He Covers Sports by the Numbers

Just about everyone in his high school in Akron, Ohio, thought Ron Grossman would eventually become a sportscaster or maybe a sportswriter.

Besides being a sports statistics nut, he was forever sitting at a desk at home and monitoring Cleveland Indians baseball games on radio or television, typing the outcome of every pitch and doing make-believe play-by-play.

Well, everyone was wrong, sort of.

After graduating from Ohio State University, Grossman moved to California and became an optometrist.

But his love for sports statistics continued, eventually leading him to the Los Angeles Rams, where for the past 23 years he has provided game information for the Rams radio announcer on KMPC.

Grossman, 53, was actually years ahead of his time, since he kept both offensive and defensive statistics.

“Everyone was keeping offensive statistics, but the defense never got any accolades,” he noted. “I thought they should, and besides, (the defense) is just as interesting.”

Besides his statistical accounting for the Rams, he clocks the hang time on punts--how long the ball stays in the air--with his stopwatch and often will clock the amount of time that the quarterback has before throwing the ball.

After a meeting with sportscaster Dick Enberg, Grossman suggested that the Rams use the defensive statistics as another interesting aspect of the game.

“The Rams tried me out for the preseason games and liked it, and I’ve been there ever since,” said Grossman, an Irvine resident and the first president of the Irvine Chamber of Commerce.

Before catching on with the Rams when they were playing at the Coliseum--he ran the press elevator for a year before getting a chance to use his record-keeping talent--he kept statistics for both the UCLA and USC athletic news bureaus.

“When they played each other, I kept the game stats for both of them,” he said.

Although he keeps the stats for the Rams “because of the fun of it,” Grossman is paid $45 a game. When he first started he was paid $5 a game.

Aside from the money, “I also have the best seat in town in Angel Stadium,” he said, but points out that he rarely goes to road games unless they are close, such as in San Diego.

He watched Sunday’s Rams victory on television and believes that the team will have a good game against San Francisco. “They always play a good game in San Francisco,” he said. “The Rams are on a roll.”

Grossman said he would rather sit at a desk during the game then in the stands.

“By keeping an accounting of everything that’s going on, you keep your interest level at a high plane,” he said. “The action of the game is not enough for me.”

Even when he goes to high school football games in Irvine, “I keep statistics of the game in my head,” said Grossman, who is quick with the numbers and names in the Rams record book. “I pick out the best player or two and keep a mental accounting of how they are doing.”

For the past eight years, the optometrist has been coaching youth baseball, basketball and soccer, as well as keeping statistics on each of them.

He also is a member of the Irvine Sports Club, which honors athletes at Irvine, University and Woodbridge high schools. And he is a former board member of the Irvine Boys and Girls Club.

It was time for Las Padrinas to change its name to Volunteer Council, said Dick Guthrie, executive director of the Boys & Girls Club of La Habra.

“The club support group has gone from holding spaghetti dinners to being a group that raises $10,000 on a single event,” he said.

Besides, the group’s name puzzled a lot of people, he said.

“Years back, it was a women’s auxiliary that wanted to be known as the Godmothers, and that really wasn’t a correct translation of its name,” he said. “Volunteer Council better reflects the role of the group.”

Acknowledgments--Mable Pride, raised on a farm in Nebraska but a La Habra resident for 60 years, marked her 100th birthday on Jan. 3. She received a birthday card and congratulations from President Bush and wife Barbara.