Tag: baseball

Day 10 of 2026 baseball books: When the galaxy of stars first came into view

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“The First All -Star Game:
Babe Ruth, FDR, and
America at the Crossroads”

The author: Randall Sullivan
The details: Grove Atlantic, 496 pages, $30, to be released June 2, ’26
The links: The publisher, the author, Bookshop.org

A review in 90 feet or less:

Hail and farewell, Garret Anderson.

The sudden death of the retired Angels’ outfielder at age 53 on April 16 at his home in Newport Beach from pancreatic issues was a real cause to pause.

GA gave us more than just general admission access to witness him as the only player to wear a team jersey spanning the California (1994-96), Anaheim (1997-2004) and revived Los Angeles (2005-2008) branding names. Which, coupled with his own rather common-man name, made it easier for him to slip under the national radar despite holding that unique spot in the franchise’s history.

The team’s current all-time leader in games played (2,013), hits (2,368), at bats (7,989), total bases (3,743), doubles (489), RBIs (1,292) and sacrifice flies (76), Anderson is momentary now tied with Mike Trout with most extra-base hits (796), second to Trout in runs scored (1,024), third in batting average (.290, behind Vlad Guerrero’s .319 and Rod Carew’s .314), and, if this comes as a surprise, he’s also third in home runs (272, behind Trout and Tim Salmon).

Garret Anderson carries the World Series trophy after the Game 7 win in Anaheim on Oct. 27, 2002. (Don Emmert/Getty Images)

One other key thing perhaps overlooked when those writing about his legacy covered his “graceful and enduring” 17-season MLB career:

Anderson was the first player to ever win a World Series title, a Home Run Derby title and an All Star Game MVP within a one-year span.

Not so trivial.

In the 2002 World Series, ending with so far the only title in the Angels’ 66-year history, Anderson’s bases-clearing double in the third inning of Game 7 gave the Angels a cushion to ride over San Francisco.

In the 2002 playoffs, covering 16 games, he was 21 for 70 (.300) with two homers, 13 RBIs and 11 runs scored.

In the 2023 Home Run Derby, Anderson proved he belonged — he did have a career-best homer total for a season with 35 in 2000, a year when he only walked 24 times. Anderson outlasted Albert Pujols in the final round to win it, using efficiency to get the job done.

“I don’t look at myself as a home-run hitter, but I know I’m capable of hitting some balls out of the park, and it’s just another platform to go out and show America what I can do,’‘ Anderson said after the eight-man, three-round competition. “That swing I used is not a swing I try to use during the season. It was just strictly for trying to hit the ball over the fence. During the season, mentally and physically, I don’t do that. I look for mistakes and try to hit them hard.”

In the 2003 All Star Game, won by the American League, 7-6, Anderson went 3-for-4 with a two-run homer in the sixth inning  and key double off Eric Gagne in the eighth to lead a comeback. That was after he led off the fourth inning with a single against Kerry Wood. Anderson, hitting.316 with 22 homers and 78 RBIs at the All-Star break, wasn’t supposed to be in the starting lineup. Added to the AL roster as a reserve, he was inserted to start and bat fifth by manager Mike Scoiscia in place of the injured Manny Ramirez.

That ’03 All-Star game included Pujols, Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, CC Sabathia, Todd Helton, Scott Rolen, Andruw Jones, Billy Wagner, John Smoltz, Edgar Martinez, Ichiro Suzuki and Alex Rodriguez.

A fourth-round pick by the Angels out of Kennedy High in Granada Hills in 1990, where he was also a high-scoring guard on the basketball team, Anderson was second in the AL Rookie of the Year voting in 1995 and made two more All-Star teams. His best statistical season was during that 2002 title run — 29 homers, a lead-best 56 doubles, fourth in the AL MVP voting.

When it came time for local scribes who really knew him better to reflect on Anderson’s impact, columnist Mark Whicker wrote brilliantly:

“He didn’t really mind being misunderstood. For one thing it gave him room to take care of business. There was no way he’d be a team spokesman. Too presumptuous. But the closer people got to him, the more they heard his incongruously throaty laugh and heard his wide range of opinions. He was a cheery skeptic about the analytics “revolution” and never abandoned his method of swinging hard at the first thing he liked, yet striking out only 13.3 percent of the time. Fifty-one percent of his batted balls went up the middle, just like the coaches tell you.”

Former Los Angeles Times sports editor Bill Dwyre added that of the career stats Anderson had that really mattered, it was obvious he came up to hit. He never drew more than 38 walks in a season and never struck out more than 100 times.

He also noted that when Anderson retired and was eligible for the Baseball Hall of Fame consideration in 2016, he got just one vote. That represented 0.2% of the total. It also meant that he wasn’t even on the ballot the next year.

What an injustice. But not a surprise.

While Anderson was added to the Angels Hall of Fame in 2016, his No. 16 has yet to be retired.

It belongs up on the right-field wall, next to Jim Fregosi’s No. 11, Rod Carew’s No. 29, Nolan Ryan’s No. 30, Jimmie Reese’s No. 50, the No. 26 they’ve assigned to original owner Gene Autry, plus the No. 42 that’s there in all of baseball to represent Jackie Robinson.

GA, No. 16. Time to come through in the clutch now. Calling all Angels.

As hosts of that 2003 All Star game, the Chicago White Sox marked the 70th anniversary of the first gathering of the game’s elite in their previous home stadium of Comiskey Park.

The twist on that ’03 game — the winning team secured home-field advantage for the league once the World Series came around. That random rule came into effect because the ’02 All-Star Game in Milwaukee was its own shitshow, ending in a 7-7 tie and commissioner Bud Selig was left befuddled. (Anderson also played in that All-Star game, going 0-for-4 but driving in a run with a seventh-inning groundout and he moved a potential go-ahead run into scoring position with an 11th inning ground out).

Bud Selig, at the end of the 11th inning with the All Star Game tied 7-7, and no where to go to finish the fiasco.

That rule giving away World Series home field was erased n 2016 after a Collective Bargaining Agreement stipulated that the team with the best regular-season record deserved that edge, not a silly exhibition game result.

But then there was that bizarre ending to the 2025 All Star Game in Atlanta. Imagine Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig and Jimmy Foxx involved in “swing-off” to declare the winner. Well, that would be somewhat interesting. Instead, we’re still not sure how it’s recorded for posterity’s sake and it resulted in an MLB reporter covering that cockamamy mess with no choice but to create this accurate lede:

ATLANTA – The fly ball off Jonathan Aranda’s bat stayed in the park, and the National Leaguers assembled in front of the home dugout jumped for joy.
No All-Star Game had ever ended like this. No MLB game had. It was the sort of ending ordinarily reserved for Wiffle ball wonderment or our most bonkers baseball dreams.

When the NL blew a 6-0 lead and, the game was tied 6-6 after nine innings, manager Dave Roberts had to wrangle a group of players from his then-active roster to enter a six-man “swing-off” with whomever the AL had pre-designated from a list it drew up before the game in case of emergency.

Then the NL out-homered the AL, 4-3, in what the MLB story called a “tater-driven tiebreaker.” That allowed Kyle Schwarber to power up a three-for-three swing performance (since he was still around to do so after most of the stars and starters already checked out by then) and he claimed the Ted Williams All-Star Game MVP Award Presented by Chevrolet.

The event was bizarre enough in that it was the first All-Star Game to feature the automated ball-strike challenge system, which resulted in three erroneous calls getting overturned. Now it could be shown to be useful, perhaps normalized and rushed into use for the 2026 season.

Turning back the clock to 1933 isn’t easy, or necessarily making baseball great again.

The Philadelphia Phillies’ Chuck Klein watches a first-inning single, along with Boston Red Sox catcher Rick Ferrel, during the 1933 All-Star Game in Chicago. (Getty Images)

That inaugural event happened just a few years after the stock market crash, four months after Franklin D. Roosevelt took office, and Chicago’s most famous citizen, Al Capone, had just been shipped off to federal prison. Prohibition was months away from being repealed by the 21st Amendment.

That allows Randall Sullivan to begin his new book about all that factored into the staging of that inaugural All-Star affair — he barely mentions the game itself until perhaps page 100, and it isn’t fully broken down until Chapter 43 on page 354 — with this:

“The first Major League Baseball All-Star game likely never would have been played if not for a five-foot, one-inch Italian immigrant bricklayer with a bad stomach named Guiseppe Zangara, who on the morning after Valentine’s Day in 1933 decided to proceed with his plan to assassinate the new United States president-elect.”

An event such as this had been discussed for decades, but never came to fruition. How did finally happen at the worst part of the Depression seems as perhaps unfathomable as it was needed.

Not exactly how the AL and NL lineups were when the game started, but that’s because the printer needed an earlier deadline to get the programs finished.

In concert with the World’s Fair happening in the Windy City, attractions were needed to bring attention and amusement. Baseball and the Hollywood film industry seemed to be the only two sectors of the American economy “to sail through the country’s financial crisis unscathed,” Sullivan notes on page 118, the start of Chapter 17. Ruth, who in 1922 received a whopping $52,000 paycheck, had seen it go up as high as $80,000 a year in 1930. It was scaled back in the economic aftermath to $75,000 for ’32, to $52,000 by ’33 and $35,000 in ’34 — all still the greatest salaries in the game. It all seemed trivial as Ruth had demanded “$60,000 or I’ll quit” in the spring training of ’32 and went off to mope.

The story of Chicago Tribune sports editor Arch Ward creating this event is, of course, covered, but not belabored as it has been in previous chronicling of the event. But the fact this was conceived as a one-off event, and is now closing in on 90 years of happening, shows its staying power despite all else watered down around its concept in modern-era, short-attention span theater.

Babe Ruth swings and misses during at at-bat in the 1933 All-Star Game at Chicago’s Comiskey Park.

Ruth is remembered best in the 4-2 AL win for hitting a third-inning homer to deep right field off the St. Louis Cardinals’ Bill Hallahan, who didn’t make it out of that inning without getting an out. In a game that took just a few ticks more than two hours, Sullivan notes that “looking back, the narrative of The Game of the Century is largely anticlimactic after Babe’s home run. It may have seemed that way to fans even back in 1933, but almost certainly not to the players. With six innings left, the American League’s 3-0 lead was to them far more insurmountable.”

Even more interesting, the game changed home plate umpires, with Bill Klem moving in after doing first base the first half and taking an ear-full of grief from NL manager John McGraw, who had retired the year before from the New York Giants.

The starting infield of the National League team included the Philadelphia Phillies’ Dick Bartell at shortstop, plus St. Louis Cardinals’ future Hall of Famer Frankie Frisch at second base, and Pepper Martin at third base.

Someone we had never come across before reading this book — General Crowder, a Washington Senators pitcher who won an AL-best 26 games in 1932 and 24 more in ’33 — came on in relief for the home team and gave up the NL’s only two run during his stint over the fourth, fifth and sixth innings. He got neither the win (that was starter Lefty Gomez) nor the save (that was reliever Lefty Grove). Crowder did get the NL’s Lefty O’Doul to ground out starting the sixth inning.

The AL’s Lou Gehrig, of course, played the entire game at first base. But that meant no appearance by the Philadelphia A’s Jimmy Foxx, even as A’s manager Connie Mack was leading the AL squad.

What’s just as intriguing for Sullivan to cover starts with Chapter 33, where he begins:

“Dizzy Dean, Rogers Hornsby and Mel Ott weren’t the only great players left out of the Game of the Century. So were Satchel Paige, Mule Suttles, Cool Papa Bell and the incomparable Oscar Charleston.”

Segregation, despite no rule against Black players on MLB rosters at the time. As the newspapers across the country were compiling votes for this contest in Chicago, the Negro Leagues had their own stars to consider, and players like Ruth and Gehrig had competed with and against them during previous barnstorming. It’s also worth noting that at this moment, Sullivan writes that “sympatheic biographies describe Franklin Roosevelt’s positions on civil rights for African Americans as ‘cautious’ or ‘complex.’ He made no real efforts to break through segregation until he was in his third term as president.”

As a result, the Negro League had its own East-West All-Star Game, organized by Pittsburgh Crawfords owner Gus Greenlee — also held at Comiskey Park later that summer. Half as many fans turned out, but it still happened. Thank goodness.

How it goes in the scorebook:

Complete-game contextual victory.

Not a surprise considering Oregon-based journalist Sullivan has been a contributing editor to Rolling Stone magazine for more than 20 years.

Among many projects, he has also written “The Miracle Detective: An Investigation of Holy Visions” about the Catholic Church in 2005 and “LAbyrinth: The True Story of City of Lies, the Murders of Tupac Shakur and Notorious B.I.G. and the Implication of the Los Angeles Police Department” in 2018.

His work has been in Wired, Esquire, Outside, Men’s Journal, the Washington Post and the Guardian.

More to followup:

== Previous works about this subject come from the somewhat cheezy “The Day the All Stars Came Out: Major League Baseball’s First All Star Game, 1933,” by Lew Freedman (McFarland, published in 2010, which even the publisher has reduced from $29.95 to $23). It’s not any more insightful than Lyle Spatz’s very dry SABR write-up on the 1933 All-Star game that was included in the organization’s Games Project.

== The Baseball Hall of Fame notes how that ’33 All-Star Game was a blueprint for other leagues to follow.

== After the 2026 MLB All-Star Game is scheduled for Philadelphia to be part of America’s 250th anniversary celebration, the 2027 MLB All Star Game will be back in Chicago — this time, at Wrigley Field.

Day 5 of 2026 baseball book reviews: M(ake) E(nshittification) T(errible) S(omewhere) in the N.Y. branding

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Embrace the disgraced general concept of enshittification as it pertains specifically to the New York Mets and, by geographic circumstances, also to the New York Yankees.

As pent-up anger and frustration ruins the way we wade through an existing world of A.I. slop, we learn that the Enshittocene — a noun coined by author Cory Doctorow and then fleshed out in his 2025 book about “Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to do About it” — expanding the definition beyond soul-crushing Big Tech stalwarts can be a healthy exercise for those who need a way to explain their grief and lack of relief.

If the Amazin’ Mets are an Amazon-Meta mashup, and the Yankees, way more than Waymo or Yahoo in their Oracle world, continue to reflect as the IBM of baseball, you Reddit right that it all happens under what locals call the Big Apple, but really it’s acting on algorithms engineered by the gigabytes of  Tim Cook’s Apple Inc.

No wonder the Mets and Yankees start this new week having each lost on five consecutive days for the first time in history, according to Sportradar.

An AI query about how any of this might Venn diagram itself on the circles of despair looks like this:

Plenty of other sources that explain how Steven Cohen, who in 2020 bought the Mets for $2.4 billion from his hedge-fund stash that wasn’t penalized for insider trading, has granted the team a MLB-top $352 million payroll for the 2026. The Mets have under contract the highest-paid player in outfielder Juan Soto, averaging $61.9 million in salary. He is currently injured.

The Dodgers circumvent much of this by deferring payments that otherwise would boost their ’26 payroll to $395 million. They also are on tap to pay the highest tax rate on the Competitive Balance Tax payroll for exceeding MLB’s $244 million threshold. The Mets and Yankees are second and third on that list.

For all the lamentations that the Dodgers are ruining baseball with their ownership spending … why is it every July 1 that we’re all reminded that it is the Mets who continue to give 1999 retiree Bobby Bonilla a $1.193,240.20 paycheck and will do so through 2035 for its example of how defer payments continue to haunt a fanbase looking for excuses to be even more disheveled?

ESPN already has already crunched the numbers to deduct that this Mets-Dodgers matchup is on the hook for more than $1 billion in salary liability. Last year’s meeting between the Mets and Dodgers was the previous most expensive series at $764 million in combined payroll — $36 million in total payroll behind this year’s matchup. When you add in their tax bills, the total jumps to over $1.07 billion, surpassing last year’s record of $1.025 billion. The Dodgers and Mets have ranked first and second (in some order) in total payroll four times since 2022. 2023, when the Mets ranked first and the Dodgers fourth, is the only exception during that stretch.

Aside from cash flow, there’s the Zeitgeist/ethos comparison that can also provide more entertainment.

When the New York Times ran an essay in its opinion pages recently with the headline — “Help! My Favorite Athlete is an Idiot” — it was no coincidence that the author was Devin Gordon, who in 2021 produced the most intriguing and pointed book “So Many Ways to Lose: The Amazin’ True Story of the New York Mets — the Best Worst Team in Sports” (our review here).

His riff was about how the franchise that continues to provide him with comedic fodder had to be somewhat dismantled over the last offseason because of political ideology that was contaminating the clubhouse vibe. Note: That was Brandon Nimmo batting leadoff for the Texas Rangers during last Dodgers’ homestand instead of what we’ve been used to seeing the Mets as they come into town this week.

As with most NYT stories, some of the best material is buried in the reader responses. Such as:

Continue reading “Day 5 of 2026 baseball book reviews: M(ake) E(nshittification) T(errible) S(omewhere) in the N.Y. branding” →

Day 3 of 2026 baseball book reviews: The Class of ’68 Brigade

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“Before They Wore Dodger Blue: Tommy Lasorda
And the Greatest Draft Class in Baseball History”

The author: Eric Vickrey
The details: August Publications, 348 pages, $24.95; released Dec. 7, ’25
The links: Author site, publisher site, Bookshop.org

A review in 90 feet or less:

The time capsule that Sports Illustrated has become, in the musky scent of its recent emasculation, can still be a bit jarring.

When the SI issue of May 19, 1969 arrived at our house, proclaiming a group of “hot young” Dodgers were about come to the rescue of a franchise still trying to find its footing from a 95-win team getting swept in the ’66 World Series, then watching Sandy Koufax retire, and now braced for Don Drysdale heading in that direction, there was some reason for optimism for all the kids in my neighborhood. The magazine’s 40-cent cover price our parents paid was also worth an investment in seeing the future as predicted by our wise elders.

Manager Walter Alston, as we were shown, had Bill Sudakis, Ted Sizemore and Billy Grabarkewitz all ready for the reboot. Tell Danny Goodman to start cranking out World Series trinkets.

Given that those ’69 Dodgers would finish 85-77, fourth-best and just eight-games out in the newly created National League West, it was a bit of an illusion, but much easier to compartmentalize after taking in a 76-86 showing in ’68 (seventh in the elongated NL, 21 games back) and a 73-89 free-fall from ’67 (eighth place, 28 1/2 games back).

Yet, these three Musketeers fresh out of the Mickey Mouse Club would bring it back to glory.

With mixed results.

Sudakis, a catcher and third baseman who signed as a free agent in 1964 a year before the MLB Draft began, hit .234 that ’69 season in 132 games, age 23. Sudsy, as was his nickname, seemed to be all but washed up by ’72 when the Dodgers waived him.  The Angels kicked the tires on him before the ’75 season, then released him mid-way through after he hit .121 in 30 games. 

Sizemore, a 15th round draft pick in 1966, somehow won the ’69 NL Rookie of the Year Award following Johnny Bench (in ’68) and Tom Seaver (in ’67) in an otherwise so-so year for up-and-coming talent. Starting at second base, Sizemore would have a career-best 4.2 WAR, hitting .271 in 159 games, age 24. After upping that to .306 in ’70, the Dodgers capitalized on his value, sending him to St. Louis with backup catcher Bob Stinson for Dick Allen (which didn’t end up so well). Sizemore came back to the Dodgers in ’76 via a trade for Willie Crawford, but by ’79, the Dodgers were done with him again, sending him this time to Philadelphia.

Grabarkewitz, taken in the 12th round of the ’66 Draft, was bestowed jersey No. 1 when he came up for 34 games that ’69 season, going 6 for 65 (.092). But the next year, he was on the NL All-Star team, hitting .289 in 156 games with a team-leading 17 homers, 92 runs scored, 84 RBIs and 19 stolen bases.  

Then, poof.

In the 2024 book “Baseball’s Shooting Stars: Improbable Ascents and Burnouts in the National Pastime,” author David J. Gordon devotes a special chapter to Grabarkewitz, the man “who led the league in consonants” but was “stymied by badly timed injuries.” His 6.5 WAR in his career year in 1970 — a stat that didn’t even exist at the time but often used in modern times to measure former players in a new light — wasn’t that remarkable, but in the aftermath, Gordon write that Grabarkewitz “may have been the most extreme one-year wonder of any non-pitcher in MLB history … I can find no other historical example of a position player with a career lasting at least five years who posted a > or = 6.5 WAR in one season but played at or below replacement level for the remainder of his career.” Why he was out of the game by age 29, after a brief time with the Angels, can be baffling to some, but Gordon has a thought on that:

“My reflexive take on one-year wonders like Grabarkewitz is their career years were flukes and the law of averages caught up with them. But Grabarkewitz is something else. Nothing about his sterling 1970 season seems lucky or flukish. A combination of lesser injuries and an overloaded Dodgers farm system — not regression to the mean — conspired to prevent him from becoming the player everyone thought he would be for more than one season. I view Grabarkewitz mainly as a very unlucky player who might very well have achieved long-term success on a different team and under more favorable circumstances.”

Gordon allusion to “an overloaded Dodgers farm system” goes to why Vickrey’s book gives a greater context to how and why the team’s 1968 MLB draft remains, by consensus still today, the greatest haul of talent in the game’s history.

Dialing back to that ‘69 season, there was a brief glimpse of a 20-year-old Steve Garvey (1-for-3), 19-year-old Bobby Valentine (five pinch-running appearances) and 19-year-old Bill Buckner (0-for-1).

Valentine, Buckner and Garvey were prized pieces of a collection that included Ron Cey, Davey Lopes, Tom Paciorek, Doyle Alexander, Joe Ferguson and Geoff Zahn. Adding in Bill Russell, Charlie Hough and Tommy Hutton, the Dodgers’ foundation had been laid and would last more than a decade — let’s call it the 1981 World Series, after they team decided to let their prized infield break into pieces.

The link to all of them is Tommy Lasorda. As Vickrey details, it was Lasorda, that scout, who was a key figure in the Dodgers’ acquisition of talent before the instution of the 1965 MLB Draft — the first pick of that draft was Rick Monday, an outfielder from Santa Monica High who had gone to Arizona State and was all but signed as Dodgers home-town talent before the Kansas City A’s were allowed to take him. Just prior to that, Lasorda was the important figure in the Dodgers signing local talent Willie Crawford from Freemont High in L.A., one of the last of the “bonus baby” players who had to spend time on the major-league roster likely before they were ready.

Continue reading “Day 3 of 2026 baseball book reviews: The Class of ’68 Brigade” →

Day 1 of 2026 baseball book reviews: Sho-ing off for the kids

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“Decoy Saves Opening Day”

The author: Shohei Ohtani and Michael Blank
The illustrator: Fanny Liem
The details: HarperCollins, 32 pages, $21.99, released Feb. 3, ’26
The links: The publisher and Bookshop.org

“Shohei Ohtani: A Little Golden Book Biography”

The author: Nicole de las Heras
The illustrator: Toshiki Nakamura
The details: Little Golden Book Biographies/Penguin/Random House, 24 pages, $5.99; released March 3, ’26
The links: The publisher and at Bookstore.org

A review in 90 feet or less:

An AI overview collection of words and symbols generated from a search engine ask specifically about “Shohei Ohtani insane endorsement income” quickly will engineer this kind of answer-nugget:

“Shohei Ohtani is projected to earn an estimated $125 million in endorsement income for 2026, with nearly 20 global brand partners, making him the highest-paid athlete in the world from endorsements alone, according to Sportico data via Boardroom. This follows an estimated $100 million in marketing revenue earned during 2025, on top of a $2 million salary with the Dodgers — a threshold only previously reached by legends like Tiger Woods, Roger Federer, and Stephen Curry”

We believe this to be true, because the AI primary source for that information seems to spitting out an Instragram post made by MLB on Fox and Fox Sports. Those numbers had been regurgitated many times over by other media platforms, including the Los Angeles Times, when, in the headline “Why $100 million in endorsements says Shohei Ohtani is the global face of sport,” the writer went on to deduce: “In Ohtani, whose face appears on everything from airplanes to skin care products, baseball at long last has its Michael Jordan: the superstar that has transcended sports and ascended to the status of global pop culture icon.”

He can hit. He can pitch.

He can write a book. Not one of those “as told to” mass-market, ghost-written, give-us-the-gossip type of sordid tale.

No new dirt here on Ippei here. It’s about a different dog.

Ohtani’s handlers must be painfully aware there is no money to be made in the book publishing business.

Just ask writers such as Bill Plunkett, who did the 2025 “L.A. Story: Shohei Ohtani, The Los Angeles Dodges and a Season for the Ages” or Jeff Fletcher, who fashioned an update of his 2022 “Sho-Time: The Inside Story of Shohei Ohtani and the Greatest Baseball Season Ever Played.” All their deadline work dancing around their regular job of covering the Dodgers and Angels didn’t generate royalties that will allow them to lead a more regal suburban existence.

Ohtani’s co-author, Michael Blank, could even clue him in. Blanks is a venture capitalist who has been with Creative Artists Agency for 15 years.

Continue reading “Day 1 of 2026 baseball book reviews: Sho-ing off for the kids” →

No. 42: Tom Selleck

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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. 42:

= James Worthy, Los Angeles Lakers
= Ronnie Lott, USC football
= Ricky Bell, USC football
= Walt Hazzard, UCLA basketball
= Don MacLean, UCLA basketball

The not-so-obvious choices for No. 42:

= Connie Hawkins, Los Angeles Lakers
= Kevin Love, UCLA basketball
= Lucius Allen, UCLA basketball and Los Angeles Lakers
= CR Roberts, USC football

The most interesting story for No. 42:
Tom Selleck, USC basketball forward (1965-66 to 1966-67) via Grant High of Van Nuys and L.A. Valley College
Southern California map pinpoints:
Sherman Oaks, Van Nuys, Los Angeles (Sports Arena), Hollywood

The 42 preamble

UCLA unveiled a Jackie Robinson monument on campus on March 5, 2016.

In November of 2014, UCLA announced it would retire the No. 42 across all its men’s and women’s sports teams. It was following up what Major League Baseball did 17 years earlier, this time to honor one of its most noteworthy alums, Jack Robinson.

UCLA may have also been nudged by another local university for the concept of this kind of number retirement. In February of ’14, Cal State Northridge’s athletic department retired the No. 58 among all its sports programs to mark the year — 1958 — when the school opened.

Conveniently, the timing for UCLA’s declaration marked the 75th anniversary of Robinson’s arrival as a student-athlete on the campus.

After two years at Pasadena City College, Robinson, out of Muir Technical High, went to Westwood in February of 1939 on an athletic scholarship. He departed in the spring of 1941, a few units short of a degree and with no graduation. The story goes that Robinson needed to make some income to help his family in Pasadena. He would soon go into the military.

But Robinson sure did put a spotlight on the university. He was the first four-sport letterman in UCLA history – football (1939 and 1940), basketball (1940 and 1941), track and field (1940) and even a little baseball (1940).

In 2004, a Jackie Robinson statue was created to sit near Jackie Robinson Stadium just west of the UCLA campus (Getty Images)

Even more convenient was UCLA announcement’s was just after the success of the 2013 film, “42.”

The late actor Chadwick Bozeman played Robinson on his journey through Pasadena to UCLA, to the Dodgers’ Triple-A Montreal Royals, before it was decided he was equipped to join the Brooklyn Dodgers and wear that number 42.

The fact that Robinson never wore No. 42 at UCLA in any sport seems to be beside the point. UCLA’s accounting department acknowledges that as it finds places in almost every athletic platform to make sure a “42” is branded somewhere.

The “42” is painted at each 25 yard line at the Rose Bowl during a UCLA-Utah game in August of 2025. Why not at each 42-yard line?

“Jackie Robinson established a standard of excellence to which people the world over should aspire,” said athletic director Dan Guerrero, a former UCLA baseball player, during the announcement. “We want to ensure that his is a legacy to be upheld and carried forward by Bruins for generations to come. While he wore several numbers at UCLA, Jackie Robinson made the number 42 as iconic as the man himself. For that very reason, no Bruin will be issued the number 42 — in any sport — ever again.”

For UCLA basketball, he was No. 18. For UCLA football, he was famously No. 28. What he wore playing baseball, the Bruin statkeepers still aren’t sure.

The UCLA Bruins’ 1940 baseball team photo. Jack Robinson is top left.

We had sought out UCLA’s sports information department for more info, but it can’t find any evidence he even wore a baseball number. The Dodgers and the Baseball Hall of Fame’s research department in Cooperstown, N.Y., didn’t produce anything. Neither did a dig through the Amateur Athletic Foundation nor the Pasadena City library archives. Employees at the Jackie Robinson Foundation finally were asked to quiz Rachel Robinson about it. She replied: I don’t know.

For now, it remains an iconic, and ironic, mystery. Which seems pretty twisted in itself.

There also seems to be no magical story behind why Robinson wore 42, other than it’s what the Dodgers gave him to wear.

In Triple-A, Robinson wore No. 10. During his days with the Kansas City Monarchs of the Negro Leagues, various accounts have him wearing Nos. 5, 8 and 23.

Ken Griffey Jr. is probably most responsible for making No. 42 more ubiquitous. When then–MLB Commissioner Bud Selig retired No. 42 for all of baseball on April 15, 1997 — 50 years after Robinson’s MLB debut — Griffey, then with the Seattle Mariners, asked that his uniform number be flipped from 24 to 42 for that day. It was.

By 2004, the league started an annual Jackie Robinson Day. In 2007, Griffey, then with the Cincinnati Reds, asked Selig if he could wear 42 again for the special occasion. Selig got the OK from Rachel Robinson — and the offer was made to any MLB player who wanted to make that number change as well. Then it became a thing.

Dodgers manager Dave Roberts, a UCLA graduate, addresses the team at the Dodger Stadium Jackie Robinson statue outside of center field.

We might come up with 42 reasons why Robinson didn’t become our prime focus for No. 42, but the primary reason is that No. 42 is far more acrimonious with Robinson’s Brooklyn Dodgers career. He didn’t come with the team when it moved to Los Angeles. Robinson retired in 1957 before the Dodgers could trade him to the rival Giants.

At PasadenaClsc.com, a Jack Robinson T-shirt.

A company named PASADENA CLSC (pronounced Classic), was started in 2019 by graphic designer Dennis Robinson, the grandson of Jack’s brother, Mack, to celebrate his great uncle’s legacy as well as celebrate the community’s history. By some accounts, Robinson would not have been comfortable with this “42” branding opportunity by MLB. Especially as it seems “42” has become a selling point when put on all sorts of hats, clothes, jackets, socks … It’s easily identifiable with a man, a cause and a statement of one’s social justice beliefs. The MLB duly notes that with its own product line.

We consider Robinson’s greatest impact in Southern California sports history when he wore No. 28 playing football.

In 2017, when the Dodgers unveiled a statue honoring Robinson outside of Dodger Stadium, Vin Scully, as the master of ceremonies, told several stories about his relationship with Robinson, going back to Scully’s first year broadcasting Dodgers games in Brooklyn in 1950. Scully punctuated that speech with this “Jackie Robinson Day” celebration on April 15:

“All across the country, in every major-league ballpark, every player will be wearing 42. And what does the 42 means? It doesn’t mean that (the players) are all equal. … but the one thing they share in carrying 42 is the fact that the man who wore it gave them the one thing that no one at the time could have ever done. He gave them equality. And he gave them opportunity. Those were the two things many of those people never had to hold in their hearts when they first began to play. So, yes, 42 is a great number, it means a lot for a great man, but it is a tremendous number when you think of a man who wore it with such dignity, with such pride, and with such great discipline.”

A book pin offered at IdealBookShelf.com

So there’s that …

Anyone else able to explain how the number 42 seems to be somehow attached as the “Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything”?

In Douglas Adams’ late ’70s/early ’80s comedy/science fiction book series, “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy,” No. 42 is the simple answer that comes up after a super computer called “Deep Thought” spends 7 ½ billion years of calculation pondering that the aforementioned question. Or was it a real question. The creators did not actually know what the “Ultimate Question” was, rendering the answer 42 even more confusing.

Adams, when asked, said he simply picked that answer because it was an ordinary, small number.

How so? What does it all mean? Was he a Jack Robinson fan?

Sit with that awhile and see where the universe takes you.

No. 42: Tom Selleck

You never know when a low dose of a early-morning TV chat show might actually clarify some urban Hollywood legend and lead to some legitimate record-keeping.

In May of 2024, Tom Selleck climbed up in the high-back chair as a guest on “Live with Kelly and Mark,” taking questions about how he went from a USC basketball player to a Hollywood actor based on his newly released memoir, “You Never Know.” The nattering ABC coffee klatch visit was also a place to get nostalgic for the end of his participation in the long-running CBS series “Blue Bloods.”

“You wanted to be — and I did not realize this — a professional athlete!?” co-host Kelly Rippa piped up as she boosted herself up in her seat.

Selleck shrugged.

“Well, it was kind of a fantasy,” he said sheepishly. “(At first) it was baseball, then I got a little burned out, and by the time I got to ‘SC, I thought it was basketball …”

“You got a scholarship, in fact!” Kelly interjected.

“No,” Selleck answered, almost apologetic. “I was a walk on. Basically my real job was riding the pine at USC … I earned a scholarship my last semester.”

Continue reading “No. 42: Tom Selleck” →