Baseball program — Turning Back the Clock: Baseball in Los Angeles

Brought to you as a public service announcement on Behalf of the Baseball Reliquery:

In conjunction with its current exhibition at the Arcadia Public Library, “Purpose Pitch: Ben Sakoguchi and the Baseball Reliquary,” the Baseball Reliquary will host a panel discussion on Los Angeles baseball history on Saturday, March 29, 2014, at 2:00 p.m., at the Arcadia Public Library Auditorium, 20 W. Duarte Road, Arcadia, California.

Baseball has been a central part of the Los Angeles sporting scene since the mid-1800s, and amateur, semi-professional, and professional versions of the game have flourished in the region. With a climate which permits baseball to be played and enjoyed twelve months a year, Los Angeles has witnessed its share of great players and games, from the sandlots to the professional diamonds, both before and after the arrival of the Los Angeles Dodgers in 1958 and the expansion Los Angeles Angels in 1961.

In “Turning Back the Clock: Baseball in Los Angeles,” a distinguished group of panelists will examine many aspects of the illustrious history of the national pastime in the City of Angels. Our panel, which collectively incorporates nearly 200 years of sports journalism expertise, includes sportswriters Ross Newhan and John Schulian, broadcasters Joe McDonnell and Fred Wallin, and historians Jean Hastings Ardell and Chris Epting.

The recipient of the National Baseball Hall of Fame’s J. G. Taylor Spink Award in 2000, Ross Newhan has devoted over four decades to covering baseball. He began his career in 1961 with the Long Beach Press-Telegram, covering the Los Angeles Angels. In 1967, he joined the Los Angeles Times, where he served as a traveling beat writer, covering the Angels and Dodgers. He took over as the national beat columnist for the Times in 1985, producing three to four columns weekly. Newhan has won numerous writing awards, including several from the Orange County and Los Angeles press clubs.

John Schulian, who vividly recalls the era when players such as Steve Bilko and Carlos Bernier were the headline makers in Los Angeles, burst to prominence in the 1970s as a nationally syndicated columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times, and added to his reputation with freelance stories for such magazines as GQ and Sports Illustrated. Schulian’s work has been included in Best American Sports Writing and Sports Illustrated’s Fifty Years of Great Writing. He later jumped to Hollywood, where he wrote for such hit TV series as L.A. Law, Miami Vice, and JAG, and was one of the creators of Xena: Warrior Princess. His many books include Twilight of the Long-Ball Gods: Dispatches from the Disappearing Heart of Baseball.

A veteran of Los Angeles sports talk radio, Joe McDonnell began his radio career in 1975, and has covered Southern California sports since the early 1980s as one of the area’s most iconic and popular broadcasters. In a nearly four-decade career that has found him working at over a dozen radio stations, McDonnell has won two Golden Mic Awards, and has been named “Sports Talk Host of the Year” six times by the Los Angeles Daily News, in addition to “Sports Talk Host of the Decade” for the 1990s. In recent years, he has been a sports anchor/reporter for KNX-AM radio and a writer/reporter/columnist for Fox Sports West.

Another seasoned veteran of Los Angeles sports talk radio for nearly 30 years, Fred Wallin hosted Dodger Talk for many years on KABC radio, as well as radio pre- and post-game shows for the Los Angeles Angels, Los Angeles Kings, and UCLA basketball. In addition to hosting sports talk shows in local markets, Wallin has worked nationally for the American Sports Radio Network, the Cable Radio Network, Sports Overnight America, and Prime Sports. On the television side, he was the baseball analyst for ESPN’s Sportslook with Roy Firestone for three years, and made many appearances on Fox Sports Net’s Sports Roundtable.

A writer, editor, teacher, and well-known baseball historian, Jean Hastings Ardell is the author of Breaking into Baseball: Women and the National Pastime, which is in more than 600 libraries and is taught in sports history courses around the country. Ardell’s baseball writing has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, The Sporting News, and The Cooperstown Symposium on Baseball and American Culture anthology. Her memoir appears in Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend: Women Writers on Baseball. Ardell co-chairs the annual Nine Spring Training Conference in Arizona, and is currently working on a biography of Southern California baseball legend Ila Borders, the first woman to play three full seasons of men’s professional baseball.

A noted author and pop culture historian, Chris Epting has had a lifelong fascination with unearthing and chronicling “hidden” locations, an inquisitive hobby that has resulted in over a dozen books based on his discoveries, including James Dean Died Here: The Locations of America’s Pop Culture Landmarks and Roadside Baseball: The Locations of America’s Baseball Landmarks. He has also written several books on Southern California baseball history, including Baseball in Orange County and Los Angeles’s Historic Ballparks. When not writing, Epting has been a frequent contributor to National Public Radio’s All Things Considered and FOX TV’s Best Damn Sports Show Period.

As an added bonus, several rare L.A.-historical baseball clips will be screened. And since the Major League Baseball season will start in earnest the following day, on March 30, our panelists will preview the 2014 season by offering their observations and predictions. Following the discussion, several of our panelists will have books available for sale and signing.

For further information on the program, contact the Baseball Reliquary 626-791-7647 or or by email.. For directions, contact the Arcadia Public Library during regular hours 626-821-5569.