Memorable moments in local sportsAs the year comes to a close, Union-Tribune sportswriters recall the people and events that made the most lasting impressions on them over the past 12 months
Sunday, December 27, 2009 at 2:20 a.m.
John R. McCutchen / Union-Tribune
Luke Ramirez and the Park View All-Stars were one of many highlights for U-T staffers.
BASEBALL’S MAGIC PLACEHoward J. Lamade Stadium sits at the base of green, tree-filled mountains in South Williamsport, Pa. It’s the home of the Little League World Series, and for two weeks last August, it was my home, thanks to the Chula Vista Park View All-Stars.
Memories from those 14 days include:
Kids swatting at gnats that buzzed about their faces. Boys and girls grabbing cardboard boxes, ripping them at the seams, then sliding down the grass on the embankment behind the ballpark. Dugout, the Little League mascot, dancing with players and coaches.
Nine-year-old kids hawking newspapers.
Park View’s Kiko Garcia frustratingly mouthing an expletive caught on ESPN when a teammate dropped a throw from the outfield. You didn’t need to be a lip reader for translation.
Andy Rios Jr., the Park View shortstop, and his braces-filled smile. Second baseman Bulla Graft and catcher Daniel Porras Jr., wiping mud on each other’s uniform in front of the Park View dugout during a rain delay.
Long, towering Luke Ramirez home runs. Garcia’s line-drive homers. Ramirez sprinting from first base to tackle Garcia on the mound after the Blue Bombers clinched the title. Gloves flying in celebration.
The most memorable assignment of my journalism career.
DON NORCROSS
AFTER THE FALLLike it or not, the biggest golf story in 2009 is going to bleed into 2010 and beyond.
When Tiger Woods crashed his SUV outside his driveway on Nov. 27, he set off a chain reaction that might last for years. Having admitted to cheating on his wife — apparently with many partners over several years — Woods has only begun the healing and recovery process for himself and his fans.
He still hasn’t shown his face, still hasn’t made more than a written statement. He is on leave from the PGA Tour for an undetermined amount of time, and unless he’s hitting balls off the back of his yacht, Privacy, he’s not getting in any practice, either.
The mystery just leads to more idle speculation and gossip, the likes of which I have never heard from such a wide swath of people about a single sports figure. They’re still talking about it at church, at card games, at kids’ birthday parties.
When will Tiger surface? Will it be on “Oprah” or “60 Minutes” or ESPN? (The latter is my bet.) Will he cry? Will he beg for forgiveness? Will he be humbled, withdrawn or defiant?
And what is to come of Woods’ golf career? The initial assumption is that he will shake this off because that’s what he does best. Remember, his mind is strong enough to have carried his one-legged body over 91 holes in his 2008 U.S. Open triumph at Torrey Pines.
But this scandal is something different. It has shaken Woods’ life to its core and burst a personal bubble of seeming invincibility. It’s hard to believe he won’t be changed as a person, and therefore, altered as a golfer. We’ll see. When and how Woods comes back already is the golf story of the year for 2010.
TOD LEONARD
REACHING OUT TO HIS ROOTSAs I stood in a corner of the auditorium at Crest Elementary in November, it truly struck me what Jimmie Johnson had become — and how it hadn’t altered the karma of the man who eclipsed his childhood dreams.
Just outside the door, the first driver in NASCAR history to win four straight championships nervously fidgeted. Johnson was about to address the students of the school he once attended.
For everything he has become — most recently The Associated Press Male Athlete of the Year and NASCAR’s Driver of the Decade — Johnson still saw himself as a “Crest kid.”
“I just drove past my old house. It brought back a lot of memories,” Johnson said. “I know the fires went through here again in 2003. When you live up here, you think about fires, even as a kid.”
When the Cedar Fire of 2003 raced through San Diego County, Johnson the driver launched his personal relief campaign and raised almost $200,000 in a week.
Back then, Johnson had won no championships. Now he’s won four straight.
But Jimmie Johnson hasn’t changed. He annually returns to his East County roots, bearing gifts. This time he distributed $496,000 in grants through his foundation to 14 county schools.
As each school representative stepped forward to accept the gift from Johnson, the driver offered two words: “Thank you.”
BILL CENTER
SILENCE WHEN THE GAMES END
Pro athletes bask in public adulation during their playing careers. Fans approach them for autographs or handshakes. Restaurants and bars give them free drinks and meals. Everybody wants to be their friend — at least until they’re not famous anymore.
That’s what happened to former Chargers star defensive lineman Chris Mims, who died in October 2008. In researching his death and life after football earlier this year, there were obvious questions that arose. Why did he die so young? He was 38. Why did he let himself go? His weight at death was 456 pounds.
The answers are buried with him in his grave in Hollywood Hills, but the clues suggest he lost his identity after leaving the limelight.
He had grown depressed. A few of his longtime friends and family stayed with him and tried to help him — to no avail.
Though he only had himself to blame for many of his problems, it’s hard not to wonder. What if just a few more people cared about him as a person and not just his fleeting prowess sacking quarterbacks in the 1990s? Would it have made a difference?
BRENT SCHROTENBOER
F
ROM SOUR PAST TO SWEET FUTURE
Emmanuel Robles has the makings of a movie and, perhaps, a champion. He is the reformed gangbanger who makes most of the cotton candy at Petco Park and, concurrently, is America’s eighth-ranked light welterweight.
His nickname is “Renegade.” But sensing Robles’ screenplay potential, I’ve been calling him The Cotton Candy Kid.
Robles’ teenage years involved such a vicious and violent cycle that his own mother asked the police to serve an outstanding warrant to get her son off the streets. The left-handed Robles subsequently renounced his membership in the Pimp Mafia Gangstas, embraced the guidance of ex-Marine Ernest Johnson, and won the Police Athletic League’s 141-pound title last year in Oxnard.
“I think his potential is unlimited,” Johnson said last March. “He’s got power in both hands. We’re still working on his right hook. That’s a work in progress. But that’s coming. It won’t be long before he’s hurting people with his right hook.”
Robles, 21, probably climbed into the ring too late to contend for a place on the 2012 U.S. Olympic team. Yet in a larger sense, he’s already won the biggest fight of his life. He has abandoned his wayward ways to hold two jobs while training relentlessly for a professional boxing career.
“I knew if you didn’t change your life around, you can be dead,” Robles said.
He is living proof of man’s potential for change.
TIM SULLIVAN
EXAMPLE OF HOPE FROM STEELTOWN“The toy department,” our section of the paper has long been called, longer than even I’ve been doing it. And I’ve been doing it long enough to not buy into that business of sports being a microcosm of society.
I couldn’t help but think more about the big picture, though, as I arrived in Pittsburgh for a four-game series between the Padres and Pirates at breathtaking PNC Park in late September. Because our struggling industry’s all about maximum bang-for-buckage, too, I slipped over to the Steelers complex to collect material for a preview of the upcoming visit by the Chargers to Heinz Field.
For one thing, I was absolutely struck by how much a part of the city’s DNA the Steelers are, how it was the football team that got people through the economic and emotional depression that had brought Pittsburgh to its knees two decades ago. How the locals wear their Steelers jerseys every Friday like they’re flying the flag. How the Steelers, in good times and bad, are Pittsburgh.
With its yellow bridges and surrounding hills, Pittsburgh truly is one of America’s most picturesque cities, but I remember past visits where you couldn’t see downtown for all the smog belching from the steel mills. They now hold a world-class bass-fishing tournament in the same Three Rivers where the water was once so polluted, fish couldn’t breathe, and the steel industry has been replaced by biomedical.
We’re all in a state of recovery and self reinvention. Pittsburgh has shown us how it can be done. Having cleaned up its act environmentally and economically, Pittsburgh’s become such a model for the entire world, President Barack Obama chose it to host the G-20 Summit that was about to commence just as the Padres were leaving town.
“When we were home last week and it was mentioned that there’d be the G-20 in Pittsburgh,” veteran second baseman David Eckstein said with a playful grin, “some of the guys thought it was the new Gatorade.”
Love that about sports.
CHRIS JENKINS
SHE’S IN IT FOR THE LONG RUNIf you’re fortunate enough to travel a long trail in this newspaper dodge, you’re going to come in contact with memorable personalities, many of them inspirational. I met one such person not long ago when I interviewed Sin Carrano.
Carrano, 26, had just helped the Cal State San Marcos women’s cross country team win an NAIA title. More important than that, as a Marine — commissioned 2nd Lt. Sin Carrano on Dec. 19 — she had done two tours in Iraq, injuring her leg the first time when the truck she was driving flipped.
What really struck me is her dedication to the Marine Corps. When I asked her if she was going to run for her service now that she’s graduated from college, she said: “There is a Marine Corps running team. But if I join that, I can’t go to Afghanistan.”
This is a true American. God speed, Sin Carrano.
NICK CANEPA
GRAND TIME WITH GRANDSON
A 5-year-old female named Zenyatta provided unforgettable performances at Del Mar and in the Breeders’ Cup Classic for me to write about on the horse racing beat. But an only tangentially sports-related memory involving an 8-year-old boy is one from 2009 I expect will stick with me just as long:
July Fourth dawned clear and cool in Yosemite. I awoke with the feeling of eager anticipation that any golfer gets when it’s a day with a round of play etched on the agenda.
Anticipation heightened, in this case, because the round would be over a beautiful nine-hole track, the Wawona Golf Course, one of the oldest in California. And because it would be an introduction to the full-sized game for my 8-year-old grandson.
We were the second group of the day off the tee, Brendan and I. The foursome ahead let us play through at the third hole and from then on it was just Bren and me and breathtaking Yosemite.
Once we were clear, I let him drive the cart. A huge thrill, it turned out, for both of us, since it was only the second time he’d been behind the wheel of such a vehicle in his life.
A couple of times, on tees that looked out upon layer-upon-layer of pines and redwoods reaching to the mountaintops and beyond, we heeded advice provided by his paternal grandmother Sharon on a hike the previous day. “Just stand quiet for a moment. Don’t say anything and become part of the surroundings.”
Brendan didn’t see any great shot-making. But we talked, laughed and enjoyed every minute.
At the end of the round, the words of my course partner “Golf is soooo fun, thanks for taking me grandpa,” made it every bit as special as I anticipated it would be waking up that morning.
HANK WESCH
CHEERS FOR A TEENAGER’S TRIUMPH
Standing ovations at the San Diego Section masters championships are common. But nothing compared to the one Westview High wrestler Ben DeMeulle received when he won the 125-pound title in February. A day earlier, I wrote about DeMeulle — his horrific childhood experiences, the murder of his mother at the hands of his sister and her boyfriend when he was a boy and how his coach had taken him in.
The story circulated through the tournament, and when it came time for the 125-pound final, DeMeulle had an entire gymnasium on his side. His victory was as exciting, emotionally charged and heartwarming as they come. Opposing wrestlers hugged and high-fived him. Coach Perry Watson gushed with pride. And for a teenager who had suffered more than any should have to, he looked truly happy.
I’ve written dozens of stories about athletes overcoming adversity. Yet no story was as grim as DeMeulle’s. He hadn’t had too many happy endings until that point. It was a thrill for me to witness it.
KEVIN GEMMELL
SOCCER SOUTH OF THE BORDER
I am sometimes asked what is the best atmosphere at a sporting event in the San Diego region, the place where the tension and exhilaration of athletic competition resonates deepest in your soul. The Chargers at the Q? Petco Park when the Dodgers come to town? Viejas Arena for an Aztecs basketball game? The back nine on Sunday in the annual PGA Tour stop at Torrey Pines?
It’s none of the above. It’s a 30-minute drive south, in a half-finished stadium dug into the far turn of a storied thoroughbred racing track. In Tijuana.
Club Tijuana Xoloitzcuintles de Caliente, the city’s second-division soccer team, plays at Estadio Caliente and serves as a glimmer of hope — a welcome diversion — in a metropolis wracked by recession and bloody narco-violence.
That was never more evident than during the Xolos’ magical run in the second-division playoffs last May, with a spot in the prestigious Mexican Premier League so tantalizingly close. The Xolos (a Mexican hairless dog) would ultimately fall to Merida FC in the two-game final series, but the spirit and energy and heartfelt civic pride oozing from Estadio Caliente was mesmerizing.
Ramon Scott understands. Scott is a poker dealer from Lakeside and a big-time sports fan, and he regularly crosses the border to take in Xolos matches.
“From the tacos to the beer — I even bought a jersey — I just feel like I’m witnessing something a little bit noteworthy in a troubled city,” Scott told me last spring. “I don’t think I could ever see a San Diego crowd get excited for a team like the fans are for the Xoloitzcuintles.”
MARK ZEIGLER
SHE WILL WALK AGAINTherese Riedel was sitting across from me in a wheelchair, her thin legs seizing as the mass of jumbled nerves fired uncontrollably in her paralyzed limbs. And she told me she knows she sits in that chair for a reason.
“Is that strange?” she asked, saying few people believe otherwise.
Depends, I remember thinking. What is the reason?
Riedel, 14 months removed from the swimming accident that snapped her neck, wasn’t quite yet able to put into words all she felt at that time. But as I sat in the living room of the Riedel family home last month, hearing the former Grossmont High basketball standout tell me her story with family members nearby, at least some of the picture was clear.
Riedel is the youngest of eight children in what was a strong, loving and faith-guided family before the accident. A challenge like the one she continues to battle has only made them stronger. Every member of the family has put some part of their life on hold to help Therese work to get her own back on path. And through it all, Therese has remained as optimistic as she is driven to walk again. And she will walk again.
Therese is an inspiration, the kind of woman I hope my young daughter grows up to be. And it is a credit to the family around her that as her broken body heals, her spirit remains unscathed.
Donations to help Therese continue her rehabilitation can be made to www.catastrophicfund.org.
NICOLE VARGAS
AMERICA AT ITS FINESTI had a lot of great fishing and hunting memories from 2009, none better than being near enough to my nephew, Denny Bambino, to hear him yell with joy after shooting and downing a trophy 8-point buck with his bow in the Allegheny National Forest in Pennsylvania.
As we knelt over the buck to say a hunter’s prayer of thanks, I could barely get the words out because I felt so much emotion. It was the first deer for our hunting camp in northwest Pennsylvania. I was proud of that and of the incredible 45-yard shot he put on this buck with his compound bow. But I was more proud of the way he had turned his life around in the past few years. He was on the wrong track and heading for nothing but trouble. But this year he married the woman of his dreams and also got a job he coveted as a welder with the company that is rebuilding the World Trade Center in New York.
Before I spoke to the Holtville Rotary Club earlier this month I found myself thinking of that day as we said the Pledge of Allegiance, sang “God Bless America” and then heard a prayer from one of the Holtville Rotarians. It was a lasting impression from 2009 for me to be with a group that still pledges the flag, sings and prays to God and helps change people’s lives with acts of kindness.
ED ZIERALSKI
THE LT SAGAIt wasn’t a moment but a month. A couple of months, actually. It seemed like forever.
Would he stay or would he go?
From the possibility first being broached in December to the announcement in March that the icon remained.
It dragged on and on.
Walking out of Heinz Stadium with LaDainian Tomlinson talking about his future following the Chargers’ playoff loss to Pittsburgh.
Ordering a chicken sandwich at a Krystal in Mobile, Ala., a week later when I heard about Tomlinson posting on his Web site his desire to stay in San Diego. A.J. Smith, also in Mobile for the Senior Bowl, uttering his unfortunate quote about Tomlinson later that day.
Working out at the hotel gym in Tampa when Shawne Merriman called to say, in essence, everyone should just get along. Tomlinson getting grilled by everyone and being none too happy when he showed up for the Super Bowl media blitz.
Stalking Tomlinson’s agent at the Combine in Indianapolis. The daily phone calls. Rumors. Tomlinson’s public silence.
Finally, on the evening of March 10, it was announced the sides had restructured Tomlinson’s deal and he would remain a Charger.
There will be some uncertainty again in 2010. But there will be no reworking of Tomlinson’s contract and a March roster bonus means the Chargers will decide much earlier than that whether to keep LT.
KEVIN ACEE
