Scribbled notes on a cocktail napkin, Part I
Let's see how far we've come ... a weekly roundup of life lessons … shameless plugs … shoutouts … Journalism musings ... and NFL playoff comparisons
"Scribbled notes on a cocktail napkin" is my weekly Sunday feature that's a tribute to the sports columnists I grew up reading who penned Herb Caen-inspired three dot columns. It's an excuse to shamelessly plug my other side projects, post my favorite Immaculate Grid from the week with a story about one of the players, link to stories I found interesting, and string together loose topics on my mind.
The weekend “three dot” notes column used to be a regular in weekend sports sections. Everyone was essentially ripping off the legendary Herb Caen … the pioneer of writing columns of separate ideas … between three dots … and weaving them all together so cleverly you didn’t even realize it until the ending.
In Los Angeles, Allan Malamud called it, “Notes On A Scorecard.”
In San Jose, Bud Geracie called it, “The Wake of the Week.”
In San Francisco, Bruce Jenkins called it, “Three Dot Lounge.”
In LA and later SF, Scott Ostler called it, “Deep thoughts, cheap shots & bon mots.”
In San Diego, Nick Canepa simply called it, “Sez me.”
At The Daily Aztec in the early 1990s, student journalist Jeff Calden started a mocking version of the column this way: “delirious notes scribbled furiously on cocktail napkins, airline tickets and toilet paper.”
The aforementioned Bud Geracie retired last week after 50 years in the newspaper business. In his farewell column, which I highly recommend, my favorite part was about a high school Journalism teacher who wrote encouraging words in green ink, instead of the standard red ink.
When he later became Executive Sports Editor, Bud also used green ink. Why?
Green means go. Red means stop.
Sometimes, a color makes all the difference.
Bud’s one of those columnists I wish I’d gotten to know more. Every time I saw him at the ballpark, he seemed stressed out, and his farewell column confirms that was true.
I remember Bud wrote a column about Jeffrey Leonard — once dubbed by his own teammates "Penitentiary Face" because of his dour expression — managing the Modesto A’s in 1997 when I was there. I wish I could find the column. The Mercury News isn’t on newspapers.com and that was the dial-up internet era. Apparently not everything can be found on Google and that’s alright.
I also remember being impressed with Bud’s aura as he interviewed people and wrote his columns. When he asked a question, there was an intensity in his eyes that he was listening to your answer and cared about what you had to say.
Sometimes, it’s not how you ask a question, it’s your body language when listening.
It’s been a tough weekend for legacy media outlets. Sports Illustrated is technically still publishing, while we mourn its death and write obituaries.
Employees at The LA Times staged a one-day walkout Friday to protest upcoming job cuts. A former top editor estimated the Times is losing $50 million a year. Fifty million! A year!
I found an item about the aforementioned Allan Malamud, which drives home the point that it was once completely inconceivable that newspapers would ever get in this dire position, especially a legacy brand like the LA Times.
Billionaire Patrick Soon-Shiong has said in meetings he’s put $1 billion into the LA Times. Soon-Shiong bought the paper for $500 million, invested heavily (another $300 million) and seemed to have altruistic plans. It hasn’t worked. Top editors resigned in protest over editorial decisions. Jobs were slashed and more cuts are on the way. They don’t even print baseball box scores in the paper anymore.
Sometimes, even billionaires can’t change the habits of news consumers.
This week’s random Immaculate Grid story: Larry Bowa
I was proud of my Immaculate Grid on Monday. My score was 31 (the lower score, the more rare). The photos of the nine players included some remarkable hair and facial hair that made me chuckle.
Here’s a Larry Bowa story. When Bowa was the manager of the San Diego Padres, he wanted to write a book and needed a sportswriter to ghost write it for him. He started asking around, “who is the biggest asshole sportswriter in town?” His theory was that he was an asshole, so he needed an equal asshole to tell his story properly.
Unanimously, everyone in San Diego said the biggest asshole was Barry Bloom. Voilà, Bloom was chosen to write Bowa’s book.
I heard this a story a dozen times in the early 2000s, when I was a young baseball scribe, not experienced enough to write a three-dot column, and figured it couldn’t possibly be true.
After a few years, I got up the nerve to ask Bloom if it was true. Yep, he confirmed, it was true. A decade later, Bowa was a coach on the Dodgers when I co-hosted Dodger Talk. I asked Bowa if the story was true. Yep, he confirmed, it was true.
Sometimes, being an asshole can lead to a book deal.
This week’s “Where Ya At?” podcast guest: Adriana Heldiz
I host a podcast for San Diego State’s School of Journalism and Media Studies titled “Where Ya At?” Each week, I interview an alum to learn about their experience at SDSU, their transition from student to professional, and their current job. The goal is to inspired students and connect alums. You can listen on all podcast platforms, including Spotify.
This week’s guest is Adriana Heldiz. She’s the assistant visuals editor for CalMatters, formerly of the San Diego Union-Tribune and another proud Daily Aztec alum. Adriana was torn when she left the U-T, but her timing proved exquisite. A few days after she left, the U-T laid off a bunch of her coworkers.
My favorite part of our conversation: she tweeted a compliment to a reporter while she was a student. The reporter contacted her a few weeks later for help on a story. That led to an internship. That led to a full-time job.
Sometimes, complimenting someone’s work can lead to a full-time job.
This week’s “proud of my friend” shoutout: Patrick Green
Patrick and I attended SDSU and wrote for The Daily Aztec together. He’s now a filmmaker in Los Angeles. In the months following the death of Kobe Bryant and his daughter Gianna in 2020, Patrick noticed a lot of murals all over Los Angeles. It wasn’t planned or coordinated. It was an organic reaction by hundreds of mourning Lakers fans with artistic skills to honor Kobe.
Over the last four years, Patrick has worked on a film of these Bryant murals titled, “Sincerely, Los Angeles.” The movie is scheduled to come out this year. Here’s a look at the trailer:
https://www.bypatrickgreen.com/sincerely-los-angeles
Sometimes, the story is literally painted on the walls around you.
Let’s see how far we’ve come
Yesterday, San Diego State’s basketball team played on Big Boy CBS in the middle of the day for a third straight week. It was the latest “let’s see how far we’ve come” moment for my beloved university. Such are the perks when you played in the national championship game the season before.
Yesterday was also the anniversary of Super Bowl XIX, when Joe Montana and the 49ers trounced Dan Marino and the Miami Dolphins, 38-16, at Stanford Stadium. [The San Francisco 49ers now play 13 miles away in Santa Clara.]
The NFL started uses Roman Numerals to avoid confusion because the Super Bowl is played in a different calendar year than the regular season. For example, the 49ers won the 1984 championship in a game played in the year 1985.
I wanted to see how far the NFL has come since then, so before watching this year’s 49ers home playoff game, I rewatched highlights from January 20, 1985 on my Apple MacBook Pro. The 49ers wide receivers still lined up in a three-point stance! Honest. Check this out.
That Super Bowl is credited with putting Silicon Valley on the map. But long before Apple, Google, Meta/Facebook and Netflix dominated our lives, the selection of Stanford University to host the game was unconventional.
Stanford Stadium did not have stadium lights at the time, or adequate dressing rooms, and a substandard press box for all those three-dot columnists.
Jim Steeg, the head of Special Events for the NFL, ordered 65 typewriters and a row of fax machines for the scribes to send dispatches back to their newsrooms. Only a lucky few brought something called the TRS-80 Model 100, a Tandy Radio Shack laptop computer, released a year earlier. It ran on four AA batteries. [I once had one. The computers connected through “acoustic couplers” in a landline telephone’s handset.]
Stanford spent $1.15 million — or $48.85 million less than the LA Times reportedly lost last year — for improvements to locker rooms, ticket booths, and concession areas.
The NFL agreed to pay for a new press area and provide temporary lightning. The game started in the afternoon, then the fogged rolled in at halftime after the sunset, and it didn’t just look dark on TV. It was extremely dark.
Stanford Stadium, back then, was all wooden seats with no backs. Fearful of negative Letters to the Editor in newspapers, Super Bowl organizers approached a new upstart company that had debuted a groundbreaking commercial at the previous Super Bowl. The commercial mostly confused people at the time, but it was the birth of water cooler talk the next day about commercials.
Apple agreed to pay for 85,000 seat cushions with its logo on one side and the Super Bowl logo on the other. They became an immediate collectors items.**
It was the birth of a seat cushion tradition at the Super Bowl.
Back then “tent city” was not a term for homeless. It was all the fancy pregame parties that were thrown in the parking lots, a way to ensure the VIPs who were urged to leave their hotels in San Francisco four hours before the game would not get bored. [Because, back then, the cars moved like a half a mile an hour on I-101 too.]
It was the birth of elaborate corporate pregame VIP parties.
President Ronald Reagan, a former California governor, was sworn into his second term that morning in private, then performed the ceremonial coin toss from the Oval Office, and the public ceremony for his inauguration was the next day.
In his address, Reagan spoke of “an America that will lead the technological revolution and also open its mind and heart and soul to the treasures of literature, music, and poetry ...”
Reagan wasn’t referring to Sunday three-dot columns, Pandora and Substack. We didn’t know it then, but the technological Pandora’s Box was cracking open.
Wrote Herb Caen: “I don't really know what a Super Bowl can do for a city, but San Francisco must be a different place right now.”
Technically, Caen wrote that after the 49ers first Super Bowl win in 1982. I don’t know what Caen wrote in 1985.
Sometimes, you can’t find everything on the internet … unless you subscribe to get behind the paywall.
** If you’re nostalgic, you can buy one of those Apple seat cushions on eBay for $58, or you can become a paid subscriber to my Substack.
At the news museum, they have a “trash 80” displayed. My favorite memory is covering a high school football game in Southern California. My deadline is 1030. The game ends at 10. I insert quotes and go to a pay phone and those couplers to transmit the story. In the middle of the transmission, a big fight breaks out in front of me. I remember 10 (probably more like 5) teenagers were punching and shoving. I turned back and screamed, “Don’t come near me. I’m on deadline.”