A Season Interrupted

I remember it all pretty clearly, for good reason. I moved into the area of Woodland Hills in September of 93’. Four months later in January of 94’, the Northridge Earthquake hit hard at 4:30am, just an hour after I laid down to go to sleep. The distance between the actual epicenter which was in Reseda (a town bordering Northridge), and my new digs was only 8 miles, which basically put us in the next to the last outer ring in the surrounding area of the San Fernando Valley.

It was aftershock city for weeks and months following, becoming a semi-perpetual state of emergency for some time before activity decreased. But with this type of natural disaster, there is no notice, making it a rough surprise when it’s always around the corner. My old 50lb. Pioneer HPM100 speakers went flying across the room, almost kissing each other in the middle. Luckily, I didn’t get clobbered. Outside the same thing was happening as far as movement, with trees, trashcans, telephone poles, transformers and wires.

Many minor quakes on the Richter you can sleep through, but not this one. It was like a hand from the land of the giants grabbed the top and sides of the house, nearly shaking it off its foundation. It rocked hard for a good 20-30 seconds, then continued rolling for what must have been a couple minutes. Attention to time is a bit lost when you’re instantly amped up with adrenaline. We were lucky on our particular block, as some houses in the area were wrecked, and needed major repairs to be lived in again.

The mutual fence in the backyard took a dive in the weak center, and I could see the neighbor’s dog, Spanky, was alone and shaking. There was an open space of clearance in the fence’s gaping wound, so I called the dog over. He hesitated for a moment, then with wagging tail he hopped through and slow-galloped over to me as I was sitting on the sundeck. We calmed each other down for close to an hour, than his owners got home. I walked him back over to the fence to meet his master, and back through he went.

For the rest of that year and more, with so much damage caused everywhere around, some $20 billion worth, where collapsed freeway sections took a serious chunk of that for repairs, and close to a dozen hospitals in the area had to be evacuated into other facilities, a disaster of this magnitude doesn’t leave the mind very soon, another after-effect that takes time for you to begin to feel that you’re back on somewhat solid ground again. Ten years gone and there were homes still getting repairs, almost in time for a next one!

The following year in April of 95’, and I’m off work on a Saturday night. How weird! What am I going do with myself?  I go play hoops for an hour and a half of pick-up games in the gym at the park over on Shoup Avenue, biking distance, but I don’t take my bike. I’m paranoid enough just making sure my game-favored ball doesn’t get lifted.

I get back to the house just in time, getting a call from Kelly at Café Bellissimo, the phone ringing as I walked in the door. Having only worked there for 8 months, she’s frantic and busy while telling me she was in emergency need of a bartender due to a scheduling snafu. I had to be there in two hours, plenty of time considering all I had to do was walk over and across Ventura Boulevard to the restaurant, the closest I’ve ever lived to a workplace. 

I got pretty psyched for this event. Kelly tells me that the whole place is rented out for the night by the Los Angeles Dodgers to celebrate the 50^th birthday of hitting and first base coach, Reggie Smith. A couple of the wives of players/coaches lived in the area and frequented the unique venue, with the entertainment being the entire singing server staff, so that was the connection in. The 95’ season didn’t get underway until April 25^th, after the 94’ season’s player strike cut that year short with just 114 games played out of a 162-game schedule, so in total there were about 60 games lost.

Wow, I’m thinking “I can’t wait to call Dad after I get back home”, following the gig’s end. My father is both an Angels and Dodgers fan, but he started with the Brooklyn Dodgers when he was younger living in New York, before I came around. In fact, my parents got married the year the Dodgers moved to Los Angeles, so when we finally moved out West in 1966, Dad felt much closer to his home team, but Anaheim (back when it was called The Big A) was a closer drive to ballgames, so we caught more of the American League.

The bar at Café B was more of a glorified service bar with a few seats around the corner. But it was really all I needed, and was used to knowing how to set it up for speed and efficiency, from the Black Angus days. I get in there and do a quick-basic inventory and started pulling the needed product from the backroom. With the glassware and backup ice in place, I was in a cockpit for cocktails !

The sedans and limos started arriving one-by-one, and within 30-40 minutes we were packed to the gills with players, coaches, and wives. Out of uniform, some players you can barely recognize without a name on the back of their shirt. But the starters stood out more clearly, players like Mike Piazza, Eric Karros, Raul Mondesi, Delino DeShields, Jose Offerman, Hideo Nomo, Ramon Martinez, Todd Worrell, Tim Wallach, Pedro Astacio, Kevin Tapani, Chan Ho Park, Tom Candiotti, Ismael Valdez, as well as coaches Manny Mota and Bill Russell.

It wouldn’t be a party though without manager Tommy Lasorda. A man of his stature arrives and it’s like the game changes. He pretty much took the stage as the emcee for the night’s festivities. I made drinks face-to-face at the bar for many of the players, and the waiters picked up drinks for their tables out in the main rooms.

I remember Eric Karros and his wife sitting down for dinner about 10 feet to my left, several were out on the large outdoor patio, and a surprise unexpected appearance, for me anyway, of Eric Davis, who took the whole year of 95’ off to heal all of his injuries. He came to the bar and ordered a cocktail, and hung out for a couple minutes while getting a lay of the land.

I asked him about the status of the strike’s end, and he mentioned that things were slowly getting sorted and settled but didn’t know when a deal would be struck, but gave me a hint that it would be soon. When plans for replacement players was put on the table, that’s when negotiations got serious, and soon after on April 25^th, they resumed play with only missing a handful of games in the 95’ season.

 ( The 2005 Cesar Izturis bobblehead )

There was a lot of energy in the room, loud with musical interludes through the night from not only the waiters, but Kelly’s husband-owner, Emilio, who got up and jammed a couple songs. He was a member of the 60’s band The Standells. Tommy took the microphone for a speech or a story or three, and to talk about his friend and coach, Reggie Smith. With Italian food in the air and many bottles of vino leaving the wine racks for the tables, everyone was having a good time and getting their fill on.

The birthday cake was brought out from the coolers, and the entire crowd and staff including myself after a couple drinks, began singing Happy Birthday to Reggie, with Lasorda leading the way. It always feels good to get past the heavy rushes that I manage behind the bar, to where I can kind of drop my gear down a notch or two and relax a little bit, but you know, it never ends until it ends. The evening, however, went by all too fast. We wished all the players a great season, and the vehicles they own or rented, took them away like a shot in the night.

How odd this baseball-themed one-off gig, as just a few months later my friend Tony Jenkins, who operated many of the electronic flipping-Ad machines at major league sporting events, always sitting behind Nicholson at the Laker games at the Forum, doing the Clipper games at the Sports Arena, called me up and asked if I could make it down to San Diego on a certain date.

He was working the machines of the Padres vs. Reds series. I made it down there for the night, and both of us sat in the Reds dugout for the entire game with his laptop on his lap. Here I am hangin’ on the bench with the likes of Barry Larkin, Ron Gant, Deion Sanders, Bret Boone, Hal Morris, Reggie Sanders, Benito Santiago, Mariano Duncan, Jose Rijo, and David Wells, to name a few of the notables. Also there was coach, Hal McRae, and manager, Davey Johnson.

The whole time I kept my mouth shut, while chewing tobacco and sunflower seeds ruled the floor and a few holed-out cans. I felt like a teenager again eating popcorn down there, but fuck it I was hungry, being the same age if not older than some of the players. In back of the dugout you’re basically under the stands. Tony would tell me that during some games where he worked close by the players, a few would go in back here and there and talk shop, get a bite to eat from the buffet, have a smoke or whatever, mainly just getting out of the limelight for a few short moments. I said to Tony “They smoke cigarettes?” He says “Yeah, just a couple of them, but they’re already dipping, so what’s the difference!”

The Dodgers and Reds ended up taking first place in their respective divisions, and met in the playoffs, where the Reds swept them 3-0 in a 5-game series, with the first two games being at Dodger Stadium.

To come sort of full circle so many years later, that just a year and two years ago, I got the call to work the bar for a couple of private parties at the home of Mike Scioscia, the manager of the Angels, my Dad’s other favorite team. That’ll be another story for down the road.

Baseball has always been close to my heart, from all of the Padres exhibition games I went to as a 10-12 year old kid living in Yuma, AZ, hanging out with the players, the country-singing star Charley Pride, watching Warren Spahn pitch a couple innings, and being introduced to famous announcer Dick Enberg, has all led up to these events of the past, and the present.

The people I’ve been fortunate enough and in a position to meet, have always been my constant source of inspiration.