LARRY BOWA'S YELLING AT ME

I read today in the Sports Pages where the Dodgers staff is issuing the outlook for the second half of the season, Torre and Bowa wondering what the hell happened between New York and LA, more than a sports version of culture shock. Torre says something like ‘if you have kids you can tell them not to play with matches but until they burn themselves…” That’s not the kind of Knute Rockne ‘Win one for that McCourt guy’ speech I’d be hoping for if I was the Dodger owner.

The Dodgers have some pitching but mid-way into 2008 the manager and the coaches and the media are still wondering when the wonder kids will wake up and start realizing they’re playing for Joe Torre and not Grady Little or Jim Tracy. Torre. Guy hangs rings in his closet. Torre, the guy caught Bob Gibson, for God’s sake. Torre, manager of Derek Jeter and Mariano Rivera and (gasp!) Roger Clemens and Andy Pettitte. Listen to the man.

Bowa talks about professionals being consistent. “That’s what the big leagues is all about. Have a game plan, execute, consistency, work ethic, not getting distracted. Guys who do that are the guys who succeed. Guys who don’t do that have one good game and three bad games.” Perfect. So I’m writing. Day by day.

I ran into a woman I’d worked with in the cable television business the other day at the supermarket. She shouted my name! She was a real cutie, always flirting with me and wearing low cut shirts. Man, oh man. She was stacking magazines on the racks and we caught up. I told her I was done with the corporate world. Writing, going to minor league baseball games to work for a few bucks, find a way to squeak by until the 401K money kicks in. Lay low, maybe get a book signed, published, that’s the plan, I said.

In the corporate world you get paid just to show up. Results oriented pay usually comes as bonuses, but you get paid. Sometimes some pretty damn good money. I see the names of some of my old colleagues now on Facebook but I really don’t want them around any more. I know who I need to know, who I want to know. Lots of people I never really wanted to but had to. Done with that.

Thumbed through a dozen Bukowski books last night and bought one book of poetry. His picture in the back of one of the books showed him standing in the betting room at the race track penciling in long shots on the Racing Form, alone with his horses and the windows. He drank a lot, I know, and his poetry makes no excuses. Somewhere I see he said he didn’t do much if any editing, just wrote and crossed out lines and sent them to magazines and publishers.

What kind of day-to-day technique did these guys use? Bukowski, Hemingway, Henry Miller? And these guys didn’t have computers. Long hand, Steinbeck and his long legal pads and his pencils. Every Day. ‘Journal of A Novel’, his letters to his publisher each day, his daily warm-up writing, he called it, the summoning of his powers, the stretch of creative muscle, admitting the tough going.

But how many days, how many hours did I waste in the morning in corporate conference calls, waiting for some email to tell me where to dial in, what to think about, what the topic was, listening to managers and the fearful chiming in, the hastened cries of ‘I’m here!’ coming from some cat on the freeway speeding from El Segundo to Chino with a cell phone. Mornings staring at the computer screen, waiting for my turn.

I told Grace, the woman at the market with the magazines, when she said she’d put on weight, that you’re the kind of girl who could put on a lot of weight and still be sexy and I don’t think she even heard that or she didn’t want to respond.

‘You look great!’ she told me. Yeah, I got a good hair stylist, I said. She gave me one of those side hugs, where you grab a shoulder and meet elbow to neck, something like that. Can I publish a story in one of those magazines, I’m thinking? Can I get a book on the rack somewhere, with my name on it? That’s what I want.

Little bit everyday. Have a game plan, execute, make adjustments, work ethic, don’t get distracted. I could see Bowa standing in front of me at nine o’clock in the morning. Yelling, his neck straining. Time is not infinite.

DOWN BY THE RIVER

Laughlin, Bullhead City, Havasu and Parker, the Colorado River, Vidal Junction, Needles; people hiding out, getting by, laying low. So was I.

Listening to the Radio; Top Three Stories from Laughlin/Bullhead City/Parker July 7-9;

3- The ‘adopted’ son shoots and kills his adopted parents in the trailer, then wanders a hundred yards outside the metal box and puts a bullet in his brain. The Coroner’s probably trying to figure out a way to just leave all the bodies where they are and give the buzzards the day off. Don’t think he shot the dog, though.

2- DJ in Bullhead City calls up his buddy, the Friday jock, to play the new promo just cut for the Friday guy’s special show, ‘Southern Fried Firearms’, your basic radio gun show. Highlight of the call was the open, when the guy answers the phone and the live jock asks the gun-show guy if he’s shooting his guns this afternoon. The guy says no, he’s watching Battle Star Galactica. “It’s a really good one!”

1-Two Las Vegas guys arrested in a Bullhead City motel room with guns, $27K in cash and computer software used to make forged checks.

The stories that make small town news so rewarding!

Laughlin, Tuesday night; At the Crab Shack I'm drinking beers with Benny, and he wants to just go back to Boron, and take back his trailer, with his girlfriend of twenty five years who he never bothered to marry and who gave him three nice girls. He was glad to talk to me, he said, because it cooled him off, took his mind off maybe going back there to his trailer and killing the guy who’d moved in with his girl friend. Kill him, he said, with his bare hands. He’d just been in jail for domestic violence, a little three day stint of a ninety day sentence, but he said he didn’t hurt nobody. Maybe the girlfriend just said enough, and kicked his ass out?

He was on his way to Kansas, he said, to get a job, get away from it all but that fell through so he ended up in Laughlin. His dad gave him a thousand dollars to help him out. He hadn’t talked to his dad for two years, they’d had a falling out. But his dad came through with a grand.

Brian ordered another Absolut with cranberry juice and a beer for me, told the girl to put it on his tab.

Andrea, with beautiful breasts and a t-shirt that said “Diamonds are Forever but You’ll Always Remember Crabs; The Crab Shack” shucked boxes of Mexican oysters like she meant it, cracking the crank with slender arms and stealing glances at me.

"I’m going over and get one of those t-bone steaks," Benny says. "Hear it’s the bomb. I’ll be out at the pool later on if you want to come on out."

THIRTY SECONDS WITH JACK McDOWELL

I didn’t ask Jack McDowell about the thrill of winning a Cy Young. I didn’t ask him about growing up in Van Nuys California in the San Fernando Valley where I worked for eleven years and I didn’t ask him about getting to the bigs after only 27 innings of minor league ball. Didn’t ask him about Stanford or being a number one draft choice of the White Sox in 1987, fifth overall.

I asked him about the four albums he’d recorded with his band Stickfigure and he smiled and laughed. He said no, there’s no music to download in the internet, no records likely floating around in the bin racks at used record stores.

“I wish guys like you could play forever,” I said. I shook his huge hand, his fingers almost crawling up to my elbow. He’d thrown out the first pitch at the Epicenter on a sunny hot Sunday afternoon and the long right arm ended up almost in the dirt, the trademark Black Jack delivery still going strong.

He had the ‘live’ arm as they called it, nasty stuff coming down off his six foot five inch frame and he hid the ball as well as anyone, ninety-plus with movement shooting out of his hip or his elbow that he’d whip at you.

I don’t think pitchers ever shave, at least not when they’re scheduled to go live, and Black Jack had gray going in the scruff spreading on his face and on his head.

He was ready for me, for anyone wanting to shake hands and get autographs. I’d asked the girl at the table out front about Jack’s career and she smiled but said ‘don’t know’ when I mentioned the music and I pointed to the program guide and the mention of Stickfigure and Yahoo sports and the Cy Young.

I’d take that resume. Baseball and music and writing.

I didn’t ask him about Roger Clemens, I didn’t ask him about Barry Bonds. I didn’t ask him if he wishes he was still playing, in US Cellular Field instead of old Comiskey, but I don’t think he minds a bit. Didn’t ask him how he might like to play with the Sox today under Ozzie Guillen with players like Orlando Cabrera and Jim Thome and Alexei Ramirez and A J Pierzynski and maybe the best team in baseball.

Didn’t’ have time. I only had thirty seconds.

DOWNSIZING

The salesman at Van Nuys Chevy was twenty eight years old, tops, two diamond stud earrings. He grinned too much.

He did it again, as we walked off the back lot into the office.

“You are what you drive,” he reminded me. All those teeth. Then he motioned me in to his felt-lined gray cubicle with the elegance of an intern about to examine my prostate.

A half-hour later and I was a 1992 Chevy Silverado Club Cab pickup. An hour ago I was a 1998 Corvette. The difference in cost between being a Corvette and being a used Silverado Club Cab? Twelve thousand dollars. I folded the check and put it in my pocket.

Maybe, not so much like a prostate examination. More like a sex-change. With a rebate.

I love LA.

UNFINISHED

We don’t really know what to do with deserts. They just sit there, and we drive by them or fly over them or drop bombs on them. We feel a little uncomfortable, out of place in the heat and the desolation. They're lonely and unforgiving.

Three big deserts, huge geological works in-progress, spread out east of Los Angeles all the way to Utah, New Mexico and Colorado, and extend south deep into Mexico.

For certain climactic and esthetic reasons, Southern Californians mostly live on the coast, in Los Angeles and the beach towns, San Diego, Santa Barbara. I like the ocean. I like beach towns. I like sand-in-the-bikini kinds of days where you watch girls spreading tanning oil over smooth brown skin and all of that clandestine eroticism that takes place at the shore.

I get away to the middle of nothing, though, escape into desert, where pavement falls apart a mile or two from the interstate and you’re on your own, hoping you’ve brought along enough water and maybe food and a blanket or bag to crawl into if you get stuck with a flat tire or you bog down on a trail, get stuck in the sand. I stop the Jeep in the middle of a dusty road and turn off the engine to hear how hard the wind blows and to catch up on the calls of the ravens and the buzz of crickets and the hum of desert survival and the creatures who work this land for a living.

The burned out Joshua Trees and creosote turned crisp in a fire blackens rusty land and etches an outline against evening sky. Breeze crawls up the back of my neck, a puff of sound against my sleeve and the rush of a kestrel flying low along the brush. Jackrabbits stand at every corner, tall ears and long legs, scrambling for cover as I drive by. Lizards take to the rocks for shade and cool air, taking no time to cross the road in straight lines. Nobody is up here but me. No vehicles, no campers, no one hiking or driving or settled in with tents or shelters. It is barren, rough, untouched, pure. It’s mine.

I’ll see no one for close to two hours, no person, just a few houses a half-mile off the road, a few cows grazing, one that scrambles over some loose barbed wire she knows how to negotiate.

Get gas in Ludlow, the girl at the Mojave Preserve office in Barstow advised. Stay away from Essex, she said, you’ll pay $5.59. Wild Horse Canyon is beautiful, she says, changing colors and decent roads, some sandy spots but the Jeep will handle it fine. I get to Hole in The Wall an hour and a half later, a campground and visitor center compound with an equestrian camp. The Ranger’s Tahoe is parked at the visitor center but it’s closed and no one comes out to greet me. It’s after four-thirty, the sun’s dropping in the west, still enough light for a cruise up to the Mid Hills camp and around back the long way to Essex.

Two hundred yards back down the road Wild Horse Canyon road turns up into a dirt trail that crosses a couple of cow catchers painted turquoise and a small enclave with a windmill spinning in the breeze. A raven flushes on my left and flies low through a hollow for a while, guiding me up the grade until he finishes his duty, pulls up into a perch and I continue past the wash and up towards the crest. Burnt brush, sage and creosote and Joshua have a crust of fire and the survival instinct of something that has been through worse. A daily battle with harsh elements of extreme heat and thirst and dry wind will fossilize some, and who will hold them one day? Say here, there was a tree, a bush, some pre-historic remnant that one day was prescient on this vast plain? Who will come, look back on where I was today, alone on this empty plateau, wandering like some newborn thing searching the desert for a new way to see? And what did I see?

I saw the earth, unfinished, raw, empty.

The breeze kicked up and the sun slanted in against piles of granite and fine grain of sand. The dry air, drawn in across the scrapings of geologic time. I saw the earth, working itself, becoming. And full of life.

JOHN WOODEN

Larry Jones saved me. I was scrolling e-mails and punching up conference calls in another desperate day of tactical corporate survival, until Larry called. John Wooden was in the studio.

'John Wooden? I'll be right down.'

Connie Martinson had just finished up interviewing John Wooden for her show 'Connie Martinson Talks Books' and the Wizard of Westwood was sitting alone on the set. The legendary UCLA basketball coach's book on leadership was hitting stores and the coach was on the talk circuit. Mr. Wooden shook my hand with his strong, soft grip, stared me in the eye with that steady, hawk-like gaze. He looked like my grandfather.

I told him I'd seen some of his championship teams play up in Berkeley. In high school we'd gone up to Cal and bought scalped tickets in the top row of Harmon Gym and watched the Bruins play in front of a rowdy Berkeley crowd.

Mr. Wooden was so nice and polite to me, saying he hoped that I'd enjoyed the games.

I remember the Bruins in their light blue warm-up jackets and white pants coming out and taking the court. The old expression for a basketball team coming out for the game was 'the team took the court.' It meant simply that the starting five went out for the opening tip. Not for the Bruins. They came out early, and literally, took the court, as in took it away from the other team with their opening passing drills.

Lew Alcindor, Lynn Shackleford, Mike Warren and the rest of that team ran a four corners passing drill to start out, with three or four balls, two or three players moving to the center of the half court, pulling in passes, pivoting and firing passes to the other corner, the balls never touching the ground. Crisp, precision, like James Brown coming out on stage and working through dance moves in front of the rhythm section before ever handling the microphone. Just teasing the crowd. They'd break the passing drill with a mock 'dunk' drill with the players just dropping the ball into the hoop, the slam being outlawed when Alcindor arrived in college.

They took the court.

Mr. Wooden was lingering in the studio, in no hurry, so I asked him if I could ask him a couple of basketball questions.

'Sure,' he said, 'go ahead.'

'I've been wondering,' I said, 'in college basketball these days, why no teams use the full court press as their base defense.' The press was the Bruins trademark, a zone press when they made a basket or free throw, turning the tempo up and forcing a fast paced game that favored the quick, tireless Bruins. No one plays defense like that anymore.

'Well', Mr. Wooden said, 'I can't speak for other coaches today, but I can tell you why it took us a long time to get where we could do it.'

I thought I knew the answer. I asked, like a student in the back row, 'because you didn't have the players'?

'Right,' and his eyes twinkled, those killer eyes that have charmed interviewers and players and opponents for decades with that ruthless fundamental approach to the game of basketball. His Bruins made it look simple. Brutal, attacking full court defense, beautiful positioning both on offense and defense and a fast break that preyed upon opponents that tired under relentless pressure.

'We didn't have the players for a long time to be able to play that way,' he continued.

For a starting five to play every night with a pressing full court zone after every basket requires absolute discipline and superior conditioning. Did he mean that he didn't think today's players were up to it?

The eyes sparkled, and he shrugged. 'I can only tell you how we got to develop it,' he said.

So, I gathered, either he didn't think today's players were up to it or the coaches lacked the will to impose a zone press. That was my take, but he wouldn't elaborate.

But I know what I saw in those games up at Cal. Even late in the second half with the game on the line and the crowd screaming, sensing an upset, the Bruins held their poise and made every big play, every defensive stop that they needed to, never leaving their positions and using relentless pressure to force mistakes and turnovers. That comes from daily practice, gym time under a coach who demands all out effort and dedication to detail. Hour after hour of passing drills, fast breaks and outlet passes, stifling defensive pressure without committing fouls. Mr. Wooden didn't use a lot of substitutes to rest his stars. He worked them.

Listen to players like Bill Walton and Kareem talk about 'Coach' like he's a supreme being. He is. He didn't know any more about the game than Bobby Knight or Dean Smith. But he knew how to get more out of his players by demanding that they play a certain way, a way where no one else could keep up with them. That was his genius.

Everyone at the top college level has great athletes. It's the coach who has the guts to turn them into predators on the court, and who can get players to play that hard that dominates. The Bruins overpowered teams before they even got on the court. In the animal kingdom a creature knows when he's dominated by a predator, and submits.

John Wooden was a power coach who walked the sideline in a blazer holding a rolled up program as a foil. Now, Mr. Wooden has the kindly air, the friendly smile and the dimples that crinkle his cheeks. But he still has those piercing hawk-like eyes.

KELSO

Trains don’t stop at Kelso anymore. The freight trains still roll by the old Kelso Depot everyday, but the railroad stopped using the Depot over twenty years ago.

A red tile roof leans out from the second floor, with gentle Moorish arches framing the dusty oasis and palm trees standing in the green grass and sand and hardscrabble. The Depot is the visitor’s center for the Mojave National Preserve now, the sprawling desert outpost north of Interstate 40 and Amboy, and east of Baker, stretching out to Nevada. The Preserve is big and lonesome, the town of Kelso almost dried up in the sun, like most things in the desert without purpose. The Kelso Depot is open everyday for visitors.

I ran over a snake wiggling across the road south of the Kelso Dunes. It was the only living thing I’d seen up close in a half hour. There was no avoiding him. Swerve and maybe roll the Jeep, at fifty miles per hour. So with a little blip, he was done, and I was speeding on towards the Dunes, six hundred foot high wind-blown hills of sand that look like big piles of gold dust in afternoon sun. A few miles back I’d passed the cinder cones, and down further below I-40, the Amboy Crater. These are big, black, volcanic cones that poke up out of the ground from eruptions that started between 7 and 8 million years ago and continued as recently as 10,000 years ago when the Ice Age came to a close.

Inside the Kelso Depot the park ranger greets you.
‘Hello. Passing through?’

‘Yeah, stretching my legs,’ I say. She nods. She’s used to visitors plodding around, not really seeing anything, stopping in, halfway between nowhere and someplace. I was no different.

It’s cool inside the Depot. The old lunch counter forms three sides of a square in the middle of the tall main room, maps and brochures spread out on the dark wood. The hard plastic laminated maps start with a small one of the Mojave Preserve, detailing the roads and trails and open space of the immediate area.

In the lower forty-eight, the Mojave Preserve is the third largest piece of land that the National Park Service manages. A larger map shows Southern California. The Mojave and Colorado (Sonora) and the Great Basin deserts join up southeast of the Mojave, down in Joshua Tree National Park. In Joshua, the three desert climactic zones are all on display, the high desert, the lower desert and the Basin that runs all the way out to Utah. Another map shows the entire United States.

Deserts cover much of the Southwest. They get rain and even some snow. But by definition, deserts give up more moisture from evaporation than they take in through precipitation.

The counter has chairs, bolted down, wooden ones that swivel on a base. They surround the counter in simple formation, with plenty of room in between. It would have been nice to stop in during a train ride, while the steam engine or the coal engine gets fired up with fuel, watered down. Take a seat at the counter and order a tall chocolate milk shake, talk with the waitress about the temperatures that get up over a hundred degrees four months out of the year.

In the West, historic structures stand alone, abandoned by time and money, no longer useful except as memories. The old buildings are allowed to hang around, no threat to modern development. In this new century, we look to the recent past, declare styles to be post-modern, mid-century, left-over structures that take on nostalgia with a bow. The lucky ones live on, guide books and preservation societies reciting pedigree, recalling their history.

A train rolls by today, not stopping. Oh, once it did, though, taking on water and fuel and food, people getting off, getting on. Mailing a postcard, a letter. 'The West,' they'd say, 'It’s vast."

They did once. They did.