The Los Angeles Times from Los Angeles, California • Page 40

D2 SPORTS LOSANGELESTIMES PAGE 2 HIGH SCHOOL GOLF From a national to a state stage Bryan Harris of Palm Desert High and Ben Murray of La Quinta, who missed out in their regional qualifiers for the U.S. Open, will compete for the state individual title. Go to latimes.com/preps HIGH SCHOOL REPORT Hamilton transfers All-City Section forward leaves Los Angeles Dorsey for Compton Dominguez; he will be a senior in athletic eligibility for the upcoming season. Go to latimes.com/preps On latimes.com Hamilton By Chris Dufresne Times Staff Writer what I thought I remembered about the first big league baseball game I attended: The year was 1966, at shiny-new Anaheim Stadium, which would have put me at 8 years old in a game definitely involving the then- California Angels. My sister won tickets in a local library raffle, but she was way more into books than baseball, so her little brother got the seats.

recall who took me to the game. Ihave no proof of attendance, only a recollection that the Frank Howard, a startling figure at 6 feet 7, hit a towering home run to left field that one-hopped into the giant scoreboard that now resides along the 57 Freeway. Ok, now for the kicker: Did it happen? Memory, like a knuckleball, can play tricks on you. Distant recollections tend to wobble and flutter. Awhile back, though, I stumbled upon a baseball research Internet site called Retrosheet.org, which has unleashed an ambitious assault on every 6-4-3 double play ever recorded.

Retrosheet boasts box scores for every game played since 1957, plus selected years from earlier seasons. Phil Rizzuto had two words for this kind of accomplishment: Holy cow. Did I really, 41 summers ago, see Frank Howard knock one from me to you? You bet I did. All it took to prove was mouse-clicking to agame-by-game recount of the 1966 season. There it was: May 11, at Anaheim Stadium.

SENATORS 4th: McMullen walked; Howard homered. Holy cow. The log say where home run landed, but he hit it off Angels lefty George Brunet, so a good chance the right-handed Howard pulled his moon shot to left, just as I remembered it. One minor memory problem: Washington made two other trips to Anaheim in 1966. On Sept.

2, a Friday night, in the top of the fifth, Frank Howard homered off Clyde Wright, another Angels lefty. OK, maybe that was the first game I attended. No matter, Retrosheet had validated for a memory that had been parked in my cranium for four decades. Tooling around Retrosheet can be likened to a young boy losing track of time rummaging through a sporting goods store. What about 1968, the year I swear I coaxed out of Mickey Mantle as he trotted from his first base position into the visiting New York dugout? possible because of the personal he says.

Smith in this for the money. Retrosheet is free and listed as a charitable organization with the Internal Revenue Service. anti-profit, not Smith jokes. With the help of a small group of volunteers, Smith spends about 20 hours a week updating his site. objective, according to its mission statement, is to make basic play-by-play information available for all interested The jewels of this baseball diamond are the box scores and game logs, culled mostly from newspapers and personal scorebooks kept by sportswriters and fans.

Baseball has always sold nostalgia like soap, often producing too much frothy lather, but there has always been something DNA- foundational about box scores. The appropriate click to a Retrosheet game log, in fact, can feel like opening an old letter. Smith thinks he knows why people connect so deeply to game accounts. mean to sound Smith says, everyone remembers their first game with their father, uncle, or grandfather. People have a memory of their first NFL or NBA game.

It just the It also helps that fundamental baseball geometry has remained constant. base moved in 150 Smith says. Once, Smith said, a man requested a box score and summary of the first game he attended with his father. The father was dying and the son presented the log as a going- away gift. a deep-down emotional Smith says of the box score connection.

Retrosheet, to date, has logged about 100,000 box scores. so far beyond what I dreamed Smith says. The goal is to secure every summary ever printed or posted. of he admits. The Depression Years in the 1930s are particularly tough because a lot of papers that carried daily box scores folded or merged.

Smith vows his battle for every HBP, like that open-ended game Yogi Berra loved to play, is not over over. So what if Retrosheet has to set your mind straight on a few of the details. Facts remain stubborn things, yet, in the end, maybe the memories are all that really matter. We dined with friends We dined alone. Atenor sang.

Abaritone. Ah yes, I remember it well. chris.dufresne@latimes.com Mantle at first? The Yankees made three trips to Anaheim that year and Mantle, a hobbled hero in the final year of his fabled career, played first base in all nine games. Sometimes the memories and facts square up. Afriend of mine was sure the first game he attended was a Yankees-Angelsmatchup in the 1960s at Anaheim Stadium in which Jim Bouton, the future author of pitched for the Yankees.

My friend said he and his dad often talked about that game in which hat kept falling off. Bouton as a Yankee never pitched against the Angels at Anaheim Stadium. for destroying some family the friend said. No, thank Retrosheet, which has arrived to reconnect distant dots and separate fact from conviction: people are wrong on the says David Smith, a 59-year-old biology professor at the University of Delaware, who developed Retrosheet as a labor-of-love in 1988. think people fuse together things.

People have different pieces of Smith is a confessed stat-oholic. He was raised in Southern California and got hooked on baseball, Sandy Koufax in particular, after attending his first Dodgers game in July 1958. What caught attention as he paged through his first game program were the back-of-the-book statistics offered by Allan Roth, legendary numbers cruncher. That was it: Smith wanted to be Allan Roth. dream of cataloging database began taking hold in the 1980s.

Thinking inside boxes FIRST PERSON Eric Crossan University of Delaware STAT MAN: Dave Retrosheet website has logged about 100,000 box scores from major league games. The Stanley Cup will be on standby in Anaheim tonight, and seeing the Ducks a victory from their first NHLtitle reminds us of their very different and very goofy early days. They were called Mighty back then even though they But they had two game-saving goalies, Guy Hebert and Ron Tugnutt, and they had Stu Grimson and Todd Ewen a couple of pugilists when they took off their gloves who were princes when they took off their skates. And for just one night, the Ducks had the Iceman. The silver-faced, glittery character was part of the Disney-fied entertainment for the first game Oct.

8, 1993. He and skating cheerleaders called the Decoys were booed heartily when they tried to draw the crowd into and with the Ducks trailing by four goals during a 7-2 loss to Detroit. The next day, Tony Tavares, the club president who would become known as a difficult boss, canned the cold guy. in a cryogenic Tavares said. Iceman cometh, and the Iceman Trivia time Who scored the first goal in Ducks history? Just say, Taking a cue from the Arte Moreno school of marketing, the Long Beach Armada has changed the name.

now the Long Beach Armada of Los Angeles of California of the United States of North America Including Barrow, Alaska. Or for short, LBALACUS- NAIBA. not a hoax. the real deal. got merchandise on the said David Kaval, owner of the Armada and chief executive of the Golden Baseball League.

abbreviation is great, especially on a hat. It wraps The Armada, which opens its season June 13 at Blair Field, will host Alaska on July 30 to honor the sister city. knows what the Angels Kaval said, adding that a real Los Angeles County team, we wanted to extend our reach as far north as By the way, Kaval said city of Long Beach officials are not upset. Their still first. Waffle King what calling Billy Donovan in Orlando, along with Billy Bail-out and Billy the Kidder, apparently less impressed with the soft spot in his heart for the Florida Gators than the soft spot in his head for wanting to walk away from the $27.5 million.

The Orlando Sentinel phoned another famous flip- flopper, Bobby Cremins, to see if Donovan has been inducted into the club yet. might even nominate him for said Cremins, who once jilted his alma mater, South Carolina, to remain at Georgia Tech and now coaches at College of Charleston. can empathize with Cremins said, adding that the aftermath of his decision was so difficult he sought counseling. you get all screwed up a little bit. easy to see him make the choice to go to the NBA, because he did everything he could at Florida.

But what happens is once he went over that fine line, he realized college is for me and he realized he made a mistake. when things get really rough because of the embarrassment part. But I respect what he did. He followed his heart and Dick Vitale put it another way, citingthe words of thelate Jim Valvano: mess with all yours, Chicago The Geneva-based Center on Housing Rights and Evictions contends that more than 2million people in seven cities have been displaced by the Olympic Games over the last 20 years, many of them homeless or poor. Maybe vying to host an Olympics is getting to be like trying to get an NFL team.

Seems like Los Angeles will be fine without either. Trivia answer Defenseman Sean Hill. And finally Jeff Van Gundy, who has worked as a guest analyst for ABC and ESPN during the NBA playoffs since being fired by the Houston Rockets, commenting on the buzz LeBron James is creating among on talk radio: people on talk radio an oxymoron right Van Gundy said. no such robyn.norwood@latimes.com Morning Briefing By Robyn Norwood Times Staff Writer It take long to crush Ice 11days.200films. 46chromosomes.

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07LAFF081 June21-July1 WestwoodVillage Tickets on sale June 8. Passes on sale now. WED.THU.FRI.SAT.SUN.MON.TUE. 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 DODGERS at San Diego 7 Ch. 9 at San Diego 7 Ch.

9 TORONTO 7:30 Prime TORONTO 7 Prime TORONTO 1 Prime NEW YORK 7 Ch. 9 NEW YORK 7 Prime ANGELS MINN. 12:30 FSNW at St. Louis 5 FSNW at St. Louis 4:15 Ch.

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4 at Ch. 4 Ch. 4 GALAXY at Dallas 5:30 FSNW CHIVAS USA at Chicago 5:30 FSC, FSE SPARKS MINN. 7:30 AVENGERS at Arizona 7 ESPN2 Shade denotes home game. Stanley Cup finals.

if necessary. Pro Calendar TIMEEVENT ON THE AIR BASEBALL 11 a.m.Chicago Cubs at Milwaukee TV: WGN 12:30 p.m.Minnesota at Angels TV: FSNW 710, 830 (Sp.) 5 p.m.Philadelphia at N.Y. Mets TV: ESPN 7 p.m.Dodgers at San Diego TV: 9 980, 1330, 610 BOXING 7:30 p.m.Wednesday night fights TV: ESPN2 COLLEGE BASEBALL 6 a.m.Div. III championship, Games 4-6 (tape) TV: CSTV 6 a.m. III championship, Games 7-9 (tape) TV: CSTV COLLEGE SOFTBALL, WORLD SERIES CHAMPIONSHIP 5 p.m.Arizona-Tennessee, Game 3 TV: ESPN2 GOLF 6 a.m.

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