New GM Farhan Zaidi, Dodgers Stadium's arborist, Roz Wyman brings Dodgers to LA, the "ball hawk" saga continues, Nancy B strikes a chord, and much more.
Roz Wyman's front row seats to the birth of the Los Angeles Dodgers
Monday was Opening Day at Dodgers Stadium in Los Angeles, where LA beat the San Diego Padres 6-3 on a 3-run homer in the 8th inning. Roz Wyman was there, in front-row seats, as she has been every single year, ever since she helped bring the team to Los Angeles in 1958.
Roz Wyman was elected to the LA City Council in 1953. At 22, she was not only its youngest member ever, but only its second woman, and Jewish to boot. She and her husband were big Democrats … Hubert Humphrey stayed at their Bel Air home and the studios would send over first-run films to screen in their living room.
LA was not a world-class city back then, and Wyman knew that one of the keys to elevating the city's prominence was to bring in a major league team. Meanwhile, Dodgers owner Walter O’Malley was trying and failing to replace the team’s stadium in Brooklyn. Eventually, O'Malley made that flight over Los Angeles and saw Chavez Ravine, a former Mexican-American hillside neighborhood that had been razed for a public housing project that was never built, with easy access to the freeways.
The rest is history.
New GM Farhan Zaidi says new LA Dodgers will build consensus
"He has a great qualitative mind, but also a creative mind. The ability to look at things both micro and macro is unique and Farhan could do whatever he wants to do, not just in this game, but in any sport or business." — Oakland A's GM Billy Beane to the SF Chronicle
The Los Angeles Dodgers open the 2015 season Monday, hosting the San Diego Padres at Chavez Ravine. There are many new players (KPCC's A Martí nez analyzes the team's "new spine" in our bonus audio), a new president of baseball operations, and a new general manager, Farhan Zaidi.
And if L.A. is a melting pot of religions, cultures and ethnicities, Zaidi is as L.A. as you can get: born in Canada, raised in the Philippines, observant Muslim, of Pakistanti heritage, numbers cruncher and former player ("light-hitting first baseman"). The Dodgers hired Zaidi from Oakland in November to replace Ned Colletti after the team crumbled in the playoffs.
Off-Ramp's John Rabe talked at length with Zaidi during spring training; here's some of their conversation:
What does Opening Day mean for you?
It's a time when we get to cash our excitement and optimism in and see the see the results of an off-season of at times overwhelming work in getting to know these new surroundings. For me, moving down from Oakland has been kind of an out-of-body experience. And I think for me to see this team take the field on Opening Day will make the whole thing a lot more real.
As GM, do you have the final say on player personnel?
No, it's interesting. I don't think of a baseball organization or front office operating that way. Even in my last organization, working with Billy Beane, who I think is as strong of a leader as there is in a baseball front office, the decision-making process was very collaborative. We really worked toward building consensus in every decision that we made, and that's how things are going to work here.
How important to you is happiness in the clubhouse? (In the off-season, the Dodgers traded Matt Kemp and Hanley Ramirez, reportedly two of the most team's most difficult personalities.)
(Laughing knowingly) I get asked this question a lot, not surprisingly. I think people look at some of our moves this off-season and think they were made with specific intention of addressing supposed issues in the clubhouse. I wasn't around last year; I can't speak to what the clubhouse was like. I can say that the moves we made were about building the best team possible, and that really goes to on-field performance. As far as once you have your roster set, I think happiness in the clubhouse is important. And the way I think it manifests itself is — like with every sport — there's a certain notion that sacrificing one's self for the benefit of the team can have have positive consequences. Having a positive clubhouse maybe means a player is okay with a platoon situation if that's what's best for the team ... maybe a guy who comes up late in the game with a winning run on second base will try a little harder to give himself up and move that runner over with a ground ball.
You're the only Muslim GM in any sports franchise. Are you very observant? ("I am," he says.) And does your faith come into play at work?
Not really. It's not something that affects the day-to-day operations and it's not something I steer conversations towards. As far as my faith goes, the biggest positive I draw from it is just an example of diversity in baseball, which to me is something that our sport can certainly use more of.
Have you faced discrimination in baseball because of your religion?
It's a totally fair question and I feel fortunate to say it really hasn't.
With all the different aspects of your makeup, you'll fit in well in L.A.
That's right, there's a lot different ethnic parts of town that I'll be able to walk through and at least try to pretend that I fit right in. I'm really excited about being able to live in L.A., and the fans have been so welcoming. I don't think I totally realized and appreciated how fundamental the Dodgers are to the fabric of the city.
Do you think the Dodgers' TV dispute needs to be resolved so that people can, you know, watch the Dodgers on TV?
Being on the baseball side, I'm honestly not privvy to that situation in the day-to-day. That's probably a better question for (President and CEO) Stan Kasten and people on the business side.
Hear much more of their conversation — including Zaidi's thoughts on the team's strengths and weaknesses, baseball in the Philippines, and pastrami — in our featured audio segment. And listen Saturday at noon to Off-Ramp, when we'll spend the entire show at Opening Day in Dodger Stadium.
Meet Chaz Perea, Dodger Stadium's landscape manager
Woven into the fabric of Dodger Stadium's beauty is its plant life: the rolling hills of Elysian Park, the meticulously manicured field and the thousands of decorative plants found outside the stadium’s gates. Those are managed by one man, landscape manager and certified arborist Chaz Perea.
Perea is 29 years old, he’s worked for the Dodgers since 2009, and at any given time about 10 people are working under him. He graduated from the horticultural studies program at Mt. San Antonio College in Walnut, but he grew up in Arizona. He’s diplomatic when you ask him what team he roots for — he won't name his favorite team, but says, laughing "I support the Dodgers. I love the hand that feeds me. I’m very happy to be here."
Before joining the Dodgers organization, Perea worked at a country club in Whittier. The change of scenery couldn't be more different for him. "There’s not a day I don’t drive in here and [think], 'Are you kidding me?'" he says. "It’s fabulous, it’s every day, and it’s kind of hard to wrap your head around."
It’s before sunrise when I go out to meet Chaz. Already, his team is at work — overhauling the landscaping near the stadium’s Sunset Gate. Opening day is a week and a half away. We start our tour of Dodger Stadium in Perea's golf cart.
First on the agenda: blue Mediterranean fan palms — of course they’re blue. A truckload just arrived and his team dug up a fresh new planter in the middle of the stadium parking lot. Where last season there was asphalt, 2015 will see an island of flora that’s lush, pretty and — most importantly — drought-tolerant.
"This guy’s gonna love the heat," he says of the fan palm as we drive over. "It’s gonna reflect sun really well. He’s gonna have a slow to moderate growth. It’s gonna use a fraction of the water that most plants would need."
Perea says plants like these can go with as little as 12 minutes of watering each week — that’s important for one of the biggest stadiums in California.
After inspecting the fan palms — which look great, by the way — we move on. We visit the landscape management workshop. Then behind it, the garden where they keep extra plants ready to go. Every now and then fans will trample the landscaping, and Perea has a fresh batch ready to replace them in the event that happens.
We finish our interview outside the top deck at the stadium — just as the sun starts rising over downtown Los Angeles. I ask him about the future — the drought isn’t letting up any time soon, and they can’t really let the grass on the field at Dodger Stadium go brown.
Perea says it's no longer simply a matter of finding drought-tolerant plants, but ones that can survive on reclaimed water. "That’s where all this exterior irrigation is gonna be pushed in the coming years, for all of us," he says. "Reclaimed water is tricky — in the sense that it introduces a handful of salts into your soil that more or less don’t get along with your plants so much."
It’s the same story for Dodger fans. Many are digging up their lawns or letting them go brown. Or they live in apartments with no green at all. Chaz Perea and his team give fans an escape from all that — what better reason to get up before dawn?
Even a star of Culture Clash's 'Chavez Ravine' roots for the Dodgers
For our Dodgers Opening Day Off-Ramp special, I wanted to make sure to pay respect to the memory of what used to be in Chavez Ravine ... the working class Mexican-American neighborhood that was razed to make way for a public housing project that was never built.
(LA County Sheriffs forcibly remove Chavez Ravine resident Aurora Vargas from her home. Bulldozers then knocked over the few remaining dwellings; four months later, ground-breaking for Dodger Stadium began. Photograph dated May 8, 1959. Credit: LAPL/Herald-Examiner Collection)
So I met Richard Montoya, one of the members of the performance group Culture Clash, at one of the Dodger Stadium overlooks to talk about "Chavez Ravine," the hit play that tells the story of the businessmen and politicians who killed the public housing plan with Red-baiting and lies, and how Fernando Valenzuela's breakout success in 1981 helped heal some of the wounds.
Montoya, who plays - among other parts - Vin Scully and Dodger Dog Girl in "Chavez Ravine," confesses to being a Dodger fan, and says he loves bringing his 4-year old son to the stadium to run the bases.
Todd Leitz, Dodgers' new public address announcer, has roots in radio
The Padres lost to the Dodgers twice on Monday. They succumbed on the field 6-3 on a 3-run homer in the bottom of the 8th inning. But they also lost to the Dodgers when they failed to hire Todd Leitz as their public address announcer.
Leitz says the lengthy and unsuccessful audition process for the Padres prepped him for the Dodgers job, which he takes over from Eric Smith.
It's a part-time gig for Leitz ... 82 home games plus, he hopes, playoffs and the World Series. The rest of the time, the 51-year old is PIO for MySafe:LA, the fire safety group, and before that he was a reporter and anchor for KNX and KABC for a dozen years.
One of the weirdest things about being a PA announcer in a huge space like Dodger Stadium is the time it takes for your voice to get from one end of the building to the other. Leitz says he's used to it because he's sung the National Anthem there many times.
Make sure to listen our audio to hear Leitz introduce a rookie relief pitcher -- John Rabe -- to the crowd at Dodger Stadium.
Opening Day: Superfans don Dodger blue mohawks, clown makeup, vintage Padres jerseys
Imagine getting lost in Dodger Stadium before the cell phone age. It's 1989. Your friend, the one in the Kirk Gibson jersey, said he'd meet you in front of the bathrooms near the right field pavilion. But look around: everyone has a Kirk Gibson jersey. It's three innings before you and your friend reunite.
To go to a Dodger game — especially on Opening Day — is to be surrounded in a sea of blue. But even at the most packed games, some people stand out.
Robert Rocha is probably one of the hardest fans to miss. For Opening Day, he dyed his enormous mohawk blue and stencils a white "LA" logo in the middle of it. "I've been doing my hair in mohawk style, probably for like five years," he said. "The bigger the hair, the bigger the heart."
Rocha — also known as Bluehawk — runs a popular Instagram with a little under 4,000 followers. He said it takes about an hour to get his hair styled. "It used to take me a lot longer until I got the science down," he said. "It's chemistry, you know? There's heat, there's coolness."
Other fans stand out for totally different reasons. Angel Perez came all the way from San Diego to root for the Padres, the Dodgers opponents on Opening Day. He wore a brown Padres jersey — not unlike this one.
"It feels a little awkward. I haven't seen that many Padre fans — maybe less than ten," he said. He acknowledged he'd gotten a couple of glares but was careful to add that the atmosphere wasn't that hostile. "It feels great, supporting my team, coming out from San Diego for the game."
On almost any given game day, you can find Bobby Crosby in the Left Field Pavilion. Crosby is a lifelong Dodgers fan and has held season tickets since 1997. Crosby also runs a popular Youtube channel where he films himself catching home runs. "The key is — it's just muscle memory and practice. Knowing where your hand is supposed to be, vaguely hoping, while your eyes never leave the ball," he said.
Crosby's caught hundreds of home runs during batting practice — on Opening Day he caught one from third baseman Juan Uribe. But he's only caught one during a game — a home run from Pittsburgh Pirate center fielder and former MVP Andrew McCutchen. Crosby hopes to catch a home run from a Dodgers player, but hasn't yet.
Legendary Dodgers scout Mike Brito on the right stuff on the mound and in the wardrobe
Not only did legendary Dodgers scout Mike Brito discover Fernando Valenzuela and Yasiel Puig, and thirty players in between. Not only did he man the radar gun behind home plate for years, calmly smoking a cigar. Not only are his fingers so crowded with championship rings you crunch them when you shake his hand. But Mike Brito is also the best-dressed person on the field.
From his Cordoba penny loafers, to the hat that perfectly complements his matching tie and handkerchief, even down to the brown-tinted sunglasses, he is an antidote to Zubaz America.
In our interview he describes what he looks for in a player, and reveals his secret clothing weapon. Okay, we'll tell you: his wife picks out his "combinations."