Moving Doesn’t Cost This Collector Prized Possessions

I’m a collector. Not stamps, mind you, or coins or antique cars or ships in bottles or beer cans or even egg beaters. I collect just about whatever hits my desk.

It frustrates my wife, because the same thing happens to my desk at home. Why, she laments, can’t I ever throw anything away?

At the office, however, I am able to hide my collected debris--or at least most of it. I file it.

News releases are generally scanned and canned, but the ones I choose to save seem destined to eternal life. After all, anything worth keeping is worth saving.

However, there are times when a few years of paraphernalia can leap out of its drawers and bury what might otherwise have been an orderly day of work.

It happened Friday. It was moving day. After more than seven years overlooking Horton Plaza, The Times’ San Diego County office relocated to larger quarters a few blocks away.

A move is always exciting, except for one exercise. Packing.

The movers told us just to leave our desks unlocked, and the contents would miraculously surface on the appropriate desk in the new office.

That would have been fine, except that it was suggested that we do a cleansing job on outdated material. Understand that I don’t consider the Magna Charta to be outdated.

Surely, I will someday have a need for a 1978 Cleveland Indian media guide or a 1978-79 Wisconsin-Parkside basketball prospectus or a 1980 San Diego State-Colorado State football program. I found them as I sorted through the flotsam in the files, and dutifully packed them. Just in case.

Other chores took much longer to consummate. To decide which files might be dumped, I had to read what was in those files. I guess I didn’t have to, but I did. I always do.

Under Sterling, Donald T., I found a Clipper clipping from the October, 1981, San Diego Magazine. The headline: “The Silver Touch of Don Sterling . . . Can the Clippers’ New Owner Be Both This Good and That Rich?”

I ended up reading the entire article, laughing throughout at the pomposity and insincerity of the man.

“Don’t sweat the short stuff,” an obviously gullible author said in the last paragraph. “Donald Sterling--and thankfully, the San Diego Clippers--are a long-term project now.”

I sure could use Donald T. right now. I could use an expert to help me pack.

I found another file marked “Cohen, Mickey.” It pre-dated my move to San Diego, and, thus, had already endured one purging of the records. Cohen was a shady character, to use a euphemism, who was pushing a book he had written. He happened to appear at a sportswriter’s function with race driver Richard Petty and football star Anthony Davis.

“Hey, Anthony,” I remember Cohen saying, “I’ll be da brains behind a caper that’ll make us some dough. You carry the loot outta da bank and Richard here will drive the getaway car.”

He didn’t ask me to be a part of the heist. He probably heard about my role in “Bonnie and Clod.”

Why do I have files on cricket, darts and sailplanes? And none on bocci ball, shuffleboard and hot-air balloon races?

I had another file on another off-beat sport called Over-the-Line. This one would be inappropriate anywhere but San Diego. It will move to the new office and retain its niche between North, Lowell and San Diego Padres 1978.

Normally, this is a file which is difficult to skip past without at least a quick perusal. In this case, since OTL had just ended its 1985 world championship debauchery, I had just returned the folder to the cabinet. I left it untouched.

As might be expected, I stumbled across a file labeled Williams, Dick. However, the contents were surprising. There was only one entry, a carbon of a story I wrote when he had been named to manage the Angels in 1974.

“I only have eight minutes,” said Reggie Jackson, then with the Oakland A’s. “To give you a summation on Dick Williams in eight minutes would be cheating the man.”

Most athletes who have played for Williams would have trouble talking about him for eight seconds without asking to go off the record. Those A’s were different. They despised Charlie Finley so much they sent Valentines to Dick Williams.

I was baffled momentarily as I slipped Williams back into the files, pondering why there were no entries since he had come to the Padres. The answer was simple, I finally realized. I had written that story back in the Stone Ages, when we wrote on typewriters--with carbon paper. There is no paper trail with computers.

In between files, I found a remarkable artifact. It was Dell Sports Baseball Yearbook for 1961. I looked for Graig Nettles, but didn’t find him.

However, under Dick Williams, it said: “Probably baseball’s No. 1 handyman and a pretty fair hitter, with sting.” Whitey Herzog, in town this weekend with the St. Louis Cardinals, was also mentioned: “A competent outfield spare.”

One of my colleagues, Chris Cobbs, looked over my shoulder and gasped at the relic in my hands.

“Where did you find that ?” he asked. “Don’t throw that away.”

He explained that that issue of that magazine had been the first he had ever purchased. Being the sentimental sort, I gave it to him. Mrs. Cobbs will probably find it among the clutter on his desk.

The files also provided reminders of teams, sports and events which have come and gone--the United States Football League’s San Diego franchise, which actually went without coming; the Gold Bowl, which Art Schlichter departed at halftime, soon to be followed by the game itself; Del Mar harness racing, which quickly trotted into the sunset; Hawks hockey; Breakers volleyball; Sockers, outdoor, and Balboa Stadium. May they all rest in peace--back in the cabinet.

And I also uncovered reminders of some of those best of times--Chargers ‘79, ’80 and ‘81; Padres ‘84; Sockers, indoor, ‘81-82, ‘82-83, ‘83-84 and ‘84-85; USD basketball ‘83-84 and San Diego State basketball ‘84-85.

Ah, the memories. Packing always brings them back.

Of course, I simply could not transport everything I found to the new office. I had to make some very difficult decisions. Some would move to the new office.

And I would take the others home.