Don't Stop Believin' -- A Post-Boomer Anthem Turned 40

"JUST A SMALL TOWN GIRL, livin' in a lonely world. She took the midnight train goin' anywhere."

The L.P.

Come on! Sing it with me! 

"Just a city boy, born and raised in South Detroit! He took the midnight train goin' anywhere!"

Now stop and locate South Detroit on a map of Michigan. Then again, don't bother. It's not there. The only thing directly south of motor city is Windsor, Ontario, and that's not even in the same country, let alone the same city or state

The real lesson here is to never let geographical inaccuracy get in the way of a stellar pop song. Steve Perry and Journey sure as heck didn't and, as a result, Don't Stop Believin' is still with us like some post-boomer national anthem four decades after its release.

Everyone knows the words, from the kids from Glee to Tony Soprano. The song became a staple at hockey games in Detroit and baseball games in San Francisco. It's even been deconstructed by musicologist Rick Beato.

45-degree turn

And yet it wasn't the first, or even the biggest single initially released from the band's seventh studio album, Escape, released during the summer of 1981. 

Its cultural contemporaries included the movies Raiders of the Lost Ark, Superman II, Chariots of Fire and For Your Eyes Only. The latter two films spun off their own charting singles, a Vangelis instrumental from the former and a Sheena Easton-sung title song from the latter. Nominated for an Academy Award for best original song, it lost out to The Best that You Can Do, from the comedy Arthur.

All of this during what was kind of a bleak year. 

President Ronald Reagan survived an assassination attempt, so too did Pope John Paul II. Egyptian President Anwar Sadat did not. Irish Republican Army member Bobby Sands staged a fatal hunger strike. Major League Baseball shut down from June 12 to August 9 because of a labor dispute, wiping out more than a third of its scheduled games.

Escape was recorded that spring and released at the end of July.

Side 1, Track 1

Don't Stop Believin', the lead track, was a kind of balm. Forward-looking, optimistic, idealistic even. A good song to play amid a never-ending pandemic.

It entered the Billboard Hot 100 at number 56, the week of Oct. 31, just behind Trouble by Lindsay Buckingham. Also on the charts then: Harden My Heart by Quarterflash, Olivia Newton John's Physical, the theme from Hill Street Blues and that number one song from Arthur.

Still on the chart, an earlier Journey single, Who's Crying Now which went to number 4. Still to come, their power ballad, Open Arms, which topped out at number two behind the J. Geils Band's Centerfold.

Don't Stop Believin' climbed only to number 9, lingering on the charts for 16 weeks, but it never really faded away. Journey's signature song became instead a part of the firmament, a touchstone embedded in our pop-cultural consciousness. 

"Hold on to the feeling..," Steve Perry sang in the outro, and hold on we have. It's the most digitally downloaded song of the 20th Century.

______________________________

For Joan and Ian, who -- in these uncertain times -- now have the ultimate reason to believe. 

-- Follow me on Twitter @paperboyarchive

Blue Coup de Grace Ends the A's Championship Era

QUALITY OR QUANTITY?  If a team finishes dead last in its division, should it try keep its best pitcher or trade that asset for a cadre of warm bodies to plug its many gaping holes?

For Oakland A's owner Charles O. Finley, the answer was the latter. It was that or nothing.

Not putting star players on the cover means
never having to say you're sorry

Stubborn as the mule he once hired for a mascot, Charlie-O was determined to do thing his way, on his budget. And midway through spring training 1978, as his team readied for the season, he dealt his former champs a long-expected blow, trading star lefty pitcher Vida Blue for seven nobodies.

A three-time 20-game winner, in 1971 Blue started the All-Star Game then captured the AL Cy Young and Most Valuable Player awards, heralding an era when the A's were the best team in the world.

As ever, the glory was fleeting.

Though he'd owned Athletics since 1960 and oversaw their transformation from doormats to champions, Finley had no interest in the free agent wars that rewrote baseball's rules in the 1970s.

Though his stars had won five straight division titles and three straight world series, when the bill came due, Charlie came up short.

After they won their last crown in '74, he balked at making promised payments toward a life insurance annuity for perennial 20-game winner Jim Hunter.  The man called Catfish got his contract voided and signed with the New York Yankees.

Unbowed, the A's soldiered on. Led by Blue's 22 wins they won eight more games in 1975 than the previous year and another division title before being swept from the playoffs by the East Division champion Boston Red Sox.

The next season dawned with the dealing of superstar outfielder Reggie Jackson and pitcher Ken Holtzman to the Baltimore Orioles for outfielder Don Baylor plus pitchers Paul Mitchell and Mike Torrez.

Still, Oakland stayed afloat, winning 87 contests and finishing just 2 1/2 games behind the Kansas City Royals. Infielder Phil Garner emerged a star, as did 21-year-old outfielder Claudell Washington. Blue won 18 games, Torrez, 16. Ace reliever Rollie Fingers won 13 more while saving 20.

No Reggie? No Catfish? No problem? Not exactly.

At the June 15 trading deadline, Finley had tried to sell Fingers and another mainstay, outfielder Joe Rudi, to the Red Sox for $1 million a piece. For good measure, he also sold Blue to the Yankees for $1.5 million. But Commissioner Bowie Kuhn voided the deals as contrary to the best interests of baseball and the stars returned to Oakland, though not for long.

Baseball's first genuine free agent class graduated that winter. With labor leader Marvin Miller playing Moses, shouting "let my people go!" A's players fled the Pharaoh Finley in droves. Rudi and Baylor signed with the California Angels. Fingers and catcher Gene Tenace went to the San Diego Padres. Shortstop Bert Campaneris inked a deal with the Texas Rangers and third baseman Sal Bando signed with the Milwaukee Brewers.

The championship core was gone. Blue, who had incongruously signed a three-year contract in 1976, remained, as did outfielder Bill North. He would be dealt to the Dodgers in May 1978 for outfielder Glenn Burke.

Churn, churn, churn. Garner and two others were dealt to the Pittsburgh Pirates for a package that included reliever Doug Bair and prospects Rick Langford, Tony Armas and Mitchell Page.

Even the presence of Page, who was runner-up for Rookie of the Year, and the expansion Seattle Mariners couldn't save the A's from finishing seventh and last in the 1977 AL West.  Blue went 14-19. Attendance fell to 495,599, less than half of what was two years earlier.

Vida Blue, bottom right, in the land of the Giants

They'd gone 63-98.* But for one game not played, it could have been worse.

And then it did get worse.

In Dec. 1977, Finley traded Blue to the Cincinnati Reds for power-hitting minor league first baseman Dave Revering. Again, Kuhn interceded to void the deal. The Reds later swapped Revering for Bair.

Blue, twice traded and twice returned, went into spring training as an A. But not for long.

On March 15, he was traded to the San Francisco Giants for seven players and $300,000 in cash. Oakland got pitchers Alan Wirth, Dave Heaverlo and John Henry Johnson, plus catcher Gary Alexander and outfielder Gary Thomasson. The Giants later threw in infielder Mario Guerrero, whom they'd signed as a free agent only months earlier.

They held the fort until reinforcements could ripen.

By 1980, Langford, together with Mike Norris, Steve McCatty, Matt Keough and Brian Kingman would form an effective starting rotation. Backed by outfielders Armas, Dwayne Murphy and Rickey Henderson, the Athletics went 86-76, good for second in the division behind the Royals again. Also in the line-up, Page, Revering and Guerrero.

Finley, perhaps somewhat vindicated, sold the club in August of that year.

Vida Blue won 18 games in his maiden season in San Francisco, but was never that good again. His declining career intertwined with a trade to Kansas City, drug abuse, a jail sentence, and a brief but respectable comeback. After going 10-10 with a 3.27 ERA and 100 strikeouts in 157 innings for the Giants in '86, he retired.

* An earlier version of this entry contained a typo, asserting the A's had lost 78 games in 1977. They'd lost 98.

-- Follow me on Twitter @paperboyarchive

Devon White, Breakfast of Champions

CANNIBALISM CAN RUN THE GAMUT from tribal to survival -- think the Donner Party, or Alive! by Piers Paul Read --  to the sci-fi horror of Soylent Green.* It seldom comes up** in conjunction with baseball.

Breakfast of A.L. West Champions

Leave it to the California Angels to fill that void.

In 1987, the defending American League West champs had a new star. His name was Devon White, and he played one of the virtuoso glamour positions in baseball: centerfield, that place rhapsodized in song by John Fogerty. Centerfield, that verdant expanse manned by men like Tris Speaker and Joe DiMaggio, by Willie, Mickey and the Duke.

And now White, a 24-year-old Jamaican-born switch-hitting blend of defense, speed and some offensive pop who grew up in New York City, cheering for Mays and the New York Mets

Going into action on July 31, the Angels' newfound phenom was hitting a solid .284, with 18 homers, 22 steals and 64 runs batted in. That night, against the visiting Seattle Mariners, White would bat clean-up just behind the prior year's phenom, Wally Joyner, who'd finished second in Rookie of the Year balloting to the Oakland Athletics' Jose Canseco.

But how best to market the multi-talented Mr. White? The Angels solution was to make him a commodity. Big league slugger Dave Kingman once said athletes were pieces of meat. California went to a different trading pit and came back with cereal. On the cover of the Halo Magazine game program, they would sell their outfielder not as an image on a box, but as the food itself. White as Wheaties, breakfast of A.L. West champions.

Friday night, lights.

"The crunchy whole wheat flakes breakfast of the Angels," boasted the box-mocking magazine cover. "Power, speed, defense from 100 percent whole wheat."

Start your day right, with a bowl of Devon White.

Net weight, 170 lbs. Kind of big to lug home from the Kroger or Safeway, but a good fit for the fully-enclosed Anaheim Stadium shared then by the National Football League's Rams.

That night the Angels tattooed the Mariners, 8-2, before 32,471 people. White and Joyner hit back-to-back homers off Seattle starter Scott Bankhead in the third inning and after a Mark McLemore sacrifice fly scored Bob Boone in the fourth, Bankhead exited with Anaheim ahead, 4-0.

The Angels' nutritious outfielder finished the night 1-4, with that round-tripper and two runs batted in. He was also caught stealing because, well... it happens.

Allowed to play out the season without being devoured by teammates, opponents or fans, White finished with slightly soggier stats than that end of July snapshot: a .263 average with 33 doubles, 24 homers, 87 RBIs and 32 stolen bases. He finished fifth in A.L. rookie of the year balloting won by the A's Mark McGwire.

The original scoreboard,
exiled to the parking lot post-enclosure

California would tumble to 6th place in the seven-team division, finishing 75-87, ending the career of veteran manager Gene Mauch.

White played three more years in Anaheim, winning two gold gloves for defensive excellence and being selected to the A.L. all star team once before being traded to Toronto in a lopsided trade where the primary return was outfielder Junior Felix, who'd be out of the majors by 1995.

He would win five more gold gloves with the Blue Jays while making the remarkable seem routine, qualify for the all star team again and be part of two World Series winners, proving more champion than breakfast.

White won another title in 1997 as a member of the National League's Florida Marlins and retired in 2001 after spending his last year with the Milwaukee Brewers. He was 38. Today, he's the hitting coach for the Blue Jays' AAA affiliate Buffalo Bisons.

* Spoiler alert!
**Seldom, but not never.
_____________________________

In the Summer of 1987, soon after graduating from college, me and my buddy Chris took a baseball tour of California. Mostly baseball at least, and hell of a good time. This is the seventh part of a series inspired by those 16 days on the road.

-- Follow me on Twitter @paperboyarchive

Go Ahead... Make My Sundae

TWO YEARS AFTER MAKING "CITY HEAT," Clint Eastwood told an entire town to cool it.

Clint Eastwood: mayor. ice cream vigilante

The place was Carmel by the Sea, on the south shore of California's Monterey Peninsula, a berg famous for its setting, its arts scene and -- for a time -- its prohibition on the sale of ice cream cones on its streets.

Eastwood -- an actor, director and Carmel resident -- changed all that in 1986 when he ran for mayor of the tiny coastal municipality and won. Then the man famous for playing Dirty Harry, decided to mess up the town.













He'd take out the ice cream ban.

Blam!

To be sure, the reason behind the rule wasn't just some case of absurd nanny-state fastidiousness run amok. According to a contemporaneous Los Angeles Times story, the denial of an ice cream stand permit -- and all of the resultant publicity it occasioned -- was prompted by concerns about water consumption in a time of drought.

But that wasn't all Eastwood did. Sixteen months into his term, the New York Times reported, the actor-turned-mayor had, "provided more public toilets, built new stairways to the town beach and expedited previously stalled efforts to expand Carmel's library."

Still, Eastwood served just a single two-year term as mayor of the mile-square city, population 4,000 or so, before returning to the serious work of acting and directing.

During his tenure though, local artist Jim Miller had made up a commemorative poster, which then became the cover of the Carmel tourist guide. The poster's tagline, not included on the guide's version, promised, "Law, Order and Ice Cream."

The image of a bearded, six-gun wielding, western hat-wearing Eastwood, was apparently inspired by promotional art for films like A Fist Full of Dollars, High Plains Drifter, and The Outlaw Josey Wales, but with a twist -- or more appropriately, a triple scoop -- vanilla or perhaps butter pecan ice cream cone in his left hand.

Do you feel like sprinkles today, punk?

Inside, the publication promising directions, maps and essential information, included not one but two articles on where to find ice cream, together with a conspicuously placed ad to underscore the point.

As the man said, "go ahead, make my sundae."
_____________________________

In the Summer of 1987, soon after graduating from college, me and my buddy Chris took a baseball tour of California. Mostly baseball at least, and hell of a good time. This is the sixth part of a series inspired by those 16 days on the road.

-- Follow me on Twitter @paperboyarchive.com

Reggie, The Original Bash Brother, Comes Home

REGGIE JACKSON CAME HOME in the summer of 1987. Not to Wyncote, PA, where he was born 41 years earlier and grew into a prodigal multi-sport star at nearby Cheltenham High School, but to Oakland, CA, where that star became one of the biggest, brightest and brashest in the nation, while playin' for the Swingin' A's.

Between 1971 and 1975, he'd led them to five straight first place finishes, and from '72 to ''74, three consecutive championships, then he was gone, traded just before opening day 1976.

Reggie Jackson of the 1987 Oakland Athletics.

Now he was back, at the end of a career that saw him play for a total of 12 division winners, six pennant winners and five World Series winners (though an injury kept him out of action in the 1972 tilt against the Cincinnati Reds).

Home, after four American League home run titles and the 1973 AL Most Valuable Player award.

Home, after 14 All Star Game selections and two World Series MVP awards, the second of which came after he crushed the Los Angeles Dodgers, hitting three round trippers in three swings to close out the 1977 fall classic.

Home after a year in Baltimore, five in the Bronx and five more in Anaheim, playing for the argumentative Earl Weaver, the tempestuous Billy Martin, the calming Bob Lemon, the defiant Dick Howser and the luckless Gene Mauch. Home after playing for Charlie Finley, George Steinbrenner and Gene Autry.

Home as Mr. October, as the self-proclaimed "Straw that Stirs the Drink." Home as a candy bar.   "When you unwrap a Reggie Bar, it tells you how good it is," his Hall of Fame teammate Catfish Hunter once said. Now, in his final season, Reggie no longer needed to be the bonbon, the straw or even a main ingredient in the Oakland Athletic's potent cocktail, he just needed to be in the mix.

Managed by future Hall member Tony La Russa, the A's franchise was on one if it's periodic upswings, if not yet at its peak. First-baseman Mark McGwire, 23, was in the midst of a freshman campaign that would see him hit .289 with 49 homers and 118 runs batted in, winning Rookie of the Year honors. Behind him, 1986 AL Rookie of the Year Jose Canseco, just 21 and on his way to belting 31 round-trippers and driving in 113. Together they were The Bash Brothers.

McGwire, Canseco and Reggie, men who would combine for 1,608 home runs over their careers, together in one Athletics line up. Surely somewhere Jimmie Foxx was lacing his cleats.

Joining them: 1979 co-RotY shortstop Alfredo Griffin and 1981 AL batting champ Carney Lansford, starting pitcher Dave Stewart -- embarking on the first of his four consecutive 20-win seasons -- and Hall of Fame reliever Dennis Eckersley.

"I think the ingredients are all here for me to have a good year," Jackson, bash brother emeritus, said in one of two features about him in the game program for July 27, 1987, when his team hosted the California Angels at the Oakland Alameda County Coliseum.

The Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum,
July 27, 1987

The A's, behind Stewart, cruised to a 6-1 win that night. Only catcher Terry Steinbach homered for the home team. Shortstop Gus Polidor struck a blow for the visitors.

Jackson -- batting sixth -- struck out four times (a drop in his MLB-record bucket of 2597 Ks, which still stands today). He ended the night hitting a discouraging .203. For the year, he batted .220 with 15 homers and 43 RBIs. In 336 at bats over 115 games, he struck out 97 times.

Though La Russa's squad would go just 81-81 that year, the table had been set, the appetite whet. Starting in 1988, the franchise strung together three straight pennants, repeating the feat accomplished by Jackson's A's of the '70s, and won the 1989 World Series.

Reggie finished his illustrious career with a .262 batting average, 563 homers and 1,702 runs batted in. He also had 18 round-trippers and 48 RBIs in 77 post-season games, 10 of those clouts in the series. He made the Hall in 1993.

The Coup

Two weeks before my visit, stop four on my California/ballpark tour, the Coliseum had hosted Major League Baseball's All Star Game, further proof the sometimes moribund A's, whose attendance had dipped to 306,763 for the entire 1979 season, were on the rebound. For those of us who care, the All Star Game program -- in this era before eBay -- was a trophy worth hunting.

The trophy

Mid-game, I chatted up one of the souvenir stand vendors about the ballpark -- better than its reputation -- and the stadium food -- more adventurous than I'd seen elsewhere -- and finally rounded to the subject of the A-S program.

He said he had none and directed me down the concourse, past the first aid station and through a door where I found myself in a souvenir stock room.

"Hi. Mike sent me," I told a woman behind the counter, feigning a casualness I didn't feel. "I'm looking for an All Star Game program."

She dropped back into the steel shelving behind her and reappeared moments later, program in hand.

"Do you work here?" she asked, looking me over.

"No," I replied.

"Five dollars," she said. I handed over the money, suppressed a smile and walked out. Quickly.
_____________________________

In the Summer of 1987, soon after graduating from college, me and my buddy Chris took a baseball tour of California. Mostly baseball at least, and hell of a good time. This is the fifth part of a series inspired by those 16 days on the road.

-- Follow me on Twitter @paperboyarchive

"Hummm... Baby," The Thrill and One Flap Down... Immediately Followed by "Dude, Where's Our Car?"

WILL "THE THRILL" CLARK never made baseball's Hall of Fame. Neither did Jeffrey Leonard, he of the notorious home run trot, "one flap down."

But those men,  a white southerner and black northerner who openly clashed with each other in 1987 made the San Francisco Giants into a team to be reckoned with.

Humm, baby. Humm, baby? Yes. Humm, baby.

It had been 16 years since the Giants made the post season, a quarter century since their last World Series appearance, a seven-game loss to the New York Yankees.

A mid-summer day's twin-bill.

Despite the presence, at various times, of Willie Mays and Willie McCovey, of Garry Maddox and Gary Matthews, of Dave Kingman, of Bobby Bonds then Bobby Murcer, of  John Montefusco and Vida Blue, the Giants had long languished in baseball's shadows.

Across San Francisco Bay, the Oakland A's had a string of five straight playoff appearances and three consecutive championships. Within the National League West, the Giants had been totally eclipsed by the long-time rival Los Angeles Dodgers and the Cincinnati Reds. In fact, every NL West team had finished first at least once since the San Franciscans had last managed the feat: the Reds in '72, '73, '75, '76 and '79,  the Dodgers in '74, '77, 78, '81,'83 and '85, the Houston Astros in '80 and '86, the Atlanta Braves in '82 and the San Diego Padres in '84.

The title merry-go-round was spinning and the Giants weren't on it.

Change came midway through the disastrous 1985 season when a 62-100 record landed them in the NL West basement. After 144 games, they fired manager Jim Davenport and hired sagacious Roger Craig. The pitching anchor of the original and terrible New York Mets, Craig suffered through back-to-back 20-loss campaigns. He knew about adversity. His approach: stay positive.

Candlestick Park, July 26, 1987. Announced attendance: 41,256

At spring training 1986, he called journeyman catcher Brad Gulden "humm baby," for still giving 110 percent effort in a career nearing its end. According to legend, the phrase was a contraction and corruption of the sandlot shout of encouragement, "C'mon, baby!"

By 1987, the Giants had a team full of humm babies led by the veteran outfielder Leonard, 31, and Clark, 23, who'd starred at Mississippi State and -- as the Giants were bottoming out in '85 -- won the Golden Spikes Award as the best amateur ballplayer in America.

Humm, baby indeed.

By July 26, though just one game over .500, the 49-48 Giants trailed the first place Reds by just a single game. On that day's schedule: a double-header with the NL East-leading St. Louis Cardinals at windswept Candlestick Park.

They were about to ignite.

Rallying back from a blown 2-1 lead, the Giants took the opener in 10 innings on a walk-off, three-run homer by The Thrill. Then, though the Cards struck first in game two, they were decked, 5-2, with Clark clubbing his second round-tripper of the afternoon.

From there, the team went 39-24, overtaking the Reds by six games to win the West. Awaiting them in the NL Championship Series: the Cardinals. Now it was Jeffrey Leonard's turn to shine.

The Pride of the Giants, until he wasn't.

Leonard, like Clark, was blunt-spoken. If you liked it, fine. If not? Too bad. The Cardinals were not fans. The St. Louis fans were not fans.

Over the 7-game series, the Giants outfielder torched Cardinals pitchers for four home runs, each punctuated by a somewhat leisurely tour of the bases, his left arm at times deliberately slack at his side. One Flap Down, again and again and again. For the series, Leonard batted .417 with 10 hits in 24 at bats, including those round-trippers. He walked three times, scored five runs and drove in five.

While Leonard's efforts earned him series most valuable player honors, it wasn't enough to carry the Giants past the Cards. They lost in seven games. In mid June of the next season, he was traded to the Milwaukee Brewers for utility man Ernie Riles.

Clark would lead the Giants to the pennant in 1989, where they were swept by the A's in a series mostly remembered for the magnitude 6.9 earthquake that interrupted it. Leonard, by then, had migrated to the Seattle Mariners, but the former teammates' enmity remained.

Long since retired, both men have found other causes for which to fight. Leonard and his wife Karen founded the One Flap Down charity, now known as One Fabulous Day, dedicated to helping single parents battling cancer. Clark and his wife Lisa are combatting autism.

The Giants finally won the series in 2010 and again in 2012 and 2014.

First Person

Where did we park?

That first game of the July 26 twin-bill was the third stop on my 1987 California/ballpark tour. Me and my pal, photographer Chris Stanley, had been running at breakneck speed, seeing everything we could see in between scheduled ballgames. This day was no exception. 

We arrived at the 'stick just before game time and after Will thrilled, we left, only to realize we'd no idea where we'd parked. With most attendees staying put for game two, we roamed the wind-swept asphalt for 45 minutes, searching for our rental car, a gold Chevrolet Corsica. 

Turned out Captain Kirk was right.
_____________________________

In the Summer of 1987, soon after graduating from college, me and my buddy Chris took a baseball tour of California. Mostly baseball at least, and hell of a good time. This is the fourth part of a series inspired by those 16 days on the road.

-- Follow me on Twitter @paperboyarchive

These Two Kids Drive Up to a Nuclear Missile Base...

STRATEGIC AIR COMMAND had a pretty awesome logo. It was a shield featuring an iron-gloved hand clutching three lightening bolts and an olive branch, set against a blue sky with white clouds. Everything about it says "might."

Might.

Nothing about it suggests "Welcome."

Naturally, when my buddy Chris and I -- a couple of recently-certified college graduate geniuses -- happened across that symbol of American power affixed to a fieldstone wall near an entrance to the Vandenberg Air Force Base, we had to visit.

It was a sunny July day in 1987. Turning off California's Highway 1 just north of Lompoc, we pulled up to the guardhouse.

"Hi, we're here for the tour," one of us announced cheerfully to a uniformed guard.

"Tour?" came the predicable response (predictable to anyone but me and Chris). "We don't have a tour."

"Oh." Came the reply, "Can we just look around?"

"No," the guard said. "But you can have this map."

Map.

Oh clueless innocence. How does one react, 30 years later, to the dawning realization we'd been quickly sized up as rubes too naive to pose any sort of threat to national security? I guess it's better than being surrounded by armed MPs and taken into custody for questioning.

Strategic Air Command -- or SAC, for short -- was the U.S. Air Force Command responsible for maintaining the nation's nuclear-tipped intercontinental ballistic missiles and its strategic bomber fleet. Remember Atari's Missile Command? Remember that cute Matthew Broderick/Ally Sheedy movie WarGames? This was a combination of those things (minus the WOPR) but real.

Global thermonuclear warfare. The only way to win was not to play. The very existence of SAC -- its effective deterrence -- made that strategy a winning one.

Rube.

Vandenberg AFB was a key element of SAC and of deterrence, and was used as a testing site for Thor, Atlas and Titan missies, the later two later doing double-duty as launch vehicles for NASA's Project Mercury solo orbital space flights and its two-man Gemini missions.

Vandenberg was also the proving ground for the Minuteman and Peacekeeper ICBMs.

The collapse of the Soviet Union, target audience for all that might and deterrence prompted a reordering of the U.S. Air Force command structure and, in 1992, SAC was dissolved. Vandenberg remains, now primarily used for military space launches.

Barred from admission that July day, Chris and I took our handout map (I'm guessing we weren't the only ones to get them), took a few snapshots at the gate and went on our way.

Now, perhaps, its time to go back. Apparently they have a tour.
_____________________________

In the Summer of 1987, soon after graduating from college, me and my buddy Chris took a baseball tour of California. Mostly baseball at least, and hell of a good time. This is the third part of a series inspired by those 16 days on the road.

--  Follow me on Twitter @paperboyarchive.com

Darkness on the Edge of (Dodger) Town

BASEBALL'S TAJ MAHAL. It's meant to be a compliment.

The Silver Anniversary logo

When it opened in 1962, Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles was the newest, nicest stadium in Major League Baseball, far outclassing San Francisco's wind-swept Candlestick Park completed just two years earlier. It was the privately-financed crown jewel of baseball's manifest destiny.

Searching for comparators, scribes turned to the Taj Mahal, Shah Jahan's edifice on the Yamuna River in India, perhaps forgetting it was a tomb for the Mughal emperor's wife.

Or maybe they didn't forget, for Dodger Stadium too is something of a monument, a grave marker for the poor mostly Mexican-American neighborhoods wiped from existence during a decade-long battle between liberal and conservative forces over what to do with acres upon acres of hilly land north of downtown L.A., a place called Chavez Ravine.

Stadium construction wasn't how that story started, but that's how it ended, with an ironic coup de grace from the team that integrated baseball.

July 21, 1987, St. Louis Cardinals 6, L.A. Dodgers 1
Winning pitcher, Bob Forsch, Loser, Fernando Valenzuela

I knew none of this 30 years ago this week when I made my one and only visit to Dodger Stadium on the second stop of a two-week, six-ballpark road trip. (Read about stop one here.) Though it was the stadium's 25th anniversary season, the commemorative program and yearbook made no mention of what transpired in the years before the ballpark opened. It was a story they had no incentive to publicize or perpetuate and, to be fair, for which they were largely not responsible.

Much has been written since about what came to be known as the Battle of Chavez Ravine, including a new book published just this year. It went something like this:

The Joe Friday ticket stub.

After World War II, the U.S. embarked on a rebuilding spree, in Europe under the Marshall Plan and at home in the form of urban renewal, clearing of slums and blighted areas in favor of public housing for the nation's destitute.

Los Angeles was no exception and it was proposed that the Chavez Ravine area be redeveloped into something called Elysian Park Heights. The project would include two dozen high-rise apartment buildings and more than 160 two-story residences.

Though the communities there -- Palo Verde, Bishop and La Loma -- had homes, schools and at least one church, they weren't seen as worthy of preservation. The city moved by force of eminent domain to begin clearing those so-called slums of the people and their dwellings. But before Elysian Park Heights construction could begin, in 1953, newly-elected conservative Mayor Norris Poulson -- with a push from a group called Citizens Against Socialized Housing (or CASH) -- canceled the project, leaving a handful of hold-out families living in a largely bulldozed region where they'd remain at loggerheads with L.A. for most of that decade.

In 1957, the Brooklyn Dodgers -- after trying and failing to secure a new stadium in their home borough -- won permission to move west with the Giants. They had no home, but Los Angeles had an idea. The city would trade its Chavez Ravine land to the team in exchange for a Dodger-owned downtown minor league ballpark confusingly called Wrigley Field.

Giants' shortstop Jose Uribe
meets Dodger catcher Mike Scioscia

While the Dodgers played the next four seasons at the Los Angeles Coliseum, a gigantic oval built for the 1932 Olympic games, the city forcibly removed the last remaining Chavez Ravine residents to make way for the stadium amid a public referendum and, unsurprisingly, litigation that stopped only at the U.S. Supreme Court door. Among the casualties, the Palo Verde Elementary School, reportedly paved over for a parking lot.

The result: a baseball-only ballpark built into a hillside, facing the distant San Gabriel mountains visible beyond the twin outfield pavilions and scoreboards.

Led by pitchers Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale, in just their second season there the team swept the American League Champion New York Yankees to win the World Series before about 56,000 home town fans. They'd win the series in '65, '81 and '88 too.

Along the way, the team that gave America Jackie Robinson, its first black superstar, also gave the nation its first Japanese superstar, Hideo Nomo and -- perhaps in a bit of karmic payback -- its first Mexican one, Fernando Valenzuela.
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In the Summer of 1987, soon after graduating from college, me and my buddy Chris took a baseball tour of California. Mostly baseball at least, and hell of a good time. This is the second part of a series inspired by those 16 days on the road.

-- Follow me on Twitter @paperboyarchive

Baby Goose Cuts Loose

Lance McCullers... Baby Goose Cuts Loose

INTIMIDATION: the innate ability to strike fear in the hearts of opposing hitters. This Rich "Goose" Gossage had in greater abundance than any big league pitcher of his generation. At 6'3", cap pulled low over his glowering, mustachioed countenance, Gossage was a terrifying whirl of arms and legs from which emerged 100 mile-per-hour Hall of Fame-certified heat.

Signed as a free agent by the World Champion New York Yankees in November 1977, he displaced incumbent, Cy Young-award winning closer Sparky Lyle, saved 27 games and helped the Bombers to repeat. While Lyle was traded to the Texas Rangers in November '78 -- famously going from Cy Young to Sayonara -- the Goose continued to roll up saves the old-fashioned three-inning, nine-out way until he too left the Bronx Zoo for one in San Diego.

There he paid immediate dividends, joining ex-Yankee Graig Nettles, ex-Los Angeles Dodger Steve Garvey and future Hall of Famer Tony Gwynn in transforming the Padres from perennial also-rans to National League champs.

By 1987, Gossage -- then 35 -- had become something of an intimidator-emeritus, a role model for a young man audaciously burdened with the nickname "Baby Goose", up-and-coming Padres closer Lance McCullers.

Final score, Padres 7, Cubs 4
Winning pitcher: Lance McCullers, Loser: Bob Tewksbury

A shade shorter than Gossage at 6'1", McCullers was still cut from the same basic template: big, hard-throwing right-handed relief pitcher.

After making his big league debut in 1985, at the tender age of 21, Baby Goose spent one full season as understudy, logging 136 innings to Gossage's 64, saving 5 games to his mentor's 21, then took over as closer in 1987.

He was just 23.

McCullers appeared in 78 games, finishing 41, as San Diego sank to the N.L. West cellar. While he went an unremarkable 8-10, he saved 16 games while whiffing 126 batters in 123 innings, fulfilling some of the weighty promise of his moniker. But it wasn't meant to be.

Baby Goose saved just 10 games in 1988, even as the team rebounded to third place after sophomore manager Larry Bowa was replaced by Jack McKeon. Four days after the Dodgers defeated the Oakland Athletics in the World Series, McCullers, fellow hurler Jimmy Jones and outfielder Stan Jefferson were traded to the Yankees for slugger Jack Clark and pitcher Pat Clement.

San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium, July 20, 1987

There he briefly teamed again with the aging Gossage, but in 1990, the Yankees bottomed out, finishing dead last for the first time since 1966. McCullers appeared in just 11 games for New York before being dealt to Detroit, where he pitched in 9 more. He missed the 1991 season before briefly resurfacing with the Rangers in 1992.

They too cut loose the Baby Goose and at the age of 28 -- after 306 games, 526.1 innings pitched, 442 strikeouts and 39 saves -- he was done.

Twenty-three years later, the Houston Astros recalled from the minor leagues pitcher Lance McCullers Jr.  A starter, Grand Baby Goose is now in his third season with the A.L. West leaders where his record is 7-2. His dad is appropriately proud.

OCT. 27 ADDENDUM: Game 3 of the World Series, now tied at 1-1. Yu Darvish starts for the Los Angeles Dodgers, while McCullers Jr. gets the ball for Houston.
_____________________________

In the Summer of 1987, soon after graduating from college, me and my buddy Chris took a baseball tour of California. Mostly baseball at least, and hell of a good time. This is the first part of a series inspired by those 16 days on the road.

-- Follow me on Twitter @paperboyarchive