It’s a Man’s World for Modern Ballboys

You think Laker ballboys you think boys, right? Eager, pimply-faced teenagers who bring towels to sweaty Shaq, Gatorade to thirsty Kobe, pick up the basketballs after warmups.

Meet Gavin Cain, 26, and Carlos Maples, 28. Cain is a graduate of Loyola Marymount and a sales assistant for an insurance brokerage. Maples is attending Long Beach State and plays golf in local tournaments, well enough, he says, to make a decent living. Adult pursuits performed by men and then off they go, every time the Lakers are at home, to pick up sweaty towels, hand off the Gatorade, gather up the basketballs.

And so much more.

“I am everybody’s assistant,” Maples says. “The equipment manager, the head trainer, the players, I’m assistant to all of them. I take care of tickets, I get food, I look out for wives. Or girlfriends.”

Or both? Hey, Maples hasn’t kept this night job for 14 years because he spills the gossip on the Lakers.

What Maples is saying is that you can’t do this ballboy job anymore if you are a boy.

“Not anymore,” Cain agrees. “When I first started maybe, but now, it’s a lot more complicated.”

Neither Maples nor Cain played much basketball. Both were baseball players. Maples says he was pretty good at Playa del Rey St. Bernard High. Cain still plays. Or did, until last summer, when he stepped in a hole during a softball game and ruptured tendons in both knees. Cain came back to the job, limping a little. Did he get any sympathy?

“I don’t think anybody knows what happened to me,” he says. “I wear long pants so the scars don’t show. And the players never ask.”

If they did, Cain could tell about chasing a fly ball, running over from right field and trying to reach a shot to deep center.

“I planted to catch the ball and I stepped in a dip,” he says. “When I looked down, neither of my kneecaps was where they were supposed to be. I got a little nauseous. But all I missed was the four-team Laker preseason league.”

Now there’s a comeback some of the Lakers might appreciate hearing about.

Maples can’t remember exactly how he first got the job. By hanging around the gym when the Lakers practiced, he thinks. He says when he was given the opportunity, “I was still a kid but I worked real hard. I was getting five dollars a game and I did it for the money then. Now I do it because courtside seats cost $1,150 and I sit courtside for free. You know? It doesn’t get better than that.”

Cain serves in the visitors’ locker room and Maples earns the trust of the home team. He will maybe run a private errand, pick up the dry cleaning or a meal at the drive-through or any of those pesky daily life details that a busy professional athlete might not have time to handle.

“You need to be pretty responsible these days,” Maples says. “The job has changed so much since when I first started. When I first started it was pretty much picking up the balls and the dirty towels.”

As a high schooler, Cain became a ball boy for Loyola Marymount. A Laker trainer who worked at the school offered him a job two years later. Two years too late it turns out.

“Carlos has gotten to work a championship series,” he says. “I’ve never gotten one of those. And I want one.”

Did he plan to make a career of this?

“Not exactly,” Cain says. “But every year when I think about quitting, I start thinking about how everybody I know would kill to have this job. We get treated with respect by the players, we get great seats and I have no complaints about the work.

“I realized how lucky I was one time, my first or second year, I can’t remember, when I was watching Larry Bird. As an athlete, I relied mostly on my hand-eye coordination. The Celtics came to town and I was in awe because Bird was having one of those games where he did not miss. I mean, the guy did not miss. The ball always hit the same spot, just at the back of the rim. It was amazing the perspective I had.”

Maples also has hesitated to give up his night job.

“My boss keeps telling me, do I know how many millionaires and CEOs would line up for my job if I quit? And I realize, yeah, I’ve got it pretty good.”

However, as he gets closer to his 30th birthday, he has begun thinking about how he would like to leave the sport. It occurs to him, as the Lakers march through this season, that perhaps there is another championship coming up. And with that, a chance to go out on top.

“Yep,” Maples says, “I could be like Mike.”

Like Michael Jordan that is. Going out a winner, a champion, with a ring on his finger. A ballboy can go out a winner too.

Cain would like that as much as Maples. To be part of a champagne soaking, to join all those front-row citizens rushing the court. To be luckier than all those CEOs because they won’t be invited into the locker room to touch the trophy.

“I’d like to feel that feeling once,” Cain says.

“Yep,” Maples says. “One more time, then walk away.”

And the line of applicants forms on the right. No boys need apply. Not for a man’s job.

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Diane Pucin can be reached at her e-mail address: diane.pucin@latimes.com.