HOT CORNER

A consumer’s guide to the best and worst of sports media and merchandise. Ground rules: If it can be read, heard, observed, viewed, dialed or downloaded, it’s in play here. One exception: No products will be endorsed.

What: “The Life”

Where: ESPN, tonight, 6:30

This episode of the weekly ESPN series shows that, despite what Thomas Wolfe wrote, you can go home again. At least Tony Gonzalez can.

In one segment of this show, the Kansas City Chiefs’ All-Pro tight end returns to Huntington Beach High and visits with four of his former coaches. He played football and basketball in high school and also in college at California.

Another segment focuses on Gonzalez’s efforts to make it in the NBA. Cameras follow Gonzalez from his apartment in Manhattan Beach to a recent Summer Pro League game at Long Beach State. Gonzalez suits up for a Miami Heat team but does not play.

The cameras are back at a Heat practice the next day, but Gonzalez is not there.

Making it to the NBA had been his goal, but he says one can become too attached to one’s goals. Also, he says he wants to spend more time with his 1-year-old son Niko.

The show opens in Manhattan Beach, where the surfers don’t even know who Gonzalez is. One female surfer says of the Chiefs, “That’s a baseball team, right?” A surfer named Jim Miller, who says he has never heard of Gonzalez, ends up befriending him and teaching him to surf.

Gonzalez’s mother, Judy, is a big part of the show. “He always loved playing basketball,” she says, “but he always knew his paycheck would come from football.”

In the final segment, Gonzalez and teammate Warren Moon meet for lunch and throw a football around with some hotel parking attendants.

It’s a fun show, but somewhat lacking journalistically. Gonzalez does not address his current contract dispute with the Chiefs. And though there is a glimpse of Heat Coach Pat Riley, he is not interviewed. It’s not clear exactly why Gonzalez didn’t get to play in that summer league game, or why his attempt to make in the NBA has apparently failed.

*

Larry Stewart