This is I on the Ball with Steve Rivera and Jay Gonzalid Sound Fox Sports fourteen fifty powered by Nova Insurance Services and Sure Your most Prized Possessions kt c R two, SAG and iHeartRadio Station.
National Champion Andy Lopus. You baby baseball. How are you coaching? I'm doing good, Stee. Thanks for having me. Man, you're an old veteran at this. I'll just find it out.
I had a radio show and a TV show in Gainesville, Florida when I was coaching at the University of Florida. Lois rating show in the history of radio and TV. But but I survived it.
But you survived it? Was it difficult?
You know what?
By the grace of God I had, I had. I was there seven years, and six of those years we won we want a couple of conference championships, went to Omaha a few times and went in his number one team in the nation in nineteen ninety eight, and only one year did we not go to postseason there in the seven years I was there, and we started off marvelously. We were twenty two and three going into Athens, Georgia about the second week of conference and fifth in the nation.
We had just the year before gone to Omaha's a number one team in the nation, and that's another story. Didn't win the national title. Still have thoughts about that. But anyway, and in that weekend I lost Jason dill Are All American first basement hit three in the lineup, a Friday.
Night guy, and our closer. We lost our.
Friday Night guy, our closer, and our number three old Winter in one week in the season Indian injuries. So we spit oil the rest of the way of the season. We didn't get into postseason. And man, that radio show was very interesting.
Well it predated or about the time internet started, but not you know, online stuff, So that was when you got your grief instead of online.
It was I gotta be honest, like I said, I was really fortunate. Six of the seven years we were in postseason. Everybody was happy, life was great, life was grand. But woo nineteen ninety nine, Man, though, when did you leave there? I came here in two thousand and one.
Okay, so two years later you must have did well. The two thousand year, yeah, we were in.
We lost to Miami twelve innings they've won that regional and then went on and won the national title.
Yeah, and yeah, you know, yeah, we played.
Okay, you had a fantastic career. It's easy to say that you had a numero longtime career. How many years.
Thirty eight years?
Coach, head coach, head coach, always head coach. Okay, So at Pepperdine you had a national title, correct, a fantastic career there. You moved to Florida from Pepperdine. From Pepperdine, then you moved here. So at what point along the road, this glorious road that you took, did you think, oh crap, this is kind of big time baseball. You know what I'm saying. You're doing it for fun and you enjoyed it, right.
I mean yeah, I mean here's the reality of it. I'll keep it as quick as because you know again, I'll keep it quick. But I never ever, ever had one thought of being a baseball coach. Ever, What do you want to be when you grew up? Honestly? Yeah, I grew up poor, kind of a poor kid. My mom and they were the greatest parents on Earth, man. But I grew up you know what I want? I just want to make money.
I did.
I just want to make money and be able to buy things that I wanted and kind of split. It had to be something I didn't care. You didn't care, I didn't care. I really didn't care. I was learning to sell real estate life insurance policies.
What age were you?
Right out of UCLA twenty two and then the guy. I was about ready to be certified, and the guy said, you know what, I got to be honest, you you look way too young. I don't think you can go into a home and sell term policy life insurance policy. And so he kind of discouraged me, right, but he said, you know if you want, and I got a little discouraged.
So I drove home and uh never it was raining.
I was living in LA and I went to junior college before I went to UCLA. So I stopped by the junior college and then you know, I was there and told the coach and he said, well, why don't you come help me? And I went well, and he goes, it's helped me, and I said, well, I need some money, so I can't pay anything, but you know, do something else. My family were all long shortman, so I worked on the dots. I work on the docks a little bit, but you get your degree before history.
So what the hell you get in? What history is not gonna pay you anything? What's wrong with you?
Well, you know, my wife's a graduated UCLA as well.
Now she's really sharp, she's a three point five.
So you're a smart man.
Married Andy Lopez is the epitome of c's getting degrees. Stay eligible, stay eligible, and play baseball. Right and uh so that was that was my hope and prayer.
Okay, so you go back and you get the job at the JC.
I'm working at the j C. So I was an assistant that one year. It's a great story from this standpoint. Go ahead, okay, ready, uh for young anybody out there that's a young coach or this and then I I've shared it with my coach, my coaches, and with my son who's coaching at the University of make Swore. Now this is a true story. So I'm at I'm at l A Harvard Junior College in Los Angeles on a thirty man roster. Number one is the best player on
the team. Number two is the second best. Three four If I said, the thirtieth man is a young guy man named Jeff Turchie. Okay, he's now a very Successfuldnnist in Orange County. But Jeff Turchi, so he comes to me all the time. I say, hey, loas we you hip ground balls me before practice? Will you throw BP? Will you hit within? All these things. I'm twenty two years old, and I'm going, yeah, why I do that? The head coach even came to me one day, I said,
why are you working with this guy? He's never gonna play. I said, yeah, I know, but you know he asked me. And this is a credit to my mother, my father, my grandmother. They always taught me, you befriend the guy that's not the rumpeter guy. So I did that the whole year. Right, we played for the state championship. I bet you Jeff played maybe five games and had maybe four bats, right, Okay, laid any defensive replacement or whatever. So the season ends and I'm going, hey, I'm not
doing this. I'm not making any money, so I'm going to go back on the docks. I'm not figuring out what I'm gonna do. So now I'm thinking about getting my real estate light chains. I'm doing all these things and I get a call at my home. Now, this is nineteen seventy six, seventy seven, seventy eight.
Maybe seventy eight.
No, no phone, sty I pick up the phone.
I hear, is this Andy Lopez?
Well, buddy of mine, Bobby Ramirez and I we would play jokes on each other and say, hey, this is Bill Smith with the Cincinnati Reds. Hey meet me at the at Peck Park in San Pedro at ten o'clock. I said, I'm going to give you a workout, maybe I'll sign you a contract. So I think it's Bobby Ramirez. I say, hey, Bobby, nice, try hang up the phone. It's a true story. So I start walking away and the phone rings again and I hear, is this Andrew Lopez? Is Andrew Lopez? Well, I was only called Andrew in
my life. I was in trouble. Yeah, So I said, ooh, excuse me, sir, I'm sorry, Yes, this is Andy. And I thought this was a prank, called that a well long story shirt. This gentleman says, I'm Dick Jacobson, superintendent of school South Bay Union High School District, which is in southern California, matt In Beach, Elsagundo, Torrence Ridondo.
On that by the airport, he.
Says, I'm looking to hire a baseball coach, football coach, rush offt football, varsity baseball, and teach five classes of freshman Spanish.
I said, I.
Got no job right, twenty two? Yeah, I'm twenty two. And I said, well listen, I'm interested, but I don't have a teaching credential. He said, well, let's meet next week. So we meet and when I get there, he's got an emergency credential. All mapped out. I go to this junior college in La. Then I go to La Kel State in LA. But I got to go to school all summer. Now I'm having this meeting in June. School
starts in September out in LA after Labor Day. So anyway, I take the job right But as I'm walking out of his office, I say yes to the job. So I'm going to do it, and I ended up doing I started as the high school I did for five years. As I'm walking out, I said, mister Jacobs said, can I ask you a quick question?
Yeah? What's up? Great?
Lesson? Great, lesson. This is how I got into coaching, he says. I said, how did you get my name a number? He said, well, my dentist is Mark Turchie.
This is right.
I'm getting my teeth worked on the other day, and he asked how I was doing.
I said, I'm doing good, but I got to hire a baseball coach.
Mark Turchie is the father of Jeff Turchie, the kid I worked with every day before and after practice.
Now, if i'd have blown him off, sure, yeah, those long. I mean, you're working on the dogs.
Don't know. You were telling me this something. And there's three people already that I know. You have to say thank you to the guy who told you. To the first guy who stirred you away. There was two of them. There was two of them, and then you went somewhere else and then this guy, there's three of them. You know, to go here there. This is a butterfly effect. Yeah, where you know this, this and that and then here you are. Right. So, so is he still around?
Who's that mister? You missed?
The dentist.
Yeah, yeah, he's still out there. Yeah, still out there. Well, the kids doing well. I don't know if his father's still well.
Oh yeah, but the kid is doing well.
He's doing well. He's he's a very successful dnist in Orange County. And yeah, we communicate every now and then. Didn't you write some books, didn't you? I wrote one after the National champion. When you win the National champions you're the flavor of the hot, right. You got answers everything you can solve world peace from Pepperdine or did you do it for Okay? It started at Pepperdine, the book, yes, but you didn't finish it.
Finish it in Florida.
In fact, if anybody got it, it's not I don't think it's in the pub case anymore. It's funny because I started it was started at Pepperdine ninety two. We win the national championship in ninety four is my last year there for two years. So you can see how quick I wasn't doing it? Okay, I had a ghost writer. What was this was the premise of the book. It
was called Coaching Baseball Successfully about Baseball. It was about me. Yeah, so every every every chapter was a little bit about my background and then you know why we did the things we did, and yeah, etattat cetera and drills and all these other things, but philosophies and the whole thing. Okay, ahead, okay, So so I take the job to Florida in ninety five, I'm off to Angel, Florida, nineteen ninety five. I finished the book in ninety six, okay, and and I vowed
I'd never do another one. It took me forever, but I finished the book in ninety six. And there's pictures of guys in Florida baseball uniforms all over the book.
Because I was at Florida the time.
So there's Pepperdine guys and there's Florida guys in it. Sometimes it gets a little confusing, but it went well for a while.
And you know I mean it. You know I did not make a lot of money on it. I can tell you that.
Yeah, No, No. One of the mysteries of books is there's no money unless your bill. Unless you're Bill Clinton or Donald Trust, they're going to pay you a million dollar advance. Other than that, you're saying, okay, twenty five, you're like Pete Diddy or somebody. I shouldn't say that with the guy with with things in your trunk, say hey, you want to buy a book. You know I give you a discount. You know you buy them for ten bucks, you sell it for twelve.
Let me put it this way, we get our with the residual checks.
Yeah.
On the every month. My wife and I in Florida and she go, here's another one. Yeah, and go, hey, that's twenty five dollars in bad.
Long John Silver's here we come. Yeah, yeah, no, no, hear what one of the reasons why you're here? You tell the greatest stories. I think you have a better book, book, better book inside you. Mike Kendred. We talk about this all the time with him having a book because he has, you know, eight titles, A lot of people who love him. You do because you're you got a great story to tell. You just do the way you grew up where you're at.
How you butterfly effect. Come on, if you had you not taking care of that kid.
I don't know what I'd be.
It's just like these things happen. Yeah, these things happened. SA mean, I got here, I stayed, but a lot of people along the way have helped me.
And then I tried to get out of coaching three times. Where let's see, I took the Dominga's Hill I was at America's High school for five years and then I got offered the Kelctate Domingu's Hills job, which is a Division two program in Los Angeles, and it was an absolute nightmare there. Just it was the worst job a man could take in his life. I said no to it for three days in a row. My dad. I went to see my dad one day and I told him, hey, Dad, I got this Dominga's Hills job offered. I told him
everything that was wrong with the job. There was no money for assistant coaches. You had to teach four lecture classes. There was no irrigation on the infil. I dragged the field. I dragged the field every day before practicing, after practice with my own car, in my own car. The crips and the Bloods. This is a true story. People think
I lie about this. If anybody wants to challenge out of this, you need to call Steve and he'll give you my number, and I'll let you talk to my wife, because why I got married my second year there.
She lived to help you.
The crips in the blood stole our equipment on a nightly basis. So I put all of our equipment, every piece of baseball equipment, in the back of my little hot my little Jetta. It was a GMC jetta. I'm not a Jedda this little hatchback. I put it in the back, so I dragged the field of my car and then I put all the equipment in the back of my car and drove it home, then drove it back and take it out.
And that was my routine every day.
I would think that you'd need a look, a small pinto or something like that, just to kind of take it.
Out of unblu. Like I said, not one penny for assistant coaches. At that time, the nc DOUBLEA allotted fifteen scholarships to a Division two Division one NCAA baseball.
I had one and a third. That was what the university game.
That's not you guys worked magic because of the scholarship limits. Yeah, and all other sports like that where football gets all these and you have like fifteen or not even fifteen seven seconds now, which is good.
I'm happy for chipping those guys. It's changing.
But anyway, I did that for a while, and about my third year there, I was offered a job. I was going to be the director of Athletes and Action Christian Organization. They were going to send me to Colorado Springs, put us up in a home. It was all set and I said yes, and my wife was out shopping. She came home and I said, Linda, we're set free, man. We're going to Colorado Springs. We had one you know, I have four kids. My first daughter was born at
that time. And she said, what are you talking about. I said, I took the job today from you know, I took the job. This is my last year to me. She was back to the job and she didn't like that. She said, you know, we need to pray about this as a couple. So we prayed about it a couple of times that night, and I woke up the next morning and I had to call the general.
We say, I'm not taking that job.
And then another time, in nineteen ninety one, I was offered a management position. What happens. I had a player at Pepperdine. I took the Pepperdine. I'm in eighty nine. There was a player on that program that first year. I'd heard the program and he was kind of a kind of a rough edge kid, and I, you know, I was I was a very demanding coach. I'm not gonna apologize for it, but I was very demanding on the field. And he got his life in order and it impressed his dad. So his dad came and he
took me to lunch. In nineteen ninety one, I was at Pepperdine. I was at Pepperdine in eighty nine, ninety ninety, my third year there, and he says, hey, I'm going to offer you a management position, your own office, and ready for this, a fifteen thousand dollars.
Raise from my salary. Yeah. So I'm thinking this is an answer to prayer.
I'm out of here, right, I'm getting out, and I go home and I tell my wife and she goes, oh, let's pray about Like, oh, Linda, No, come on, you know, come on, you know we're both we both are born again Christians. I said, hey, come on, this is this is too good to be true. I don't have to recruit anymore. I don't have to worry about winning forty games.
Yeah, thank you very much.
Yeah, and I'm gonna get a fifteen thousand dollars race. Come on, Lynn, what we gotta pray about? And the next one I won't go to. Oh my god, I'm not taking this job. Oh guess what happens next year nineteen ninety two, you.
Get the job at pepper where you win the title.
We win the national team win the title. Yeah, so I would have left the year early.
And again again, your your path would have been different.
As we're flying home on the charter jet from Omaha, Nebraska, we just won a smaller school they ever win a national title, only three thousand students, no football program of Pepperin only three sounds, three thousands enrollment. My wife nudges me and says, hey, you probably need to stay in this job.
That's for a little while longer. Okay, we gotta go. We had to even mentioned the guests. We're gonna We're gonna talk to Larry Gilman, a former TV guy in Cincinnati, while Pete Rose was a player and a coach, I think for sure a player. And then we're gonna talk to Donnie Salem at the four to fifteen hour. If you paid attention to our social it's reversed. So Gilman will come on first and then Donnie Salemon. Donnie Salem will be afterward. Let's take the break. Thank you, Ryn.
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Steve Rivera and Jake and Salez. They have their eye on the Ball on Tucson's Sports Stage Jet Fox Sports fourteen fifty streaming live. I mean iHeart radio Wapps.
Hey, welcome back to Why I'm About Hero Fox Sports fourteen fifteen. I'm Steve Rivera. In with me today's former you of a baseball coach, Andy Lopus. Now on the phone, we have Larry Gilman, a former sports report in Cincinnati who covered Pete Rose extensively and became friends with him. Is that right?
I don't know if you would consider to be the right thing to do as a reporter that Pete and I got to be quite close during the three years I was there.
Okay, Okay, So I saw your post on Facebook. How did this hit you?
Well, the fact that he had passed away.
Yeah, well he was eighty three years old, and you know, she.
Has devoted the last.
You know, many decades of his life. Really in terms of his quest to get into the Hall of Fame.
It made me.
Very sad that he had passed away before that happened, because, as I said in my post, I really felt that well, he definitely should have paid a price for violating the rules in the way it was, still he was still one of the greatest players. It's not the greatest non home run hitter of all time. And I think he belongs in the.
Hall of Fame.
Yeah, Larry, this is a at coach Lopez, Andy Lopez, And I've got to ask you a question I never had the honor and the pleasure to and I echo your thoughts. You got, you know, and hey, who didn't have a little bit of a dark side in their life?
You know?
I mean, come on, but but boy, what a great player and phenomenal And I was a big fan of Pete Rose growing up as a kid. I'm seventy years old, so I remember when he was a young when he was just getting after it with the Reds and even with the Phillies and all the rest. But I do want to ask you something. I was very intense on the field, and then off the field.
I was not that way and that I just had.
It's almost like I had two personalities meet personally, right, Pete's intensity on the field, how was he off the field?
Good question.
I think that I wouldn't describe him as an intense person off the field. I mean, he really did have a problem with gambling long before you know any I mean, I had left Cincinnati when all of his his issues became public. He left Cincinnati too. He went to play for the Phillies, and I went to another market. I moved to Milwaukee, and then many years later this all sort of emerged. But when I knew him and was with him, I wouldn't call him intense as a person,
but he had his quirks. I mean, one of the things is he would bet you on anything. You know, you be in the car with him and you're going somewhere, and I'll say, I'll bet you a dollar that we see a red car before the car. Or We used to go to the racetrack a lot sometimes with his kids, and we socialized a lot. And I wouldn't call him intense off the field, but he was clearly a product
of his background. He grew up in the western Hills of Cincinnati, which is sort of a blue collar, white Catholic area.
And.
He sort of.
He had a very high sense of propriety when it came to certain issues. We were once my wife and I and he was and I was on a double date with Pete who was with not his wife, even though he was very visibly and publicly married, and we went. He was part owner of the Cincinnati Wave indoor soccer team. We're sitting in the press box and watching the game and I made a comment.
To the group.
I said, boy, our team really got and I used an X live on that call, and Pete looked at me and he said, how can you use language like that in front of women?
And here he was out in a public setting with a wife.
So it was a set of values that was, you know, was new for me as a Jewish.
Kid from Saint Louis. How can you be out in public?
Beget that when I dropped the F bomb and here you are with this very attractive woman who in front of everybody, you know. So he was someone who really added a dimension and an insight about a lot of things to my life. And I think that he was very intense about baseball to a point of over focus. You wake him up in the middle of the night, out of a dead sleep. He could give you every
statistic about his baseball career up until that moment. And on the one day, I mean, during his forty four game hitting streak.
I pitched in college.
I was left hander, and he says, we played twenty two games and really calls me up.
He says, I'm down at Riverfront. Come down here.
I go down there.
He said, I need a left hander to pitch banning practice to me because I'm facing Jim Bunning tomorrow.
And you know, he's an amazing game.
He's hitting thirty five games in a row.
He already had the national leader.
On his one day off.
He's down there taking baddock practice and wants me to throw to him because he wants a left hander.
Like you know, he's never seen a left hander before. So he was very.
Focused and very passionate and very determined to do things in a certain way.
But that way wasn't always a way I was familiar with.
So so you kind of maybe already asked answer this question his background and his intensity. But you don't see players like him anymore, Right, that drive, that run down to first base to kind of plow you over, kind of over over overplay almost. But I loved that he was my hero growing up. I love how he played you ran hard, you played hard? Uh? Is that a product of his background too? Did he have a dad who kind of stressed that or where did that come from?
Well?
He once told me that if there weren't such a thing because the game of baseball, he'd be selling aluminum siding like his dad did. I mean, he was very much aware of the fact that, you know that he he was uniquely talented in a certain way, but in other ways maybe not so much.
But I.
I just think that he he was that way. And I also think that one of the reasons that so many people really loved him as a player was because as a as a baseball player myself.
I mean, baseball, as we all know.
Doesn't have the same reputation as as as as football or even basketball of being a physical kind of sport where where passion, you know, has a huge role, it's really more of a skill sport. And and here comes Pete Rose and he's, you know, sprinting down to first base when he gets a walk, and he's running over Ray FOSSi in a meaningless All Star game and actually putting FOSSi out of the you know, it sort of ended his career in a very real sense.
But you know, that's just the way Pete was.
And I'm not sure that anyone ever called him on it or suggested that wasn't one hundred percent positive because so many people just sort of worshiped him for it. And you know, when it came to free agency, I mean, he had grown up in Cincinnati, played his whole career with Cincinnati, and when I was there in nineteen seventy eight or nine, he went in the free agent market
and ended up going to the Phillies. And the decision process for him was not about money, because he could have gotten pretty much the same money anywhere, but it was really about finding the right fit for him and finding a place where he would be happy and where he would play a role. And I think he was a friend of Bobby Wine and that was one of the reasons that he went to the Phillies instead of the Braves or a couple of the other teams that
were sort of after him. So he really did have that kind of side to him that was very traditional, very old school in terms of.
You know your you know your word is your bond.
I mean, he did have a problem with gambling, but in terms of everything else, I would have trusted him with anything.
Yeah.
The one question I was just curious, Like I said, I never had the pleasure or to see him in person.
Was he big? How big was he?
It was not big. He wasn't small. I call him average sized. I'm not saying it might have.
Been five to ten uh and you know, not but but very dirty thirty, very sturdy, you know, but but not not a slugger.
I mean his skill was was having a complete control of the bat at all time. I mean, if you're pitching to him, or someone's pitching batting passes to him.
He would call out where he was going to hit the ball.
Uh, and he'd hit it there, you know, sort of like Tiger Woods with that thing he did with a golf ball kind of thing. I mean, he was just uh uh he really was a technician.
Well he just recently, I don't know how long ago on Twitter or on Fox. He was doing the Fox TV thing right and and Rodriguez was there, and so was uh the Chicago White Sox guy forget his name us No, no, the big guy, Frank Thomas. So he was teaching them or you know, this is what I did when I was slumping. He went up, went back and he was giving baseball hitting lessons, you know, choke up. He was teaching them and they were like, wow, I mean,
these guys who know how to play the game. He was telling me, if I'm gonna slump, I do this and we'll step up curveballs here, do this, and do that. He was he was brilliant at that. And there's no.
Question, whole life, his whole life.
And and like coaching is a technique, right, you either you got it or you don't. And I think the players loved him because he knew all that stuff. He was good at it.
Yeah.
The thing that I was always impressed with him, Larry Man as a coach, but as a young player two growing I was. I was a middle infielder, my my during my career. But he was so versatile. I mean, you know in today's world of baseball, they're they're looking for that, They're looking for the gather the interchangeable parts. You know, the Dodgers are famous right now, you know, put Mookie Bets at short, put him at second, put them in right, Okay, But I mean, right, am I
right about this? Pete Rosie. I remember him playing left field. I remember him playing second base.
Well, he came up as a second base. Yeah, and for the first whatever big percentage of his career he was the second baseman. And then Joe Morgan came along, and so he became a third base and then later in his career he he became, uh he became an outfielder, so he could play anywhere.
He played first left Philadelphia, he played first base. Yeah yeah he did at the end.
Yeah yeah no, what what if? Did you inredible talent? And as a reporter, Larry, did you have any run ins with him?
Never?
But uh, yeah, know it was It was interesting because I was local, and you know, we used to hang out together and I'd see him a lot. And yet because of his standing and because of his his career, I mean, he was already well in his career when when I met him, and they were right in the wheelhouse of the big Red machine with Johnny Bench and George Foster and.
And sig concepts to own.
And I mean I think other than their pitching, I think from from a lineup point of view, places one through eight, it could have been the best.
Hitting team ever.
Uh in terms of just not being a weekly anywhere in the lineup.
Uh.
But so he had he was a major national sports figure and he knew major national sports reporters.
So I was in that regard.
I mean, I was covering the Cincinnati Reds because I lived in Cincinnati and worked for a Cincinnati TV station, And I know I knew Pete Rose because he was in Cincinnati, and I got to meet him and have a relationship with him. But in terms of his his relationships with the national news media, he clearly had his friends and people who weren't such friends. So but that really didn't have an impact on me, because you know.
I was in a different place.
Yeah, well, what's your what's your favorite memory?
I was thinking.
About that today. The favorite memory, Well, the one was.
When I.
Well I talked about that a little bit, when you know at the at the at the game that I went to. I mean because of him, I got to go to things I wouldn't have otherwise gone to. The favorite memory I guess I had during in nineteen seventy eight, the Reds went on a.
Good will trip.
In Japan, and so Haw Ruo was there at the time, who was the greatest slugger in the history of Japanese baseball, and I got to meet him and get some photos. You know, people didn't have cell phones back then, so I don't know be selfies, but I have a few pictures that other people took but that trip, I mean, it really brought into focus what an international hero he had become.
We went to there's a Mizuno, which.
Is the biggest sporting goods maker maybe in the world, but they're in Japan, and they have a whole huge department store in downtown Tokyo. And one day Pete and George Foster and Johnny Bench had been paid to come and sign autographs.
And post for pictures.
And I wrote down there with Pete and there were lines three times around the block of people waiting to get in. I mean, japan huge baseball interest over there.
I was really surprised by that.
But he was so great. He's just so open to everyone.
And then before the games in this tour, he would do that hitting clinic where he would call where he was going to hit the ball and and and you know, and everyone.
Just ate it up.
I mean, he he just loved being in the spotlight. He loved being a hero, and he really was proud of the fact that he felt that he had done it without being born with tremendous natural ability, that he really had had to work hard, uh to get as good as he was, and had to hustle more than
everyone else and do all these other things. And I would say, rather than have one single story or one single incident, I would say that being around a guy like that and getting to know him, uh was was just a very special opportunity, and you know, I was very, very blessed to have it.
Yeah. Right, well, Larry, thanks for your time, Appreciate your time. Thanks talking with you.
See the business all right, I'll see I'll see at Viera Mori.
Yes, thank you, We'll see my Tuesday guys with the guys. Okay, let's take a break and come back. If you're an Arizona men's basketball fan, you know it's been successful for nearly forty years. Now take a look back at the Ludelsen era. In my new book, Lessons from Loot, it was a labor of love through the eyes of twenty five former players, coaches and friends to give insight to the coach and the man who led them, competed against them, and inspired them twenty five chapters for his twenty five
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This is I on the Ball with Steve Rivera and Jay Gonzalez sound Fox Sports fourteen fifteen. Subscribe now to the podcast on the iHeartRadio app just Surgeon I on the Ball.
Hey, welcome back to my I on the Ball here Fox Sports fourteen fifty. I'm Steve Rivera. He's mister Andy Lopez coach and Lopez two time national champion. Here here one at ULA and win at Pepperdine right, and we got Ryan with us today. So let me ask you how many you give me a number? You can be any number. In your time, you've coached about a thousand kids,
more than about twelve hundred twel hundred. Okay. Did you have a Pete Rose guy where you talked about the kid who at the end of the thirty right, who ran hard, played hard, did all that, but just was a marginal player, but made himself into one player. I'm talking Pete Rose that way.
Yes.
David Exstein, David Exstein, when the world's MVP of the whatever I was.
You don't even have to think about it because he was a walk on at Florida, Okay.
And when he walked into my office, my secretary, I'll never forget normal it's my first year there, and Norris says Coach Loy and gets on my phone. Coach Lopez, we have a player that wants to talk about the baseball proer. Yeah, come on, that's my first year. Come one, Come on, you know I'm you there. I don't know one soul in Florida now, one human being. So I'm going, yeah, come on in. So here comes this little guy walks in. I kind of go, okay, how you doing? And I'm
thinking he's going to ask about the manager's position. Just Coach Lopez, David, and I said, okay, David, okay, well you know, tryouts and so and so he comes out, wait keep him and he's got okay. Actions didn't have a really good arm. His nickname in Big Leaues was just enough, just enough strength to get it out. So anyway, and I still stay in close contact with him and his brother Ricky.
They both played for me.
And uh so fall baseball starts and you know I'm having I had my routine as head coach.
We had meetings every morning nine o'clock.
For one hour with the team, no no with coach step and we'd go over yesterday's practice, today's practice, and then we'd go over recruiting, and then we'd go over some.
You know, scholarship issues.
Well, I'll never forget the beginning fall, I'm saying to my staff, Hey, we've got to go out and find a couple of second basements because you know, the ex Time kid, he good kid, works hard, but you know he's short in his arm strength. And not that that he's short, he's just short in some ability. Well, by the end of the fall, my meetings were, hey, guys, we got to find some money for Exstein.
It was like the guy, it was unbelievable. And all the.
Guys I coached, and I was really lucky to coach a lot of good players, so I got some wins because I had good players. Right, But if he had a bat at bat, you could lay your life that the next at bat was gonna be absolutely fantastic. I mean, if he had a We're in Omahon nineteen ninety six. It's it's LUs in LSU. It's the famous game that war and Morris hits the home run to win the national championship the next day against LSU Miami.
Well, we're playing LSU.
Winner of this game plays Miami tomorrow x Steinn's up in the fifth inning, has a really bad at bat. He's coming up in the next seventh or eighth inning, and I turned my estaff, I said, and it's one to one. It's a one one game. I said, if x steinn comes up with people on base, we're gonna win this game. We're gonna be playing for the National Championship Ball. And it's my second year of Florida. And they turn a double play right before he gets up though.
In the eighth, Nam whack all the gap double. We don't score him, we lose two to one. They played National Chair. They win the National Chamis the next day on Warren Morris's grant home run in the ninth.
But yeah, he was phenomenal and that's who he was.
Right right. So you've had I'm sure you had more more like him, but he's the one that popped.
Up right away.
Yeah, I think in I think in every program, I was big on intangibles, and I was always looking for that and recruiting and uh a few huge on intangibles. In fact, there were many times I avoided the guy that was the he passed the eye test for the guy.
You know, he's got intangibles just talking to his coaches. Don't do that. I mean what you know what I'm saying. They want They want the Jay Jay who sat next to near you with me regularly. He was the eye test dude. He was the airport guy. You look, you look the part.
Yeah, and it's it's a phrase. You know, you look like Targa played like Jane and I'm that guy where I don't want that dude, I want the intangible guy.
I think it's because of my career.
I started as a high school you were that guy, and then six well know, but my first five years I was a high school coach. Okay, my next six years I'm at kel State, Dominga's Hills. I recruited a kid one night at kel State to mean was like, so I wish Linda were here because she was married to me. I did not get a recruiting visit until my thirty fifth phone call.
Really, I called thirty.
Five players and said, would you come visit and visit the gruen No.
No.
I had a guy tell me, ask me where are you located? I said, well about four blocks from your house? He lived four blocks in our house.
We got to call coach you're on the air, eye on the ball.
Hey, what going on?
Is Vic?
Vic?
How you doing?
I am great?
I wanted to Coach Lopez.
This is Vic.
I met you at High Corbett. I'm a good friend of Gary and Kevin de Lamico's.
Oh my gosh, Delamico is my left field on the national championship team at Pepperdine.
How are you?
Vic?
I am great? Great, Steve I had a chime in with a Andy Lopez story. Don't mind clean, it's clean, but uh. In nineteen eighty nine, I went to a clinic from Coach Lope to cal State, LA, and he told this story that I've told him to every baseball team I've ever been associated with, every player. So he's going to Dodger Stadium and they get lost going up to leaguel And Park. They take a wrong turn and they can see the lights of the stadium, but he's
kind of lost and stuff. And he pulls up and he sees these little kids out in the street playing with football. And he pulls up and he says, hey, kid, come here. Kid walks up to Andy's carr and says, what's up. He goes, how do you get to Dodger Stadium and the kid turns around and says, your practice, man, your practice. I told coach Lopa that when I met him. He goes, how do you remember that? And I said, man, it stuck with me.
Forever and ever.
And then there's a little PostScript to that. He goes to Pepperdine the next day they have practice, and he says, if I if I go through the neighborhood in Long Beach there where he lived and see a kids practice are playing with football, We're not going to condition tomorrow. So he says, he takes his wife to dinner. He says, where the heck are you going? And he goes, I'm
just looking for something. And he's driving through the streets of Long Beach looking for a game of which football, which he never found.
Yeah, my wife was so mad at me. We went to church. We went to I always took Sundays off. That was just something I spend time my wife and kids, and we went to church. That was a routine. I said, lin, let's go to dinner later tonight. She says, okay, let's go worry. So we started driving around Long Beach, California. I had not yet moved to Pepperdine yet I hadn't moved to tousands. She's going, what are we doing? And I said, I'm just looking for a wolfleball game? And
she goes, have you lost your mind? I ain't go No, I just looking for I couldn't find one, which was a heartbreak for me.
Man, Yeah, nobody does that anymore.
Who plays it?
Yeah, nobody plays.
I just had to chime in, see that that you're you're with a bad story teller of all time.
Man, I agree.
I told you got a great memory. Vick.
Right.
Thanks.
I love your coach, but you take care, Thank you very much.
My story with you is a camp and I was doing some things at camp. You're camping, uh? And I think you probably talked to us somewhere in America, baby, somewhere in America. Can you tell me we've said that story before?
Somewhere in America. That was my saying to my teams.
I'd say, you know, a guy would dive for a ball and just come up just a little short, you know, an infield, or a guy would pop up a ball with an inner squad.
Guy would pop up, pop up.
A ball with bases loaded, and I would just you know, I just very calmly say, hey, you know what, somewhere in America, someone just made that play. Somewhere in America, someone just got that hit, Like somewhere, don't think, don't fully sure someone's making that play that you just didn't make,
and someone's getting that hit that you just didn't get. Now, when we start making them at that time Pepperdine or we start making them at floor, and we start making them here in Tucson, you know what, they'll be saying that about us, sure, like, hey, they make those plays in Tucson.
Was that Obviously that's a motivator right there, But what was your go to motivator?
Uh?
You know what, I honestly as and I have a lot of time reflect now. I've been down for about eight or nine years.
And all I do know is hang out with my two Golden Retrievers and they never talked to man.
You know, they're good listeners, but they don't talk back. They don't give any feedback.
Treats, man, I've heard treats, do yes, right.
I got in trouble the other day to give I gave our female one too many treats my wife.
My wife got mad at me.
But I think my biggest motivator, honestly, Steve was I used to tell our guys very first team meeting, we have two rules in the program, beyond time and do things right. Now people are going to be shocked at this, but you can call anybody. I'll give you phone numbers and talk to anybody that me right, we will not have a curfew. And the guys would look at me. Then you guys like, what, no, we won't have a curfew.
Now.
I grew up in the streets of San Pedro, and I grew up in the hood San Pedro, so I could tell what someone had a.
Rough night to night be shore. That was pretty easy for me to kind of read that.
We had nine o'clock nine am breakfasts on the road every morning and you had to be there and you had to be there on time. And so I'd walk around and just take a look at bodies, take a look at faces. But I said, now, the reason we're not we're gonna have two rules, beyond time and do things right, because that's gonna be a challenge for you the rest of your life. Be on time and do things right. And the other thing is, I'm not gonna cur for you. You want to know why, because I'm
gonna treat you like a man. I'm gonna treat you a man, like a man. And then I would say, now, practices are gonna be mine, they belong to me. I'm gonna do it. I think I needed to get you ready to play a big game. Omaha, and get ready. But games are gonna be yours. Games are gonna be you gonna make the worst mistake ever known the mankind. But you know what, I'm not gonna embarrass you. I'm not gonna yell at you at the Pride yet. Now, practice could get a little interesting, but games sure yours.
So just relax and play.
And when the guys understood that, basically, our practices were tremendously intense and sometimes almost sure madness. And I know that, and it was a bit designed. But games were loose as a goose and go out and play a man.
But I think that's part part of your success. It was it was as rich Rod would say, you know, getting comfortable in the uncomfortable and you'd win games Monday through Friday during the practice because you played it on Saturday.
And I think that had a lot to do with our postseason success. Like I mean, I'm really thankful for this statement. Two things come to mind when I look at my life as a coach. I only had one recruiting class that did not go to a World Series. That was in two thousand and eight, and we were in Miami as a one seed. We didn't host. I remember that we went to Michigan. We were once they
went because we couldn't. We still had Moodaike Corbit. We were in Michigan as a one seed, so we had to win that, which we did, and then we go to Miami and we lose in the set in the third game. We went on Friday, lose on Saturday, and we lose two to one or three to one, and they go to Omaha.
We come home.
If that team would have won that game is a great team, great team, big time pitching staff with Shlerath and Perry and Gilman and those guys, if they would have gone, every recruiting class that I had from my college career would have gone to a college World Series.
Right.
The other thing though, is is we only had one time where we went on too. That was only my first year here. We went on to first my second year, we went to a Flordson region. We went on to other than that, we we stuck around regionals.
We have about ninety seconds in this segment here, U was there a Was there a point in your career earlier otherwise that you kind of realized, not that you had something, but hey I got a good life?
Oh man?
Like there won you won the first title and then you're thinking it, Okay, I'm.
Thirty seven years old.
We just won the national championship and I remember flying home with my wife. Yeah, okay, and we fought because to meanings Hills was a hard job, man, Steve Oh to meanis Hills was a hard job.
Wow.
I mean, I you know, I had four arties replaced. I had quadruped. Why passed? One of them had to be Domingo skills. I mean one of them might be doing it without a doubt. But anyway, but I'm flying home and my wife nudged me. She goes, you're going to stay in this profession now, And I looked at it. I said, wow, I can't believe we just did what we did. But what really what I was saying is like, you know, I got a chance to really take care of my family. Now, yeah, I mean, you know, I
mean I wasn't stupid. We just won the national championship. I'm thirty seven years old and we just did it at Pepper and yeah and three thousand students and the student body.
You know, I mean, come on, you know. So yeah, yeah, time we can go. We're gonna take a break, come back. We got breaking news with Ryan on the other side.