News from The Opposite Field

On Tuesday, we played our first and only game of the season at Alhambra High School, alma mater of Hall of Fame slugger Ralph Kiner. Born in the tiny coal-mining town of Santa Rita, New Mexico, Kiner moved to Alhambra when he was four, after the death of his father, a steam-shovel operator, and was raised here, alone by his mother, who found work as an insurance company nurse. He signed with the Pittsburgh Pirates in 1940, the year he graduated from high school, and soon emerged as the most prolific home-run hitter of the post-World War II era. He led the Major Leagues in homers six consecutive seasons, twice breaking the hallowed 50 mark. When he retired in 1955, he had a career total of 369, good at the time for sixth in the record books (now 68th). At 87, Kiner is still active as a broadcaster, doing commentary for the New York Mets.

Nobody at Alhambra today is likely to be headed to Cooperstown—and nobody is named Kiner (more like Saldate, Beltran, Crespo, Solis, and Marin)—but the team still plays nearly flawless baseball. They are fivepeat champions of the Almont League, and at 9-1 so far this season, they are close to clinching a sixth.

One of the more hilarious identity crises—er, juxtapositions—of the Kit Rachlis era at Los Angeles magazine manifested itself in the June 2004 “New Downtown” issue. The cover featured a photo of a bougie white couple (both models) in their bleached IKEAesque loft, pretending to be snug, merry pioneers in the city’s rapidly gentrifying core. There was a profile of the developer who started the whole loft renaissance, and a list of downtown’s best restaurants and happy hours. “Where To Live, Shop, Dine & Play!” the cover lines promised.

Nowhere on the exterior of the magazine was there any indication that, lurking inside, was a 6,500-word journey through the tawdry netherworld of a homeless encampment under the Sixth Street Bridge—a piece that read more like a lament about the “New Downtown” than a celebration. As was often the case during my Los Angeles years, though, that was my assignment, to probe the grayer shades, the darker margins, of whatever the official narrative happened to be. For weeks that spring, I explored the labyrinth of nooks and coves that house the homeless on the Los Angeles River—the storm drains, the grottoes, the rafters, the catacombs—discovering in the hive of pimps and pushers and fugitives and freaks something that approached community.

“Under the Bridge,” which can be read here in its entirety, was illustrated with half a dozen haunting black-and-white photos by the late James Fee, including the shot above of Seven, a transvestite prostitute who insisted I bring Chips Ahoy! to our interviews—because he was, well, “a chocolate lover.” Much to some advertiser’s horror, I am sure, the story segued into the magazine’s summer fashion spread, “A Whiter Shade of Pale,” which featured yet more primped and coiffed models in “hip-hitting capris, crisp corset styles, and tiers of silk chiffon.”

A magnificent Sunday at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, and a distinguished panel, which included Mark Kurlansky (The Eastern Stars), Edward Achorn (Fifty-nine in ‘84), and moderator David Davis (Play by Play: Los Angeles Sports Photography 1889-1989). The Times‘ book blog, “Jacket Copy,” provides the wrap-up.

Photo: Joshua Sandoval

We played a bummer of a game on Tuesday, a game that had no business being played. It had been sprinkling for about an hour, a light drizzle that was easy enough to ignore, but then just before the first pitch we were treated to a blustery spring downpour. The grass became a Slip ‘n Slide, the dirt turned to mud. The ump could no longer brush the plate clean—a towel was summoned, to wipe it down. In the slop, the Aztecs looked, um, sloppy. Over the course of five innings—the game was stopped as soon as it became official—Bell Gardens blanked us 11-0, and held us to one hit. It did not belong to Max, either; he walked and popped up, and limited to those two plate appearances, his 11-game hitting streak came to an end. 

What was bad for Mark Keppel was good for kitty litter sales. To sop up the rain, Coach Hernandez dumped several twenty-pound bags of Jonny Cat (“Maximum Odor Control”) into the batter’s box, a fine metaphor for the mess that was made.

Mark Keppel’s JV basketball coach, Danny Chee-Kit Woo, was married on Saturday, to Jennifer Anne Akemi Lee, a milestone celebrated by hundreds of family members and friends, including many rosters worth of current and former players, at Monterey Park’s venerable dim sum palace, NBC Seafood. It was a night of joy and bedlam and pent-up athletic intensity—the same zealousness the Aztecs are expected to exhibit on the court was funneled into the revelry—complete with Star Wars impersonators and a nine-course Chinese banquet. For the first dance, Coach Danny asked Max and his guitar-shredding friend Cameron Lee-Sung (most likely the starting guards on next year’s varsity squad) to perform “Nightingale” by Saves the Day. It was not a tune Max had much experience with, not that he has had much experience singing in public anyway, but Danny insisted, and to honor the coach who has done so much to prepare him for the rigors of sports and life, Max made his debut somewhere between the braised reishi mushrooms and the peking duck.

No, that is not a typo. Not a Jimi Hendrix flashback (If 6 turned out to be 9, I don’t mind, I don’t mind…) or an update of the Kama Sutra. This was a W, the end of the schneid, Keppel’s first victory of the season. It was also at least the first time in five years that Keppel has beat cross-freeway rival Schurr (I have been able to dredge up records of 17 consecutive losses: 10-2, 9-1, 17-0, 2-1, 14-6, 5-4, 13-3, 13-8, 12-0, 15-1, 16-5, 9-2,   24-2, 11-5, 15-3, 17-4, 12-8) but I suspect the dry spell goes back much further, easily a decade, maybe a generation.

The best part, in the end, is that it did not require any heroics. No miracle catch or walk-off homer or flame-throwing ace. The boys just did their job, determined, relentless. They let a 1-0 lead slip away in the top of the third inning, then rallied back in the bottom of the third to tie it. They fell behind again in the fourth, and rallied to take a 6-5 lead in the fifth. They frittered that away in the top of the sixth, but rallied again in the bottom. Then they played defense in the top of the seventh. No secret formula or lucky break. Just baseball.  

That said, it helped that Max had his best day of the season at the plate, going 4 for 4, all of them singles and sizzling and sprayed around the diamond, and scoring three times, including what would prove to be the winning run on a squeeze play in the sixth. Prior to Friday, he was batting .400, good for seventh on the Almont League leader board; now at .455, he should climb a few notches. More important, he has earned a victory for just the third time since joining Keppel’s varsity squad in 2008. That is a record so far of 3 and 49, a staggering amount of losing to do in your high school years. But for today, at least until next week, it is a one-game winning streak.

I was out the other night with my cinematic soul brother, Eric Nazarian, for a few hours of drink and story. I had been at USC a week earlier for a screening of his love letter to the Los Angeles River, The Blue Hour, and in the Q&A session afterward someone inevitably raised the question of filming in East L.A.—the matter of accessibility, danger, language, cooperation—as if it were some distant and exotic locale. It was decided right then and there that Eric and I would do it up as soon as possible in the barrio, in a community to which we both feel, as much as a Jew and Armenian can, a profound and ineluctable connection.         

He nominated Eastside Luv, the artsy Chicano wine bar on First, but as is often my inclination, I suggested something downer and dirtier: La Cita, a working-class cantina on Whittier Boulevard that I have visited off and on. La Cita actually reminds me of how the Gold Room used to be back in my Echo Park days, lots of mirrors and neon and mini-skirted barmaids, and yet a certain decorum; no matter how beer-soaked the revelry, you are expected to act right, to tip well, to leave your gacho ways out on the curb. After a few cans of Tecate and a shot of Cazadores—and a rousing performance by a wandering eight-piece banda, complete with sousaphone, trombone, bass drum, and a couple of saxes—Eric and I had hit our stride. There were handshakes and toasts and Spanish niceties. La Cita was starting to feel like home.

I began to recount the story of Ruben Salazar, the Los Angeles Times columnist who was killed by sheriff’s deputies in 1970 while covering a massive Vietnam War protest in East Los. Ruben had ducked into a dive not unlike La Cita—it was called the Silver Dollar, another couple miles down Whittier—when a deputy fired a 10-inch tear gas projectile through the curtained doorway, right into the journalist’s head. “Can you believe it?” I said to Eric, pointing to the entrance. “I mean, he was sitting here just like us, in a place just like this—and then bam!”  No sooner had I uttered those words than—bam!

Bam, bam, bam, bam, bam!

At least a dozen shots, maybe a whole clip, erupted on the street outside. Some crazy fool was shooting—at the bar? at a rival? —only feet from where we were communing. I am not making this crap up, not manufacturing scenes for some bust-a-cap screenplay. It was that eerie, that scripted. Eric pulled me into the corner of the bar. The manager locked the door and cut the lights. We eventually piled out the back and, as squad cars descended, made our escape. It was nutty, for sure, but I would hate for anything to reinforce the perception that the Eastside should be thought of as separate, off-limits. The odds, as always, favor survival. Rather than call it a night, I took Eric to another joint up on Cesar Chavez, one of my favorite hideaways. Over another round of Tecates, we caught our breath and reaffirmed our faith. 

“Bro, we’re bound by gunsmoke now,” Eric said.

“We were, anyway,” I said.

At some point, while talking about movies and authenticity and L.A.’s cultural landscape, I also mentioned that I had once written a story about Hollywood’s star-crossed fascination with Emiliano Zapata. “The Curse of Zapata“ ran in Los Angeles magazine in December 2002, and if any filmmaker would appreciate that specter, it would be Eric.

¡Salud!

Illustration by Anita Kunz

I had been refraining from posting news of Mark Keppel’s latest misadventures, just to avoid monotony and, perhaps, spare my son and his teammates a daily chronicle of their misery. Since Saturday we have been entered in the St. Paul Easter Tourney, an annual contest of mostly parochial schools hosted by our coach’s alma mater. The Aztecs stunk it up Saturday (7 errors, en route to an 11-4 drubbing), got rained out Monday, and stunk it up again Tuesday (lost 9-2), but today’s debacle was of such epic proportions—the taste of victory so near—that I thought it cried out for a chapter all its own.

Our opponent was Santa Monica’s tiny New Roads school (student body: 371), a squad that had also lost the opening two rounds of pool play. As has been Keppel’s pattern, we jumped out to an early lead—up 3-0 in the first—then proceeded to fritter it away—down 8-4 after four—except that for once we managed to rally again, putting up three runs in the fifth and another two in the sixth. We went into the seventh inning with a 9-8 advantage, three outs from our first win of the season.

Three outs. We have been playing ball since the beginning of March and have not once had a lead to protect in the final inning. It really felt like Wednesday was our day—a day that surely was going to come—and all we had to do was keep our shit together for like ten more minutes. Let New Roads tighten up, take the desperate hacks, while attrition secured us the W.

The first sign of trouble was Max: He had thrown out five batters from shortstop and made two more put-outs on line drives, one of which initiated a double play, and tagged out a would-be base stealer at second. Eight plays at short without an error, and all of a sudden he beefs a throw to first. Tying run on base. Still, the Aztecs got to within one out of the finish line—one strike, if I am not mistaken, of the end—and a fly ball, a seemingly routine play to center, appeared to signal the moment that would, at last, redeem us. I had my camera ready to go, not wanting to miss a second of the celebration. The ball dropped about a foot behind the center fielder. Never even touched his glove. The run scored. Tie game.   

The next batter, the best hitter on New Roads, we intentionally walked. Runners on first and second.

The next batter was hit by a pitch. Bases loaded.

The next batter, well, he too was hit by a pitch. Winning run forced in. A freakin’ walk-off RBI beanball.

Max and I had to give a ride to Keppel’s catcher, Miguel, a boy I coached two years ago on JV. On the way back to the car he kept asking me, “Is there a God? Is there?” Now, that is sort of a trick question, one that might elicit any number of responses, and I suspect, if pressed, Miguel himself would answer in the affirmative. But it was that sort of a day, that sort of a test. The best news is that tomorrow, in the finale, we play a team that, like us, has so far lost every round.

San Gabriel High School: 4

Mark Keppel High School: 2

I grew up knowing about the track from my father, a painter and sculptor who has played the horses since the days of Sword Dancer and Dr. Fager. By osmosis he taught me to care about the pageantry and the rituals, the cool rationality of the Daily Racing Form and the fitful passions of putting money on animals. During my first years in L.A. he would fly down from Portland to visit, and the centerpiece of every itinerary, alongside the galleries and museums, would be Santa Anita—the Art Deco thoroughbred temple that attracts more world-class jockeys than any other track in America.

In December 2000, one of the most accomplished of those jockeys, Chris Antley, was found dead in his Pasadena home. Because of the condition of his body, it was initially believed that the two-time Kentucky Derby winner was the victim of a homicide, but a toxicology test later determined that he had overdosed on meth and diet pills; 15 pounds over his riding weight, Antley was tweaking so bad that he had literally bounced off the walls, leaving a bloody mess.

I spent the next several months at Santa Anita, immersing myself in the culture—in the triumphs and the torments—of these exceptional but often unappreciated athletes, grown men who must, like supermodels, shrink themselves smaller than they would naturally be. The story, “Little Big Men,” was published in the May 2001 Los Angeles magazine. Yes, I got paid to go to the races.

Credit: A shirtless Gary Stevens was photographed by Joseph Rodriguez.