Cherish the Thought

It’s Christmas morning and we are sitting by the tree, untying and unwrapping.

There are 10 packages and each represents decades of stature in the Los Angeles sports community.

As we open, we realize that we have never quite taken the time to cherish such gifts. Our days fly by and we never take the advice of an old friend, the late Al McGuire, who always told us to celebrate the moment, to stop and smell the roses.

McGuire was of the opinion that, if we let life trample us, it will; if we let all the daily Picassos around us become blurs, we’ll never appreciate a great work of art.

These gifts have been ours for years. Let’s open them one by one, understanding that what we find represents longevity, uniqueness and the total subjectivity of the person opening the presents. There is a slight bit of dust inside each, along with some wrinkles. No shining new toys here, just those that are nicely broken in.

Let’s also understand that, in a city as rich in sports lore as ours, there easily could be several hundred packages to open.

Here we go:

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PACKAGE NO. 1

His name is John Wooden, he turned 91 in October and his gifts to this city would fill volumes. In fact, many of them have. He coached UCLA to those 10 NCAA titles in basketball and he is in the Hall of Fame as a teacher, coach and player. Books have been written with and about and for him. He has become one of the most mesmerizing public speakers. As his body breaks down, little by little, his mind gets sharper and sharper. Frequently, when he is asked a question at one of his speaking engagements, he responds by reciting an appropriate poem. If it has 10 verses, he recites all 10. As large as his achievements have been, his heart is even larger. A year or so ago, he was asked to give a send-off talk to a group of wheelchair basketball players heading to the Paralympics. They were leaving from LAX and the walk to their gate was long and tedious for Wooden, who grumbled a bit to himself along the way about saying yes to things he shouldn’t. But he made it, saw the looks in the eyes of the disabled athletes as he spoke to them, and told a friend later, “There they were, with no use of their legs, and there I was, grumbling because I had to walk so far. I was so ashamed of myself.”

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PACKAGE NO. 2

His name is Chick Hearn and he is probably 85 years old, although nobody is quite sure because he won’t fess up. That is part of his charm and possibly why somebody created the term “stubborn Irishman.” We all read how heart surgery stopped his streak of broadcasting Laker games at 3,338 last week. We all know that listening to a Laker game without him is not really listening to a Laker game--they ought to label them exhibitions until he comes back. And we all know one thing for certain: He will come back.

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PACKAGE NO. 3

His name is Mal Alberts and he once was a famous sports broadcaster. He lived in the East for a while, but is from here and is back here now, where he says he belongs. Because of the similarity of names, he often gets mixed up with current network broadcaster Marv Albert, but Mal Alberts is 74 and stopped working a few years before Marv came along. After the 1960 World Series, when Bill Mazeroski beat the Yankees with his famous homer, Mal Alberts interviewed Mickey Mantle on the spot, and Mantle told him, “The best team lost.” Alberts is in poor health these days, needs a walker to get around, but still drives and is working on a book that will help us all remember the good old days of sports.

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PACKAGE NO. 4

His name is Shav Glick and he has been a sportswriter for The Times for 47 years. He is 81, knows more about auto racing than many of the people who designed the engines and shows no signs of gearing down. When it is suggested that he might curtail his travel schedule a bit, he grumbles and writes another memo, promoting ideas for stories in faraway places that will involve six changes of planes, four rental cars and maybe even a dogsled or two. He still plays golf to a 19 handicap and still shoots in the 80s.

“More of them are in the hundreds now,” he says, grumbling again.

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PACKAGE NO. 5

His name is Vin Scully, and if he isn’t an icon, nobody is. He has been the Dodgers’ broadcaster for 52 years, and is in his early to mid-70s, although, like Hearn, is not fond of broadcasting his age. For many years now, he has been more important to the Dodgers than power-hitting outfielders or fireballing relief pitchers. He is their image, their dignity, their sense of balance when all else seems to be spiraling out of control, as it has since Fox bought them.

He has mastered the art of storytelling amid the routine description of balls and strikes and lazy fly balls. It was once remarked that the greatest fear of many listeners, when Scully begins one of his wonderful tales while also describing an at-bat, is that the hitter will swing and connect early. Given a 3-2 count, with perhaps two foul balls, Scully can do “War and Peace.”

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PACKAGE NO. 6

His name is Eddie Merrins and he walks the fairways of Bel-Air Country Club like somebody who has been there before. And he has, for more than 40 years, as head professional and teacher to the stars. He is 75 and still can, occasionally, shoot in the 70s. His stature is such that it would not be unheard of for a Tiger Woods to come calling, or David Duval or Phil Mickelson. He has fixed some of the worst swings in the world, and been allowed to tinker with some of the best. In golf, anywhere on this continent, if the phrase “the little pro” is uttered, everybody knows who that is.

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PACKAGE NO. 7

Her name is Olga Connolly and she is as symbolic of the good old days of track and field and Olympics as anybody short of Jesse Owens. She is 69 now, but it seems like only yesterday that her Olympic village romance at the 1956 Games in Melbourne with Harold Connolly of the United States charmed us all. She was Olga Fikotova from Czechoslovakia then. Connolly was a hammer thrower from the United States, Olga a discus thrower, who would win the gold medal. Those were the Iron Curtain days, and a public romance that knocked that curtain down was Cinderella-like in the United States.

They moved to California, and the marriage ended in 1973. But Olga’s commitment, to this very day, to the elements of public fitness and public education is passionate. For somebody who grew up surrounded by communism, Olga Connolly, probably the leading all-time Czech liberal, can and will articulate better than most of us born and raised in this country the real elements of a democracy. All those groups trying to hire a busy John Wooden as their guest speaker ought to try Olga Connolly.

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PACKAGE NO. 8

His name is Tommy Lasorda and he needs no description. He is 74 and is everywhere--talk radio, newspaper articles, TV, magazines, probably even some bad movies. If the longtime Dodger manager is an acquired taste, he has certainly given us plenty of time and access to acquire it. In the long run, only those with no sense of humor or those who just don’t get it dislike Lasorda, which means he and T.J. Simers have the same clientele.

He has asked us to worship Dodger Blue, to believe that there is a higher power working when his team takes the field. People say he talks more baseball than he knows. They forget that he has won two World Series, an Olympic baseball title and almost a Japanese league title. They forget he is in baseball’s Hall of Fame. He is loud, unabashed, sometimes full of himself. But always fun. He has raised millions of dollars for charity. Once, he spearheaded a drive to build a convent for some nuns back East. Now, when he goes to visit them, the nuns treat him as if he were the pope. And if they continue, he’ll run for the job.

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PACKAGE NO. 9

Her name is Judy Holland and if there are more important pioneers in women’s collegiate sports, you’d be hard pressed to name them. She is 64 and, for 20 years before her retirement, she was associate athletic director at UCLA, from where her influence spread nationwide. In the mid-1970s, when women were still competing under an organization separate from the NCAA, Holland and a man named Irv Grossman began a program that is now known as the Honda Awards and has evolved into the premier event honoring female college athletes. Honorees have included Cheryl Miller, Jackie Joyner-Kersee, Ann Meyers-Drysdale, Nancy Lieberman, Mia Hamm and many more. Holland continues as the driving force in that annual awards program. She is smart, tough and disciplined, but also easily amused, which is proved by her admission that she is a regular reader of Simers. In 1999, she was given the Honda national award of merit. Not a moment too soon.

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PACKAGE NO. 10

Hey, we get two gifts in this box, two guys named Duke:

* Duke Llewellyn persuaded John Wooden to put his name on a college basketball award 25 years ago, and in so doing made the Los Angeles Athletic Club, where Llewellyn is athletic director, the counterpart to the New York Athletic Club and its Heisman Trophy. The Wooden Award is now an April fixture, attracting the biggest names in the game to a banquet that honors the best only days after the NCAA tournament final. Llewellyn, in his late 70s, is a former USC football player and a pied piper to Southern California athletes seeking training and a facility for their Olympic dreams.

* Duke Russell is a household name only in his own household, and perhaps in the offices of various local college presidents who have incurred his wrath in recent years by dropping sports. Russell, 75, was an athlete at Hollywood High and later at L.A. City College. He played in the Dodger organization, but never made it to the big time. In 1986, they dropped baseball at LACC and Russell became a man with a cause. He has taken on college presidents at LACC, Pasadena City College, Mission College and Cal State Northridge, and his most recent efforts have been geared toward getting football back at Northridge, which played its last game last month. Russell is tireless to the point of being annoying. He organizes campaigns, gathers groups, makes hundreds of phone calls and fills the voice mail of area sports editors. His labor of love pays him nothing, and he says he does it because, “I love sports, they helped me so much in my life, and society needs them.”

There, 10 great Christmas gifts.

If you are reading this, you are a Los Angeles sports fan. It is Christmas and you are blessed, not only by family and friends and health and well-being, but by these 10 packages we just opened.