Sports Arena in March, 1975. (Walter Iooss Jr./Sports Illustrated via Getty Images)
Start with Marques, the L.A. City Player of the Year out of Crenshaw High. He would be picked for California Interscholastic Federation’s 100th anniversary All-Century team. Johnson took on the responsibility of wearing No. 54 for the Bruins — shared by many standouts before him.
Johnson would be the last All-American player that Wooden coached at UCLA before his surprising 1975 retirement, which coincided with the Bruins’ 10th NCAA title under his watch. Two seasons later, playing for coach Gene Bartow, Johnson was first John R. Wooden Award winner, recognized as the national college basketball player of the year, and now the sport’s equivalent of the Heisman Trophy.
Flash forward 20 seasons later.
Kris Johnson, Marques’ oldest of five sons, entered UCLA’s basketball program as a freshman. The program wins the NCAA title — the first since Marques Johnson was at UCLA. Kris Johnson also wore No. 54 and was also an All-L.A. City Player of the Year at Crenshaw High, marking the first father-son duo to earn that honor as well as win a national college basketball title at the same school.
Josiah Johnson, Marques’ next-oldest son, also played basketball at UCLA. He wore No. 54. He came to Westwood from Montclair Prep.
By 2018, Kris Johnson’s son, Will — Marques’ grandson — made the University of Oregon basketball roster, first as a walk on, then earning a scholarship, out of Palisades High. And wore No. 54.
“Brought tears to my eyes,” Marques Johnson said of seeing Will Johnson during warmups before a Feb., ’18 Oregon-UCLA game at Pauley Pavilion, a place where No. 54 hangs from the rafters. “It was the realization of a dream that started when he was 7, 8, 9 years old.”
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. 78: = Jackie Slater: Los Angeles Rams = George Achica: USC football, Los Angeles Express = Art Shell: Los Angeles Raiders
The not-so-obvious choices for No. 78: = Grenny Lansdell, USC football = Alex Laferriere, Los Angeles Kings
The most interesting story for No. 78: Jackie Slater: Los Angeles Rams right tackle (1976 to 1995) Southern California map pinpoints: Los Angeles Coliseum, Anaheim Stadium
Jackie Slater’s livelihood was predicated on preventing quarterbacks sacks. Turns out, he can also play a mean tenor sax.
By which, we mean, he can pretend.
If only one person came out with some dignity left after a herd of Los Angeles Rams were talked into recording a 1985 music video “Let’s Ram It!” it was the 6-foot-4, 284-pounder who introduces himself at the top of it as “Big Bad Jackie.”
I’m Big Bad Jackie and I’m starting us off The Rams getting down so nobody’s soft And don’t you worry cuz the Rams are rappin’ When game time comes we’ll get back to zappin’ We can’t sing and our dance is not pretty But we’ll do our best for the team and the city So get on your feet and clap your hands Let’s Ram it right now with the L.A. Rams
This by no means defines the career of a Pro Football Hall of Famer who played one of the most demanding positions for 20 straight years — the first 19 in L.A. before its move to St. Louis, where he called it over.
But let the record show, Slater made this record. And broke many others.
Tom Hoffarth's The Drill: More Farther Off the Wall 