Guy

Boss Guardiola has maintained last season’s disappointment was down to the number of injuries his side suffered, particularly losing Ballon d’Or winner Rodri to a serious knee injury for most of the campaign.

The Spaniard’s absence left a gaping hole and the centre of the park lacked real energy, with Nico Gonzalez signed for £50m from Porto in January and Reijnders added from AC Milan for £42.5m in the summer.

The Dutchman showed glimpses of his capabilities at the Club World Cup but gave fans in England a real taste of what to expect in the Premier League.

Reijnders said: “I saw the intensity and it is pretty hard, but it is nice to play in the Premier League and to score on my debut is always nice.

“I’m always trying to find space in the box and work to give assists. My type of game is to be a box-to-box player and help the team with goals and assists.”

Reijnders’ footwork and chipped pass for the opening goal was sublime, while there was nothing Jose Sa could do for his first-half goal which was clipped across goal and into the bottom corner.

There were also early signs of an understanding building up with star striker Erling Haaland as his disguised pass allowed the Norwegian to net his second goal.

As well as his goal contributions, Reijnders’ dominant performance is highlighted by the fact he had 82 touches of the ball and completed 52 of his 57 passes.

Reijnders also completed 22 passes in the final third – the second most in the City team behind Gonzalez (24).

With neither Rodri nor Phil Foden available as they return to full fitness, City’s midfield will be a force to be reckoned with once the duo make a comeback.

“Tijjani Reijnders is the star man for me,” former England full-back Chris Powell said on BBC Radio 5 Live.

“You will see a new-look Man City midfield and you still have Phil Foden and Rodri to come back – they have laid a small marker down.

“For City, it was a disappointing season for them last year, so they have got a lot to play for this year.”

The Chargers were blindsided in the truest sense.

Eleven days after signing a contract extension that made him the NFL’s highest-paid offensive lineman in history, Chargers left tackle Rashawn Slater went down in training camp with a knee injury that ended his 2025 season.

It was the latest crushing blow to a franchise with a withering track record of losing key players at the most inopportune times.

“It’s like a gut punch to the solar plexus,” coach Jim Harbaugh said in the aftermath of the July 27 injury. “Takes the wind out of you.”

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Sam Farmer talks about the impact Rashawn Slater’s season-ending injury will have on the Chargers.

This is where coaching and creativity kick in. It’s musical chairs along the offensive line as the Chargers scramble to protect the blind side of franchise quarterback Justin Herbert without handcuffing their offense by committing too many resources to doing so.

The challenge is profound but not unique. Teams have navigated these choppy waters before.

“The basis of your pass [protection] basically is, you pay a ton of money to somebody that’s just going to lock down that end, the blind side,” retired NFL quarterback Matt Hasselbeck said. “The blind side. They made a whole movie about it. That’s where you spend your money.”

When quarterback Rich Gannon was preparing for an opponent, the first offensive meeting of the week was about protections. How are we going to block these guys?

“We’d start by drawing five guys on the board, our offensive line,” Gannon said. “You’re just like, ‘OK, we’re going to build an offensive line.’ And we’d start with the left tackle, right? We’d just draw a big dollar sign. That’s the guy you have to pay. That’s the guy you have to have.”

In the case of the Chargers, erase that dollar sign from the board.

“When you lose a guy like that, there’s a trickle-down effect,” Gannon said. “You have to find someone to replace him. Now, what does that mean for our protection plan?

“Very few teams have a guy that can step in without a drop-off. And you’re talking about a Pro Bowl-caliber player at left tackle, there’s usually a significant difference when the backup goes in.”

Chargers quarterback Justin Herbert, left, and offensive tackle Rashawn Slater walk off the field after a win over the New Orleans Saints in October.

(Ronald Martinez / Getty Images)

Even in this abysmal situation, there are flickers of positivity for the Chargers. First, they are moving Joe Alt from right tackle to left, where he spent his illustrious college career at Notre Dame. The Chargers used the fifth overall pick in 2024 on the 6-foot-8, 322-pound Alt, who Harbaugh says has Hall of Fame potential. Having Alt in the mix is a huge bonus for the club.

Still, switching from right to left tackle is no small feat.

“People think it’s just easy to play on the offensive line, and if you’re a right tackle you should be able to play on the left, but it’s not the same,” Hall of Fame defensive end Dwight Freeney said. “Everything is different. You have muscle memory and different repetitions that you’ve done constantly. Doing something the same way all the time. One way.

“It’s not easy to pick up, switch your feet and go to the other side. The guard positions and center are more interchangeable, but when you start messing with your tackles, especially your left tackle, that’s a problem.”

More good news for the Chargers is that swing tackle Trey Pipkins is a blocker who can play on both ends of the offensive line. He too is returning to a familiar spot, as he was a right tackle at the University of Sioux Falls.

The Chargers will be tested right away. Their first three games are against division opponents, and their third is against Denver, which led the NFL last season with an average of 3.6 sacks per game.

“You’re going to have to start the season making sure you’ve got a back over there on the left side, or a tight end in passing situations just to make sure the quarterback doesn’t get whacked,” said Mike Tice, the onetime Minnesota Vikings head coach whose specialty is coaching offensive lines. “You’ve got to have a plan going into the season. If you don’t have a plan going in, you’re truly [doomed].”

Gannon said the Chargers are especially fortunate to have Greg Roman as their offensive coordinator, because Roman showed exceptional creativity in Baltimore beefing up their front with extra linemen and fullback Patrick Ricard, nicknamed “Pancake Pat” for his ability to flatten people in his path.

“They dressed it up with the Ravens,” said Gannon, an analyst for Sirius/XM NFL Radio. “Seven offensive linemen on the field. You’d get the defense to go big, then throw it.”

Gannon sees the versatile Scott Matlock playing the Ricard role for the Chargers. Matlock, listed on the roster as a fullback, is 6-4 and 296.

“His role is going to expand,” the retired quarterback predicted. “That’s how you do it. That’s how you build in protection when you’re down a left tackle.”

And though Harbaugh described the setback as a gut punch, Hasselbeck noted there’s a thread of a silver lining.

“From the front-office part of it, this is actually not the worst timing,” he said. “Not that there are great left tackles on the street, but at least you can do something now in training camp.

“It’s not as dire as losing your star guy on Friday before Week 1, or losing him during Week 1. Also, when guys get hurt early in the year and you lose them for the season, they’re more ready to go earlier in the offseason the next year.”

Big blocker. Small consolation.

I sank into Randy Carter’s comfy couch, excited to see the Hollywood veteran’s magnum opus.

Around the first floor of his Glendale home were framed photos and posters of films the 77-year-old had worked on during his career. “Apocalypse Now.” “The Godfather II.” “The Conversation.”

What we were about to watch was nowhere near the caliber of those classics — and Carter didn’t care.

Footage of a school bus driving through dusty farmland began to play. The title of the nine-minute sizzle reel Carter produced in 1991 soon flashed: “Boy Wonders.”

The plot: White teenage boys in the 1960s gave up a summer of surfing to heed the federal government’s call. Their assignment: Pick crops in the California desert, replacing Mexican farmworkers.

“That’s the stupidest, dumbest, most harebrained scheme I’ve heard in my life,” a farmer complained to a government official in one scene, a sentiment studio executives echoed as they rejected Carter’s project as too far-fetched.

But it wasn’t: “Boy Wonders” was based on Carter’s life.

Randy Carter’s collection of historical photos and other memorabilia of A-TEAM, a 1965 program that sought to recruit high school athletes to pick crops during the summer.

(Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times)

In 1965, the U.S. Department of Labor launched A-TEAM — Athletes in Temporary Employment as Agricultural Manpower — with the goal of recruiting 20,000 high school athletes to harvest summer crops. The country was facing a dire farmworker shortage because the bracero program, which provided cheap legal labor from Mexico for decades, had ended the year before.

Sports legends such as Sandy Koufax, Rafer Johnson and Jim Brown urged teen jocks to join A-TEAM because “Farm Work Builds Men!” as one ad stated. But only about 3,000 made it to the fields. One of them was a 17-year-old Carter.

He and about 18 classmates from University of San Diego High spent six weeks picking cantaloupes in Blythe. The fine hairs on the fruits ripped through their gloves within hours. It was so hot that the bologna sandwiches the farmers fed their young workers for lunch toasted in the shade. They slept in rickety shacks, used communal bathrooms and showered in water that “was a very nice shade of brown,” Carter remembered with a laugh.

They were the rare crew that stuck it out. Teens quit or went on strike across the country to protest abysmal work conditions. A-TEAM was such a disaster that the federal government never tried it again, and the program was considered so ludicrous that it rarely made it into history books.

Then came MAGA.

Now, legislators in some red-leaning states are thinking about making it easier for teenagers to work in agricultural jobs, in anticipation of Trump’s deportation deluge.

“I used to joke that I’ve written a story for the ages, because we’ll never solve the problem of labor,” Carter said. “I could be dead, and my great-grandkids could easily shop it around.”

I wrote about Carter’s experience in 2018 for an NPR article that went viral. It still bubbles up on social media any time a politician suggests that farm laborers are easily replaceable — like last month, when Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said that “able-bodied adults on Medicaid” could pick crops, instead of immigrants.

From journalists to teachers, people are reaching out to Carter anew to hear his picaresque stories from 50 years ago — like the time he and his friends made a wrong turn in Blythe and drove into the barrio, where “everyone looked at us like we were specimens” but was nice about it.

“They are dying to see white kids tortured,” Carter cracked when I asked him why the saga fascinates the public. “They want to see these privileged teens work their asses off. Wouldn’t you?”

But he doesn’t see the A-TEAM as one giant joke — it’s one of the defining moments of his life.

An old photo belonging to Randy Carter shows, seated at bottom right, his boss at the time, Francis Ford Coppola. “Everyone in this photo won an Academy Award except me,” Carter said.

(Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times)

Born in Brooklyn, N.Y., Carter moved to San Diego his sophomore year of high school. He always took summer jobs at the insistence of his working-class Irish mother. When the feds made their pitch in the spring of 1965, “there wasn’t exactly a rush to the sign-up table,” Carter recalled. What’s more, coaches at his school, known at University High, forbade their athletes to join. But he and his pals thought it would be the domestic version of the Peace Corps.

“You’re a teenager and think, ‘What the hell are we going to do this summer?’” he said. “Then, ‘What the hell. If nothing else, we’ll go into town every night. We’ll meet some girls. We’ll get cowboys to buy us beer.’” “

Carter paused for dramatic effect. “No.”

The University High crew was trained by a Mexican foreman “who in retrospect must have hated us because we were taking the jobs of his family.” They worked six days a week for minimum wage — $1.40 an hour at the time — and earned a nickel for every crate filled with about 30 to 36 cantaloupes.

“Within two days, we thought, ‘This is insane,’” he said. “By the third day, we wanted to leave. But we stayed, because it became a thing of honor.”

Nearly everyone returned to San Diego after the six-week stint, although a couple of guys went to Fresno and “became legendary in our group because they could stand to do some more. For the rest of us, we did it, and we vowed never to do anything like that as long as we live. Somehow, the beach seemed a little nicer that summer.”

Carter’s wife, Janice, walked in. I asked how important A-TEAM was to her husband.

She rolled her eyes the way only a wife of 53 years could.

“He talks about it almost every week,” she said as Randy beamed. “It’s like an endless loop.”

University High’s A-TEAM squad went on to successful careers as doctors, lawyers, businessmen. They regularly meet for reunions and talk about those tough days in Blythe, which Carter describes “as the intersection of hell and Earth.”

As the issue of immigrant labor became more heated in American politics, the guys realized they had inadvertently absorbed an important lesson all those decades ago.

Before A-TEAM, Carter said, his idea of how crops were picked was that “somehow it got done, and they [Mexican farmworkers] somehow disappeared.”

“But when we now thought about Mexicans, we realized we only had to do it for six weeks,” he continued. “These guys do it every day, and they support a family. We became sympathetic, to a man. When people say bad things about Mexicans, we always say, ‘Don’t even go there, because you don’t know what you’re talking about.’”

Carter’s experience picking cantaloupes solidified his liberal leanings. So did the time he tried to cross the U.S.-Mexico border in 1969 during Operation Intercept, a Nixon administration initiative that required the Border Patrol to search nearly every car.

The stated purpose was to crack down on marijuana smuggling. Instead, Carter said, it created an hours-long wait and “businesses on both sides of the border were furious.”

In college, Carter cheered the efforts of United Farm Workers and kept tabs on the fight to ban el cortito, the short-handled hoes that wore down the bodies of California farmworkers for generations until a state bill banned them in 1975.

By then, he was working as a “junior, junior, junior” assistant to Francis Ford Coppola. Once he built enough of a resume in Hollywood — where he would become a longtime first assistant director on “Seinfeld,” among many credits — Carter wrote his “Boy Wonders” script, which he described as “‘Dead Poets Society’ meets ‘Cool Hand Luke.’”

It was optioned twice. Henry Winkler’s production company was interested for a bit. So was Rhino Records’ film division, which explains why the soundtrack features boomer classics from the Byrds, Bob Dylan and Motown. But no one thought audiences would buy Carter’s straightforward premise.

One executive suggested it would be more believable if the high schoolers ran over someone on prom night and became crop pickers to hide from the cops. Another suggested exploding toilets to funny up the action.

“The mantra in Hollywood is, ‘Do something you know about,’” he said. “But that was the curse of it not getting made — because no one else knew about it!”

Colorado River water irrigates a farm field in Blythe in 2021.

(Luis Sinco/Los Angeles Times)

Carter continues to share his experience, because “as a weak-kneed progressive, I always fancied we could change the situation … and that some sense of fair play could bubble up. I’m still walking up that road, but it seems more distant.”

A few weeks ago, federal immigration agents raided the car wash he frequents.

“You don’t even have to rewrite stories from years ago,” he said. “You could just reprint them, because nothing changes.”

I asked what he thought about MAGA’s push to replace migrant farmworkers with American citizens.

“It’s like saying, ‘I’m going to go to Dodger Stadium, grab someone from the third row of the mezzanine section, and they can play the violin at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion.’ OK, you can do that, but it’s not going to work,” he said. “I don’t get why they don’t try to solve the problem of fair conditions and inadequate pay — why is that never an option?”

What about a reboot of A-TEAM?

“It could work,” Carter replied. “I was with a group of guys that did it!”

Then he considered how it might play out today.

“If Taylor Swift said it was great, you’d get people. Would they last? If they had decent accommodations and pay, maybe. But it would never happen with Trump. His solution is, ‘You don’t pay decent wages, you get desperate people.’”

He laughed again.

“Here’s a crazy program from the 1960s that’s not off the map in 2025. We’re still debating the issue. Am I crazy, or is the world crazy?”

Travis Kelce is done fighting for his right to party.

Or at least the 35-year-old Kansas City Chiefs tight end is ready to start toning down his party-hearty image — which is kind of big news for a dude who is known for his wild, celebratory, off-key renditions of the Beastie Boys classic “(You Gotta) Fight for Your Right (to Party!)” and is often seen out enjoying life with superstar girlfriend Taylor Swift.

Kelce made the revelation during a lengthy interview with GQ that was published Tuesday morning.

“I’m starting to phase out of wanting to be known as the party guy,” the three-time Super Bowl champion and 10-time Pro Bowl selection said.

“When you see me hanging out at the US Open with Taylor, it may look like the two of us are partying. But I’m just enjoying the fun of being at this really cool event that I always wanted to go to with the person that I love.”

Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce attend the men’s singles final match at the 2024 US Open last September.

(Sarah Stier / Getty Images)

He added: “I’ve become way more strategic in understanding what I am portraying to people.”

Following the Chiefs’ loss to the Philadelphia Eagles at Super Bowl LIX in February, Kelce didn’t immediately commit to returning for his 13th NFL season and the final year of his contract with the Chiefs. He acknowledged to GQ that he has been thinking about his life after the NFL, although he didn’t offer any details on what that might look like.

Kelce already has a high profile off the field, thanks in large part to his relationship with Swift but also from his appearances in countless TV commercials and on his successful “New Heights” podcast, which he co-hosts with older brother Jason. Incidentally, that podcast is sure to hit, uh, new heights in its number of listeners this week when Swift makes her first appearance on the show.

Part of Kelce’s new outlook on his image seems to have been influenced by Swift and the way she interacts with her immense fan base.

“People gravitate towards how she performs and how she makes it feel like the entire stadium is in a little room with her,” Kelce said. “She is so good at mesmerizing everybody and making everybody feel like it’s an intimate situation. I think that alone — there is so much calm and coolness. She’s beautiful. She’s up there making everyone feel at ease.

“Whenever I get in front of a crowd, I feel like I’ve got to be like, Woooo! Like, excited, bringing the energy. Then I saw that coolness and that calmness and that relatability that she is so good at presenting. I really grabbed that. Like, Man, I can use that side of entertainment as well. It’s not just always being the guy that brings the energy and creates these exciting moments.”

Kelce added that he and Swift share similar outlooks when it comes to their respective legacies.

“Nowadays I just want to be respected and loved by the people that I’m surrounded by in my work,” he said. “I want to leave it better than where it was when I started. And I see her having those same values.”

Through the first two weeks of USC’s preseason football camp, Prophet Brown had established himself as one of the early standouts in a crowded cornerback room.

But Brown’s breakout was cut short this week, when the redshirt junior suffered a noncontact injury during USC’s practice that’s expected to keep him out for the foreseeable future.

The timeline for his return remains uncertain. USC coach Lincoln Riley suggested the team would definitely be without him “for the first few games” but was still “hopeful to get him back here at some point.”

“Hate it for him because he’s been playing really well,” Riley said. “Obviously has had one of the more rapid ascents [this fall] in terms of all the years that he’s been here.”

USC defensive coordinator D’Anton Lynn had just singled out Brown on Wednesday night as “one of the guys we trust most on defense.”

“He’s taken a big step,” Lynn said. “Outside of [safety] Kamari [Ramsey], I would say there’s no one on the back end that knows the defense quite like him.”

Brown had taken reps at all three corner spots since the beginning of camp, but was widely believed to be the favorite to start at slot corner. The only other player on USC’s roster with more than a handful of snaps in the slot during his college career is transfer corner DJ Harvey.

Lynn said on Wednesday that Harvey was getting some reps at slot corner.

“He’s a guy from a skill set standpoint that can do all three [corner positions],” Lynn said. “So we’re trying to get him as many reps at those slots as possible, to try to see which one is his best spot.”

Chasen Johnson, a transfer from Central Florida, and DeCarlos Nicholson were both expected to compete for outside corner spots and have minimal experience in the slot.

Until Friday, USC had felt pretty good about its depth at the position. But losing Brown is a significant blow, one that will put more pressure on young defensive backs to contribute early.

Riley also mentioned Braylon Conley and Marcelles Williams as corners who impressed in camp and could step up in Brown’s place.

Feeling good up front

At the start of camp, no position on USC’s roster appeared, on paper, to be as big of a concern as the offensive line, where the Trojans have to replace three starters from a group that already struggled a year ago.

But nearing the midway point of camp, Riley said he feels better about depth up front than he did in the spring.

“I like this group a lot,” Riley said. “Some young guys that have really come on fast. Give credit to Coach [Zach] Hanson for the development of these guys because we’ve got some guys who are rapidly improving.”

Among those who have surprised Riley: Guards Hayden Treter and Micah Banuelos, both of whom have dealt with injuries since coming to USC.

Both will likely be needed this season, given the lack of proven options otherwise.

Etc.

Star wideout Ja’Kobi Lane [unspecified injury] has yet to fully participate in USC’s preseason practices, but is expected to begin “ramping up” in the coming days, Riley said.

It was 68 degrees and overcast, a cool coastal breeze wafting across the practice fields, when UCLA commenced its first off-campus football training camp in nearly a decade.

San Bernardino, this was not.

With 55 newcomers dotting a roster of 105, not to mention eight new assistant coaches, the Bruins’ camp that started in Costa Mesa on Wednesday morning was more about togetherness than toughness in the triple-digit temperatures of the Inland Empire.

Every offensive player was matched with a roommate from the defense or special teams. A series of bonding exercises was planned inside and outside the nearby team hotel. Everything the Bruins do over the next 2 ½ weeks will be of the get-to-know-you variety.

UCLA linebacker JonJon Vaughns lines up with his hands on his hips and looks across the field during the first day of the Bruins’ preseason camp in Costa Mesa on Wednesday.

(Nate Donlevy / UCLA Athletics)

“I have a lot of tough guys, but it’s more of the connection,” coach DeShaun Foster said. “There’s a lot of new coaches and players, so I just wanted to find a way to make us be able to connect a little bit more, you know? To be able to eat three meals with each other and just get close.”

Foster said the football facilities at Cal State San Bernardino that the Bruins had last used in 2016 weren’t available, forcing the move to his native Orange County.

After going through the initial two-hour practice, temperatures topping out at 75 degrees, the consensus was that the Jack R. Hammett Sports Complex felt more like a day at the beach than one inside a sauna.

“In the beginning, it was a little humid,” linebacker Isaiah Chisom said, “but the sun came out, it was beautiful out here.”

The facilities included three grass fields, a makeshift locker room under one tent and a makeshift weight room under another. Trainers set up near the field, unfurling folding tables next to carts of supplies. Fences lining the field were adorned with signage reflecting the Bruins mantras — “Discipline, Respect and Enthusiasm” and “Do More.”

There was the usual training-camp cadence. Whistles blew and on cue, players wrapped up foam pads and dragged them to the ground. After another whistle signaled the start of stretching, a roar rang out. Players dropped to their knees to commence a series of body bends, twisting their arms and shoulders one way and then the other.

After a series of leg stretches, new defensive line coach Jethro Franklin offered an opening salvo to a group of nearby players.

“Bruin football,” Franklin said, “should not be for the timid or the weak.”

UCLA quarterback Nico Iamaleava warms up during the first day of the Bruins’ preseason camp in Costa Mesa on Wednesday.

(Nate Donlevy / UCLA Athletics)

During the 25-minute media viewing period, new quarterback Nico Iamaleava made a couple of handoffs to running backs, including one to Anthony Woods for a short touchdown, and threw one pass into the end zone that fell incomplete.

“He slings it,” tight end Jack Pedersen said of Iamaleava’s throwing style. “It’s a nice, firm spiral, man, and the guy doesn’t miss. Literally, can’t say enough great things.”

Before the training session, Foster said he was confident Iamaleava had sufficiently mastered the offense after enrolling in June.

“He’s pretty much grasped the playbook already,” Foster said of the transfer from Tennessee. “We haven’t had to hold back on anything. And I know at least he has these first two installs down pretty well. So just looking forward to getting out there and just watching him.”

The practice was staged in relative secrecy. Other than a handful of donors and a few city officials from Costa Mesa, fans were not allowed to attend like they had been in San Bernardino, where they sometimes lined multiple practice fields. The six reporters on hand Wednesday were barred from taking photos or videos of even the warmup periods.

Foster said training camp was about preparation, not publicity.

“We’re here to work,” he said. “We’ve got 16 days to come out and really be able to put a good product out there on the field.”

This is a business trip complete with bed checks and a curfew. Chisom is rooming with running back Anthony Frias II and has a connecting door attached to the room of linebacker Ben Perry and running back Troy Leigber, providing ample opportunities to learn about new teammates.

“I think it makes us build brotherhood,” Chisom said. “You’re staying with some people that you may have never talked to before … it kind of forces us to be close.”

The schedule called for an off day Thursday to accommodate players’ final exam schedules, one of four breaks interspersed among the 14 practices before the team breaks camp on Aug. 16. The Bruins hope that by the time they return to campus, the installation of a new 100-yard grass practice field alongside two smaller artificial turf fields will be complete.

If not, they’ll have new friends to commiserate with as they shift practices elsewhere on campus.

“This is a great opportunity to spend 2 1/2 weeks with a guy you don’t really know, right?” said Pedersen, who is rooming with defensive back Croix Stewart. “Being able to branch out, I think it’s really cool that they do this, and this is now getting an opportunity to meet other guys on the team and branch out and make those lifelong connections.”

Etc.

Although a judge denied wide receiver Kaedin Robinson’s request for a temporary restraining order that would have granted him immediate eligibility, Foster said his confidence level remained in the “90s percent” that Robinson could play for the Bruins this season. Robinson, a transfer from Appalachian State, has a preliminary injunction hearing set for Aug. 18 that will decide whether he’ll be cleared to play. … Freshman defensive lineman Robert James III maneuvered the area on a scooter, his lower right leg encased in a protective boot. … Luke Duncan took the snaps as the top backup quarterback. … Foster said linebacker Weston Port had commenced a Mormon mission and was expected to return by the spring of 2027.

Tino Sunseri is spending the next two weeks in Costa Mesa while a large chunk of his heart resides on the East Coast.

That’s where the new UCLA offensive coordinator’s wife and 3-month-old son are living with one set of grandparents, allowing Tino to focus the best he can on training camp with the Bruins.

The first-time father is buoyed both by what he’s seeing with his team and reports about his infant, who giggled for the first time the other day. Santino Michael Sunseri Jr. already has a nickname — “We’re calling him Sonny, like ‘The Godfather,’ ” Tino cracked, referring to Santino “Sonny” Corleone from the movie — and curiously studies his father in FaceTime sessions.

“Right now,” Tino said Saturday morning, “he’s kind of giving me that look, like, ‘Hey, I know your voice, but who are you right here?’”

There’s also plenty of getting to know you between Sunseri and his new quarterback.

Nico Iamaleava enrolled in June after transferring from Tennessee, making this the fifth consecutive season that Sunseri will be working with a new quarterback. In 2021, Sunseri’s first season as quarterbacks coach at James Madison, veteran quarterback Cole Johnson led the Dukes to the semifinals of the Division I-AA playoffs.

A year later, Sunseri worked with Todd Centeio, a transfer from Colorado State who led James Madison to the Sun Belt Conference’s East Division title. In 2023, Sunseri and Jordan McCloud, a transfer from Arizona, helped the Dukes notch another division title.

Last season might have been Sunseri’s most impressive working with a newbie quarterback. Kurtis Rourke, a transfer from Ohio, led Indiana to a historic season that included an 11-2 record and appearance in the College Football Playoff.

Sunseri’s first impressions of Iamaleava align with the sort of immediate success he’s enjoyed with other quarterbacks.

“He’s a self-driven person,” Sunseri said. “He has a certain standard of how he wants to be able to operate each day. And the great thing about my past is I’ve been around a lot of guys that have the same kind of feel and thought process.

“So the only thing you’ve got to do with these guys is you’ve got to be able to give them the information, and you’ve got to keep being able to stimulate them to be able to make sure that every single day, there’s something that they’re being able to attack and chase, and there’s not one day that he hasn’t come in here that he’s not focused on being able to become the best player that he can be for UCLA.”

In the limited media viewing period Saturday, Iamaleava had more success on the ground than through the air, faking a handoff and cutting to his right for a touchdown run. The only pass he threw, intended for Ezavier Staples, was broken up by defensive back Jamir Benjamin in the end zone.

Iamaleava has impressed Sunseri with a relentless approach — whenever he’s not practicing or working out, he’s studying the offense.

“It’s infectious to him; he can’t get enough of it,” Sunseri said. “And when you have those kind of guys, you can start to be able to see how they can be able to develop, and now you can be able to start to be able to formulate a mindset and starting to be able to see where they think, how they think and start to be able to have it to where you can really understand how to coach them.”

Having such a condensed window to work with Iamaleava before the season opener against Utah on Aug. 30 at the Rose Bowl isn’t a concern to Sunseri.

“It’s not about us being able to install the offense,” Sunseri said, “it’s about being able to make sure that it’s not too much too fast to where he can be able to grasp it, because we’re not playing next week, we’re playing in three weeks — it’s still a ton of time for us to be able to utilize.”

Those wondering what UCLA’s offense will look like might have to wait until the season opener because Sunseri isn’t divulging much besides its goal to stretch a defense so that it must account for “every single blade of grass.” Sunseri did suggest that there will be an ample amount of running the football.

“Let me say this: We’re gonna be a physical football team,” said Sunseri, whose first coaching stops came as a quality control coach at Florida State and Tennessee and a graduate assistant at Alabama. “It’s where I’ve always been raised, coming from the SEC, you’ve got to run that ball, and me being a Nick Saban disciple, that’s just my thought process, right?”

A speedy duo

UCLA running back Jaivian Thomas carries the ball during preseason training in Costa Mesa on Friday.

(Nate Donlevy / UCLA Athletics)

Jaivian Thomas, the transfer running back from California, is so fast that his father called him “The Jet” growing up.

During informal sprints with his new team, Thomas said fellow running back Anthony Woods stayed with him step for step.

So does that make this a twin-jet offense?

“Ant got gas,” Thomas said of his teammate, “but I feel like I’m the fastest in the room.”

The hope is that alongside returners Jalen Berger and Anthony Frias II, the Bruins can spread their carries and wear down defenses. While Thomas and Woods are the speedsters of the group, Berger and Frias might feature slightly more power to their rushing styles.

Berger said he had fully recovered from the sprained ankle he suffered against Iowa last season that hindered him over the season’s final four games. Thomas was the Golden Bears’ leading rusher last season, averaging 6.3 yards per carry while gaining 644 yards and scoring seven touchdowns.

Coach DeShaun Foster called Thomas a threat to score every time he touched the ball. If all goes as planned, multiple running backs will cross the goal line while challenging defenses.

“It allows those guys to be able to stay fresh, and as those defenses align, they’re playing 40, 50, 60 snaps in the game, and you’re getting to the fourth quarter, those guys are a little worn out,” Sunseri said of playing a bevy of running backs. “So then whenever you put a guy in with fresh tires, then he could be able to have it to where he’s running through a couple of those tackles, maybe he’s able to continue to be able to play at a different speed than those [defensive] guys in the game.”

When he first offered to man the grill, Tobias Raymond had no intention of holding onto the role. He was not, by any stretch, a connoisseur of grilled meats. Nor was he experienced cooking over an open flame. Yet this was the offensive line’s first summer barbecue, and somebody on USC’s offensive line needed to step up. So Raymond, the Trojans’ redshirt sophomore right tackle, volunteered.

He didn’t know what he was getting into at the time because what started as a gathering of linemen eventually, by its fourth iteration or so, had evolved into a full-blown team bonding event. That meant grilling up hundreds upon hundreds of hot dogs and hamburgers. And Raymond, by virtue of being the first to volunteer, had become the de facto grillmaster.

It wasn’t the sort of role Raymond might’ve willingly embraced three years earlier, when he first arrived at USC as raw talent at offensive tackle. Since then, Raymond has developed into one of the Trojans’ most trusted linemen, a critical cog at an otherwise uncertain position for USC.

As he stood behind the grill this summer, flipping burgers, his fellow linemen could see just how much had changed during that time.

“He held it down all summer,” center J’Onre Reed said. “He’s standing there with his shirt off, flexing like he’s Captain America. He loves it, man.”

It wasn’t long ago that Raymond tried to actively avoid that sort of attention.

“He was the type of guy who would lead by example and be the hardest worker on the field, not necessarily speak up,” said Tim Garcia, Raymond’s coach at Ventura High.

But on the football field, he had a way of turning heads. He played with a mean streak that stood in total contrast to his chill demeanor off the field. At Ventura High, coaches marveled at his ability to finish blocks and his willingness to push through the whistle.

In high school, Raymond could afford to get by with brute force. He was so athletic for his position that Garcia and his staff gave Raymond some run at tight end ahead of his senior year, just to see what he could do.

That athleticism was enough to convince some college coaches right away of his future in football. But Raymond still had a lot to learn as an offensive tackle. His technique needed work.

“He was still very green, very raw as an offensive lineman,” Garcia said.

Not everyone wanted to pour the time into developing Raymond that would be required. Even USC took until six months before signing day to offer.

“There were some coaches who came on board who were not interested in Tobias,” Garcia said. “Then others said, ‘Well, this guy has it all. I can do this with him, that with him.’”

Raymond wanted the whole recruiting process over as quickly as possible. He took one official visit to California the summer before his senior year and told Garcia right after that he wanted to commit. Just to get it over with.

Three days later, USC offered. Raymond didn’t want to go for the visit at first. He’d seen USC once before, on an unofficial visit. He figured that was enough. He didn’t want to make a fuss. But Garcia convinced him to go through with it.

That Sunday, after the visit, Raymond called Garcia.

“And he says, ‘Hey coach, would it be OK if I commit?’”

It would be a while after that before Raymond finally made his mark at USC. He was slow to develop as a freshman and redshirted. In his second year, he was thrust into action in eight games, speeding up that process.

Still, he tried to fly under the radar.

“I think that was one thing I really needed to work on, saying things when I thought it was the right time,” Raymond said. “I was always really quiet as a freshman and sophomore, just getting into college and learning how it goes. But I feel like I’m in a spot where I can start being a more vocal person.”

It was in the run-up to USC’s bowl game last December that coaches could sense Raymond finally getting comfortable, on the field and off. His progress accelerated from there.

When Zach Hanson took over coaching the offensive line, he kept challenging Raymond to tweak his technique. Every time, he says, Raymond had it corrected within a play or two.

“He’s not afraid to try different things,” said Hanson, who’s entering his first year as USC’s offensive line coach. “A lot of guys get hesitant to do that. But he’s a pro at his craft.”

He’s still getting the hang of being a leader in the room. But what might’ve felt unnatural to him not that long ago, he says, is starting to feel like second nature. Thinking back on where he started, USC coach Lincoln Riley called Raymond’s transformation “radical in every way.”

Now no one in the building bats an eye when Riley declares Raymond to be “one of the best players on the team.”

That’s what Riley will need Raymond to be this season, if USC hopes to hold up along an otherwise thin offensive front. He’s expected to play right tackle to start the season. But his teammates and USC’s coaches have expressed confidence that Raymond could playany position on the line, if need be.

That might have, at one point, seemed like a worrisome proposition. But Reed, the Trojans new center, saw all he needed to see this summer while watching Raymond preside over the most important job at the barbecue.

“It was hot, and he didn’t have no problem sitting there sweating,” Reed said. “He’s got it, bro. He definitely did the thing.”

TAMPA, Fla. — The Dodgers didn’t go shopping at the top of the market ahead of Thursday’s trade deadline.

But what they came away with — right-handed relievers Brock Stewart and Paul Gervase to bolster the bullpen, and versatile outfielder Alex Call to round out the lineup — are the kind of moves that “just raises the floor for our ballclub,” manager Dave Roberts said Friday.

“I feel we did get better,” Roberts said, before echoing the front office’s hope that the Dodgers’ biggest improvements over the final two months of the season come from the star-studded, but underperforming, core they already have in place.

“I think we’ve got a pretty dang good team. I think if you look at it from the offensive side, as far as our guys, they’ll be the first to tell you they’ve got to perform better and more consistently. That’s something that we’re all counting on … I love our club. I really do. Now it’s up to all of us to go out there and do our jobs.”

The job for the Dodgers’ two biggest acquisitions, Stewart and Call, will be clear from the get-go.

Stewart, a former Dodgers swingman from 2016 to 2019, has reinvented himself in the second half of his career. Unlike his first stint in Los Angeles, when he threw in the low 90s and was a fringe long reliever on the roster, Stewart is now a higher-leverage relief option, with a mid-to-upper 90s fastball and swing-and-miss sweeper he has used to dominate right-handed hitters this season.

“At the end [of his first Dodgers stint], he lost the velocity and was trying to figure out if he could hang on and who he was at that point,” Roberts recalled. “Obviously, he’s put in a ton of work to sort of find himself again. He’s had nothing but success. I’m excited to see this version of him. He certainly shouldn’t lack for confidence.”

Stewart won’t fix the Dodgers’ ninth-inning problems — with their closer role up in the air ever since struggling offseason signing Tanner Scott went on the injured list with an elbow injury — but could get some save situations “in the right situation,” Roberts said — for instance, if a run of right-handed hitters (who are batting just .104 with a .327. OPS against him this year) are up at the end of the game.

“I trust the guy, I trust the player, what he’s become,” Roberts said. “So for me, if the situation calls for it tonight and he’s in the ninth inning, I’ve got all the confidence.”

Gervase, a 6-foot-10 right-hander the Dodgers acquired from the Tampa Bay Rays in exchange for catcher Hunter Feduccia as part of a three-team trade on Wednesday night, was also on the active roster Friday. He comes with just five previous career MLB appearances, but a deceptive delivery aided by his long-limbed extension on the mound.

“I don’t know a whole lot about him,” Roberts said. “I know he’s got a big arm. He’s got some extension, some rise, but I haven’t seen him.”

The arrival of Stewart and Gervase did coincide with yet another loss in the bullpen. Veteran right-hander Kirby Yates, another offseason signing who has disappointed with a 4.31 ERA this season, was placed on the injured list because of lingering discomfort in his pelvic and lower-back area. He went back to Los Angeles to get further testing.

“In the last, call it, two weeks, he hasn’t felt great,” Roberts said. “Hasn’t been injured, in his words, which is why he kept pitching and competing. But we flew him home this morning to look at the doctor and kind of get some tests to see if there’s something that’s kind of been aggravating him. Something’s just not right, exactly. So we’re trying to suss that out.”

In the lineup, Roberts said Call — a 30-year-old right-handed-hitting journeyman who found a niche with the Washington Nationals the last few seasons as an on-base threat capable of grinding out tough at-bats — would mix in at all three outfield spots.

“[He is] a tough, feisty hitter,” Roberts said. “I certainly see him playing versus left. But I think he’s pretty much a neutral guy. Slugs a little more against left, but gets on base against right. I’m going to try to keep him in there a couple times a week.”

Call said he wasn’t shocked to learn he had been traded on Thursday, and was excited by the “chance to compete in the playoffs and win a World Series” with a first-place Dodgers team.

“For me, I am going to grind out at-bats, put the ball in play, take my walks, make it tough on the pitcher,” said Call, who has hit .297 with the Nationals in 102 games over the last two seasons. “Just really make the [pitchers] work so that hopefully they’re tired when the top of the order comes back around or whatever.”

Roki Sasaki facing hitters

Internally, the Dodgers are hoping rookie Japanese pitcher Roki Sasaki can also serve as a de facto late-season addition after missing the last several months with a shoulder injury.

And this week, the right-hander took a key step in his recovery process.

Sasaki faced hitters for the first time since getting hurt in a simulated inning this past week in Arizona, Roberts said, and is scheduled to throw two more simulated innings on Saturday.

The team has been targeting a late-August return for Sasaki, who had a 4.72 ERA in eight starts this season before going on the IL.

If you’re still looking for someone to blame for Donald Trump’s 2024 reelection, don’t just look at the usual suspects — the MAGA die-hards, the QAnon crowd or your uncle screaming at Fox News. Consider the bros at your local gym’s squat rack, the Discord server or the gaming lounge who suddenly swung right — or, better yet, consider blaming the Democrats who decided those guys didn’t matter. Yeah, nice work, geniuses.

Recent focus groups conducted by the centrist Democratic group Third Way, with the polling firm HIT Strategies, show that many young men feel criticized, overlooked and talked down to by a party they see as hostile to their values and concerns. This echoes similar feedback from last fall, when young male voters told pollsters that the Democratic Party “has somehow become the anti-male party.”

If you’re wondering why this siege mentality hasn’t softened, it may be because the condescension and antagonism persist — especially among progressive elites whose statements are often conflated with the Democratic Party.

July alone offered a plethora of examples. And lest you think this is from the fever swamps of the internet, consider a few selections from the New York Times.

First, we got “The Boy Crisis Is Overblown,” which shrugs off boys’ educational struggles, instead suggesting that boys expect others (women) to pick up the slack, both at home and in school. Then came “The Trouble With Wanting Men,” a literary masterclass on how dating men amounts to unpaid emotional labor. And to round it out, “Why Women Are Weary of ‘Mankeeping,’” which blames men for … being human? Having different priorities than their girlfriends and wives?

See a pattern?

None of these pieces are entirely wrong. Boys and men are only human, and there are good guys and bad guys. But if you’re a dude just trying to stay afloat in a rapidly changing world, you might get the impression that the cultural left, which (let’s be honest) constitutes the Democratic Party’s base of energy and pressure, isn’t exactly rolling out the welcome mat.

And if you’re a guy, what do you do with all of that criticism? You check out. You find a podcast. You listen to some YouTuber explain how protein cured his depression and why you should never trust a woman who owns more than one NPR tote bag.

You exercise your greatest act of middle-finger rebellion: You vote for Trump!

Now, you might say, “Is it really fair to blame the entire Democratic Party for what a few writers say?” No! But politics isn’t about fairness. It’s about vibes, and the vibe right now is that progressive culture has morphed into the HR department from hell. Heck, even Sydney Sweeney in an American Eagle ad was too much for the online pitchfork crowd. What’s next? Canceling golden retrievers?

The problem for the Democratic Party is that once you’re branded a “woke scold,” it’s hard to pivot, no matter what you say.

Look at President Biden. He was called “Genocide Joe” for supporting Israel, yet still got blamed for pro-Palestinian campus protests — proof that stereotypes are sticky, and perception, not policy, drives voter sentiment.

But here’s the irony: Democrats have an opportunity to turn things around — and if their friends weren’t so busy writing gender theory op-eds, they might notice there’s an opening to do just that.

Thanks to issues ranging from tariffs to immigration roundups to the Jeffrey Epstein scandal, some of these podcast bros have started mocking Trump. Meanwhile, “South Park” skewered him for threatening lawsuits to intimidate or silence his critics, which is an impressive about-face considering he used to score points by criticizing cancel culture.

“While some of these young men are still drawn to Trump and the Republican Party,” Third Way’s focus groups found, “most are persuadable swing voters who dislike significant aspects of Trump’s actions so far in his second term.”

But it’s gonna take more than President Obama podcasting about “what’s right with young men.” It’s gonna take modern leaders — men and women — who have the guts to stand up to their own tribe and say, “Hey, maybe we shouldn’t treat half the population like defective appliances.”

Want their votes? Talk to them like they’re human. Stop acting like masculinity is a war crime. Nominate a presidential candidate who lifts and can go on Joe Rogan’s podcast. Offer some real policies that don’t sound like they were cooked up in a gender studies seminar at Bryn Mawr.

Until then? Don’t be shocked if a whole generation of guys hears one more lecture about toxic masculinity … and decides to vote for the most toxic guy in the room.

This is how Trump wins.

Matt K. Lewis is the author of “Filthy Rich Politicians” and “Too Dumb to Fail.”

LAS VEGAS — Wearing horn-rimmed glasses, a light blue suit with a UCLA lapel pin and tan wingtips, Nico Iamaleava settled into his seat on an elevated platform in front of about 30 reporters.

“How’s everybody doing?” the new Bruins quarterback asked casually inside the convention center hall late Thursday afternoon, giving no hint that this was the most pressure he had faced since an attacking Ohio State defense sacked him four times in the opening round of the College Football Playoff.

These reporters were almost as relentless. For more than 25 minutes during the final Big Ten media day, they peppered Iamaleava with questions about his decision to leave Tennessee on the eve of its spring game for a program with a lesser pedigree, prompting UCLA quarterback Joey Aguilar to take Iamaleava’s spot in what essentially amounted to a college football trade.

What was Iamaleava’s motivation in making his move? Was his dissatisfaction with Tennessee’s name, image and likeness package a factor? Did he have to take a pay cut to come to UCLA? What was it like dealing with the fallout from jilted Tennessee fans?

While failing to offer many specifics, Iamaleava patiently engaged every question, the Southern California native saying he was driven by a desire to play for a top program closer to his family in Long Beach.

“Ultimately,” the 6-foot-6 quarterback had told a small group of Los Angeles-based reporters earlier in the afternoon, “it came down to me wanting to be back home, you know, be back home next to my family while still competing at the highest level.”

Iamaleava pinned the timing of his departure from Tennessee on “false reports” about financial demands that “made me not feel comfortable in the position I was in. But, you know, in the back of my head, I always wanted to come back home and be closer to my mom, be closer to my dad.” Tennessee was reportedly set to pay Iamaleava more than $2 million to play for the Volunteers this season.

Declining to discuss his new NIL deal at UCLA, Iamaleava said he was focused on football and academics while trying to revive a program that has not won a conference championship since 1998.

“The realistic expectation for us,” Iamaleava said, “is to bring championships back to Westwood, and, you know, the first day I stepped into the locker room, I felt that from every guy in there, that they’ve got a chip on their shoulder and that they want to go out there and prove people wrong.”

Iamaleava will have to do it wearing a new number after attempts to get his preferred No. 8 — retired in honor of Troy Aikman — failed, leaving him with No. 9. He said he’ll proudly wear the number to represent his seven siblings and two parents whom he credited for his humble nature.

One of those siblings is now a teammate. Freshman quarterback Madden Iamaleava, who verbally committed to UCLA before signing with Arkansas, flipped his allegiance back to the Bruins in the spring after his older brother decided to come home. Depending on how he fares in training camp, Madden could become Nico’s top backup.

“I think he’s ready, man,” Nico said of his sibling. “My little brother was a bonus from me, you know, for him to come home with me. And just being a helping hand to him in anything he needs, I think, was the biggest thing for me.”

If everything goes as planned, Nico acknowledged, his stay at UCLA will be a short one. Should the Bruins win a lot of games and Iamaleava further establish himself as a top NFL prospect, the redshirt sophomore will move on after this final college season.

“This is a year where, you know, I’m really trying to get out after,” Iamaleava said. “So, you know, I’m going to give my all to UCLA, and, you know, if I have the year I want, you know, I want to get out.”

Everything about Iamaleava’s stay might have an accelerated feel. He said he received the offensive playbook after signing in April and has participated in player-run practices since arriving on campus in June, quickly impressing his new teammates with not just his talent but also his savvy.

“He’s good at looking off people,” linebacker JonJon Vaughns said of Iamaleava’s ability to deceive a defense, “and his arm is big, it’s powerful.”

There will be no easing into a training camp that starts next Wednesday in Costa Mesa given that UCLA opens the season exactly one month later against Utah on Aug. 30 at the Rose Bowl. The strength staff has already provided Iamaleava an indication of the high expectations he’ll face on the field.

“I’ve never been pushed like this by a staff before,” Iamaleava said, “so I’m excited to go to work for these guys.”

Calling it “a fun challenge,” Iamaleava said he was trying to quickly absorb a pro-style offense that he described as “a little more condensed formations” than what he ran at Tennessee. The chance to play for offensive coordinator Tino Sunseri, who has a history of immediate success with new quarterbacks, has invigorated Iamaleava.

“He’s a high-energy guy,” Iamaleava said of Sunseri, “and I wanted to go play for him the first day I met him.”

Praising his entire wide receiving corps, Iamaleava said he had already developed good chemistry with Kwazi Gilmer, Mikey Matthews, Ezavier Staples and Titus Mokiao-Atimalala. He’s gotten to know the offensive linemen through a bowling outing that also included the quarterbacks.

“He’s a great person,” right tackle Garrett DiGiorgio said. “He’s got a good heart, and he really cares.”

Not always. Iamaleava said he tuned out social media during his departure from Tennessee, shielding himself from the vitriol. He found solace in video games such as NBA 2K25 and UFC.

“I was playing a lot of video games with my friends and my cousins, man, and, you know, really paid no mind to it,” he said. “Sometimes I had no idea [what was happening]; my cousins would come and tell me about stuff they would see and I was like, ‘I don’t care.’ So, you know, I think a lot of that just comes with, you know, protecting your peace.”

Later, as he rose from the platform and thanked reporters, Iamaleava appeared fully zen. After all the speculation about his future, he’ll have the final say on the field.

When Clayton Kershaw signed a one-year deal with the Dodgers last February, it looked like it could have marked the start of a goodbye tour. The left-hander would take one more trip around the league, then settle into a rocking chair and wait for the Hall of Fame to call.

Instead, Kershaw has shown flashes of the pitcher who won three Cy Young Awards in four seasons, though now he gets by on guile and guts more than curveballs and sliders. On Sunday, however, he was undone by his defense in a 6-5 loss to the Milwaukee Brewers.

It was the Dodgers’ third loss in as many games since the All-Star break and 10th in a dozen games overall, the team’s worst 12-game slump since 2018.

And the losses keep mounting in other ways as well, with first baseman Freddie Freeman sustaining a left wrist contusion after being hit by a José Quintana pitch in the sixth inning. Freeman is among the Dodgers’ leaders in batting average (.292) and is third in runs (47) and hits (95). With the team already missing third baseman Max Muncy and utility player Kiké Hernández, the possibility of losing Freeman for any stretch would be a significant blow.

The game ended with the slumping Mookie Betts lining out to center field with the bases loaded.

The Dodgers’ rotation has also been battered by injury, which is why Kershaw’s performances have been so important. Despite missing the first seven weeks of the season, he ranks third on the team with 11 starts and has given up two or fewer earned runs in eight of them — including Sunday, when he scattered five hits over 4 1/3 innings, exiting the game with the score tied 3-3 in the fifth.

Dodgers starting pitcher Clayton Kershaw delivers in the first inning Sunday against the Brewers.

(Mark J. Terrill / Associated Press)

Kershaw, who left without a decision, would have pitched longer had a throwing error by third baseman Tommy Edman and a misplayed fly ball by center fielder Andy Pages not extended the Brewers’ fourth inning twice, forcing Kershaw to throw 29 pitches in the inning. And he battled to get that far, working with a fastball that rarely topped 90 mph and a curve he bounced to the plate more than once.

“It just speaks to the guy,” said Dodgers manager Dave Roberts before the game. “Even when he doesn’t have his best on that particular day, he does what’s called of him each time out.”

“He has adjusted, as far as using his whole pitch mix more,” Roberts continued. “He’s incorporating a lot more pitches and trying to keep guys more off a particular set, attacking guys differently.”

The Dodgers (58-42) gave Kershaw an early lead with a three-run third. Pages led with a double to left, then scored on a line-drive sacrifice fly by Dalton Rushing. After Betts followed with a single, Shohei Ohtani sliced a 2-0 sinker over the left-field wall for league-leading his 34th home run.

The defense gave all three runs back in the fourth with a two-out throwing error by Edman letting in a run and Pages misplaying a ball that bounced off his glove near the warning track in center for a tying double.

Esteury Ruiz’s first home run for the Dodgers put them back in front in the fifth, but the Brewers (59-40) went in front to stay in sixth, scoring three times off relievers Alex Vesia and Lou Trivino (3-1) on a double, three singles and a walk.

The Dodgers’ bullpen earned-run average of 4.38 ranks 12th in the 15-team National League. The team hasn’t gotten a scoreless game from its bullpen since July 3.

After Rushing’s bases-loaded infield single pulled the Dodgers to within a run in the ninth, Betts, who was elevated to the leadoff spot in the order in an effort to end a slump that had seen him start July hitting .174 with as many strikeouts as hits, lined out to center. He finished one for five, dropping his average to .240.

Notes: Pitchers Blake Snell and Blake Treinen made rehab appearances for triple-A Oklahoma City on Sunday. Snell, who has been on the injured list since April 6 because of left shoulder inflammation, made 58 pitchers over four innings, giving up a run on four hits while striking out six. It was his third rehab appearance. Treinen, out since April 19 with a forearm strain, followed with a perfect fifth inning in which he struck out two. He could return to the Dodgers’ roster this week.

They lost a cherished teammate hours before they started training camp. But the Chargers receivers knew just what to do when they heard of Mike Williams’ sudden retirement.

“At this point [we’re] just treating it like the next man up,” receiver Quentin Johnston said. “Him leaving was unexpected, but at the same time, we just gotta fill in the blank and keep moving.”

Williams’ sudden departure has left an already questionable receiver group with even more to prove. The 6-foot-4 receiver was coming off one of the worst seasons of his career but was still expected to add a familiar, trustworthy face for quarterback Justin Herbert. When it came to winning 50-50 balls, Williams was one of the best ever, offensive coordinator Greg Roman said.

And in a group that was led by a standout rookie last year, the 30-year-old Williams was a much-needed veteran presence.

“It’s not easily replaceable,” Roman said. “But we like where everybody’s going. We like the guys we have, we just gotta work, keep getting better.”

Star receiver Ladd McConkey is already leading the way. Despite a record-setting rookie season, McConkey has already tweaked small details that could result in big improvements in his second season, Roman said. The former Georgia star’s work ethic already sets the tone: Roman walked by the receivers room at the Chargers’ practice facility Saturday morning and saw McConkey sitting alone studying Friday’s practice film.

But who will step up after McConkey? After his drop-plagued 2023 rookie season, Johnston improved drastically last year when he caught 55 passes for 711 yards receiving and a team-high eight touchdowns. But even the jump in production hasn’t quieted some critics who remain disappointed in the former first-round pick.

With Williams’ departure, Johnston could take an even bigger leap. Encouraged by the support of his teammates and coaches, he said his confidence is at an all-time high.

“I got what it takes to still be here,” Johnston said. “I just gotta go out there and prove that every day.”

Rookie Tre’ Harris can push Johnston on the outside. The 6-foot-3 Mississippi alumnus delivers some of the same traits as Williams, but Roman has started Harris in a role that more mirrors how former Chargers receiver Joshua Palmer played. Palmer, who signed with the Buffalo Bills in free agency, had 584 yards receiving and one touchdown on 39 catches last season.

Harris, who caught 114 passes for 2,015 yards receiving and 15 touchdowns in two seasons at Mississippi after beginning his career at Louisiana Tech, insists to coaches he can play any position. But Roman is mindful to not overload the second-round pick, especially after he missed several days of training camp because of a contract dispute.

Harris reported to training camp Friday, one day after the whole team, but nearly a week behind quarterbacks and other rookies who reported July 12.

“It was music to my ears when I heard that he signed and he was getting in,” Roman said. “It’s so important for young receivers to be in camp. There’s been so many different adjustments, it’s just a different game. So far he’s been outstanding. A really smart guy. On top of everything. … Attention to detail, technique, really excited for him. So far, so good.”

Harris was a focal point of his first practice Friday, becoming a frequent target in team and seven-on-seven periods. Receiver Jalen Reagor kept a close eye on the rookie as the sixth-year, former first-round pick shouted instructions on which routes to run. They often huddled on the sideline after plays.

Reagor is on his third team after the Philadelphia Eagles drafted him in 2020. Not only is he the Chargers’ most experienced receiver, he remains a reliable option outside with his versatility and speed.

Chargers wide receiver Jalen Reagor celebrates after making a catch against the New Orleans Saints in October.

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

“He does everything really well,” Herbert said. “I think he’s one of those guys, whether it’s the quick game, whether it’s the intermediate stuff or the deep balls like that, he’s definitely fast enough to be able to take the top off and he’s such a great route runner. He’s able to beat man coverage and another guy that you feel comfortable going to whether it’s zone or man, just finds a way to get open.”

Rookie KeAndre Lambert-Smith sustained an undisclosed injury during the spring, but is back to full speed for training camp, Roman said.

The Chargers loaded up on offensive firepower during the draft, adding two rookie receivers and tight end Oronde Gadsden, a converted wide receiver who could add more lift to the passing offense. The additions appeared to be a signal from the front office that Johnston had to take another step forward in his career to maintain his place on the team.

But like the leaping touchdown pass he caught over his shoulder during Friday’s practice, Johnston took it all in stride.

“Water off a duck’s back,” wide receivers coach Sanjay Lal said during the spring. “I haven’t seen anything. I told him he’s a starter because he is and he’s operating that way.”

Etc.

Left tackle Rashawn Slater took a rest day during Saturday’s practice, Roman said. With right guard Mekhi Becton still celebrating his Super Bowl ring, right tackle Joe Alt shifted to the left in place of Slater, Trey Pipkins III subbed in at right tackle and Jamaree Salyer stepped in at right guard. Despite starting at right guard last year, Pipkins isn’t a top contender for a starting spot at left guard, where Bradley Bozeman and Zion Johnson have rotated during the offseason. Pipkins instead will be a swing tackle option off the bench, coach Jim Harbaugh said. … Running back Raheim Sanders missed a second consecutive day of practice Saturday.

MILWAUKEE — As a tour group gathered in the press box at American Family Field on Monday, the stadium guide looked down at the diamond and tried to identify the hitter in a Dodger blue T-shirt taking thunderous swings in an afternoon batting practice session.

“I’m not sure which player that is,” the tour guide said.

One knowledgeable Dodger fan in the group recognized it wasn’t a big-leaguer at all — at least not yet.

“That’s Dino Ebel’s son,” the fan said. “He’s gonna be a top draft pick next week.”

Brady Ebel might not be a household name yet around the sport but in Dodger circles, the rise of the Corona High infielder, and 17-year-old son of longtime third base coach Dino Ebel, has long been a proud organizational story in the making.

Six years ago, Brady and his younger brother Trey (a 16-year-old junior on a loaded Corona team last season), first started tagging along to Dodger Stadium with their dad after the Dodgers hired him away from the Angels at the start of the 2019 season.

Brady Ebel could be one of three Corona High baseball stars to be selected in the first round of the MLB amateur draft next week.

(Ric Tapia/Getty Images)

Back then, they were like many of the other children of players and staff that the family-friendly Dodgers would welcome around the ballpark. Not even teenagers yet, Ebel’s sons would be taking ground balls and shagging in the outfield during batting practice before the start of Dodger games.

Now, they are both standout prospects with major college commitments (Brady to Louisiana State, Trey to Texas A&M) and expected futures in pro ball.

On Sunday, Brady is expected to be a Day 1, and very possibly first round, pick in the MLB draft — a rise borne of his own physical gifts, but also aided by a childhood spent growing up in the presence of big-league players.

“I’m so blessed, me and my brother,” Brady said this week, after accompanying his dad on the Dodgers’ recent road trip in Milwaukee. “It’s my favorite thing to do. Come to the stadium with my dad. Get better. And watch guys go about it. Because I know I’m gonna be here soon. This is what I’m gonna be doing.”

The physical traits that make Brady a coveted prospect are obvious: His 6-foot-3, 190-pound frame; his smooth, compact left-handed swing; his defensive feel and strong throwing arm from the left side of the infield.

What sets Brady apart from the typical high school prospects that populate draft boards this time of year is his unique upbringing in the game, having absorbed countless lessons on his trips to work with his dad.

“Watching those guys do it every day, just being able to be in the clubhouse and walk around and see how guys act, has helped me and my brother a lot,” Brady said, shortly after peppering balls all over the outfield stands at the Brewers’ home ballpark. “I take pieces from everybody.”

Corona High infielders (from left): second baseman Trey Ebel, shortstop Billy Carlson and third baseman Brady Ebel.

(Eric Sondheimer / Los Angeles Times)

The Ebel sons first got an up-close look at major league life in Anaheim, marveling as young boys at superstars such as Mike Trout and Albert Pujols during Dino’s 12-year stint on the Angels’ coaching staff.

When their dad was hired by the Dodgers, their first-person education continued at Chavez Ravine, where many Dodgers players and staffers have marveled at their own evolution into coveted recruits and MLB draft prospects.

“As a dad, I love it, because I get to spend more time with them, and I get to watch them get better,” Dino said. “The process of watching them work with major league players is something I’ll never forget.”

Many days in recent summers, the pair have been a constant presence at the ballpark.

There have been ground rules to follow, as Dino noted: “Stay out of everybody’s way. When you shag, get in the warning track. When you go eat, if a player is behind you, you get in the back of the line.”

The fundamental lessons they’ve learned, from watching players hit in the cage, to catching balls at first base during infield drills, to talking to other members of the coaching staff during quiet stretches of the day, have been endless. The fingerprints it has left on their game have been profound.

“Process, approach, work habits, how to respect the game, how you go about your work every day,” Dino said. “For them to see that, from guys at the top of the chain of elite superstars in the game … that’s what I’ve seen them take into their game. Trying something different. Listening to what the players are telling them in the cage, on the field.”

Brady, for example, has become a keen observer of Freddie Freeman’s work in the batting cage during recent years.

“There’s stuff he grew up doing that he still continues to do,” Brady said of Freeman. “Different drills. Keeping your hands inside. Driving the ball up the middle. I’ve been doing that since I was 8. And he’s 30-whatever, still doing it. It’s the simple, little stuff.”

As the Ebel boys have gotten older, Dino noticed how they would get home from the stadium, go to a practice field the next day, and replicate specific drills and techniques they’d witnessed the night before.

“It’s pretty special for me, as a dad, to watch them go through this process,” Dino said. “And then, as a coach, how they’re getting better each day they come out here.”

Such roots haven’t been lost on evaluators. Most scouting reports of Brady note his advanced approach and discipline at the plate. MLB Pipeline’s write-up of him ahead of the draft lauded his baseball IQ, and that “his experience working with big leaguers for a long time was clearly on display” as a prep player.

In Baseball America’s latest mock draft, Brady is projected to go 33rd overall to the Boston Red Sox — where he could join Corona teammates Seth Hernandez and Billy Carlson as the highest-drafted trio of high school teammates in the event’s history.

Looming seven picks after that, however, are the Dodgers, a team that would need no introduction to a player that grew up before their eyes.

“That would be really cool, just to be with my dad’s organization,” Brady said of possibly winding up with the club. “We’ll see what happens on draft day. You never know.”

When Danny DeVito arrives — camera off — on our video call with Charlie Day late last month to discuss the 17th season of “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia,” he apologizes for sounding like he has “just come out of the salt mines.” His voice is hoarse, and Day is worried he’s sick.

“I did a lot of yelling this week,” DeVito explains.

You would think he would be practiced at that.

For 20 years now, DeVito has been exercising his vocal cords as the mischievous, disgusting Frank Reynolds, layabout father of Dee (Kaitlin Olson) and Dennis (Glenn Howerton), colleague of Mac (Rob McElhenney or Rob Mac, as he announced recently), and roommate of Day’s Charlie. In the upcoming season premiering Wednesday on FXX and streaming next day on Hulu, the gang that runs Paddy’s Pub gets into more absurd scrapes. They visit “Abbott Elementary” in the second of two planned crossover episodes with that ABC sitcom; they head to a dog track; Charlie opens up a ghost kitchen in his apartment to make Frank a smashburger; and, as is teased in the trailer, Frank goes on “The Golden Bachelor.”

During our interview, Day and DeVito offer up a dose of the chemistry that has long made Frank and Charlie a madcap pair as they discuss their history with each other, their brushes with Bachelor Nation and, naturally, turds. DeVito remains off camera most of the time, but he pops on occasionally for dramatic effect.

Charlie (Charlie Day) and Frank (Danny DeVito) over the seasons in “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.” (Patrick McElhenney / FX)

Danny, what do you remember about that first meeting you had with the three guys?

Danny DeVito: I knew lots about the show already. I was going in because I was friends with [then-president and now current FX Networks chairman John] Landgraf. Landgraf sent me the first eight shows, and I watched it with my family. He was saying he was talking about these really talented guys that he was working with, and John was building the network over there. I can’t remember exactly where we met. But where we met was a weird — that was the first thing that threw me a little bit. Do you remember where it was?

Charlie Day: We had a lunch — you, me, Rob and Glenn — [on] Beverly Boulevard. We didn’t have an office. We were writing the second season. You’d agreed to the show, and you came in like your character from “Get Shorty.” You started ordering for all of us, and you told us some crazy story about your father having a box full of teeth and watches, and we were just taking notes, man. I think we pitched you a couple different character names. I think you shot down a few of them, but you liked Frank. Frank was my step-grandfather’s name.

DeVito: I had an Uncle Frank.

Day: You came in like a tornado. It was great.

DeVito: Well, I usually do that. Way before “Get Shorty,” I would just come in and everybody would be looking at their menus, and I would just look at the menu right away and just say a half a dozen things and everybody would look at me like, “You’re ordering everything on the menu!”

Day: Danny, know that I went and spent maybe almost a whole week rewatching almost everything you’d ever done before we met with you. I watched every episode of “Taxi.” I watched almost every single movie I could find. Just studying a fighter you’re going up against. And it was “Get Shorty” that really kind of locked in for me. A lot of people would have you do that Louie De Palma thing over and over again, and you’re so great at that. But there was something so idiosyncratic about the “Get Shorty” character and unpredictable that we’re like, “Oh, if we can tap into that …” I think it took us a couple seasons to do it, and then it felt like kismet that you sort of came into that meeting like that guy.

On “It’s Always Sunny,” Charlie Day, left, and Danny DeVito are friends, roommates and schemers: “Whenever Charlie does something, it titillates Frank.”

(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)

How do you feel like the dynamic between Frank and Charlie has shifted over the years? Or even if it hasn’t, what do you discover coming back season after season?

DeVito: I think Charlie offers a lot of avenues for Frank to follow for some reason. I like the idea of the scheming and everything that everybody else does, and they do it in a normal way. They want to make money, they want to get ahead, they want to be famous, they want the bar to succeed, they want this, that. But whenever Charlie does something, it titillates Frank. They know when I am really happy with the material. When I see I’m going to eat a turd, I go like, “Wow, man. We’re pushing the envelope.”

Day: I’m always loving writing and working on the scenes in our apartment and then getting to the set and filming those. I’m always excited for it. There’s something about filming in that intimate space that feels like there’s a magic there. Same with the little back office in the bar. Any time we’re there, there’s something funny to these cramped spaces.

DeVito: We’re playing sardines all the time.

This season opens with the “Abbott” crossover and ends with Frank on “The Golden Bachelor.” How did that come about?

Day: Well, the funny thing about this show is, there’s so many different ways that we do it. I think there’s a push-pull where I really was wanting to do the EMT episode and the dog track one. And Rob has these really big ideas, like buying a soccer team. He wanted to do this “Abbott” crossover, and he wanted to do this “Golden Bachelor” episode. To be perfectly frank, I didn’t really want to do both. I think you can do one or the other. The “Golden Bachelor” thing I thought was funny, but I was like, maybe we could just do the “Sunny” characters’ version of it. But to his credit, those are the things that people latch onto and are talking about. I tend to like when we’re not doing the pop culture references as much, but then we have a big back and forth and we argue. And then when we land on it, the second we agree to do it, then I’m always all in, as is Rob. So then we’re both writing together and saying, well, what’s the best version of how to do this?

The gang is back at “Abbott”: Danny DeVito, left, Charlie Day and Rob McElhenney in this season’s opening episode of “It’s Always Sunny.” (Patrick McElhenney / FX)

The “Abbott” crew — Chris Perfetti, from left, Sheryl Lee Ralph and Quinta Brunson — in a scene from the crossover episode. (Patrick McElhenney / FX)

Danny, what was it like filming Frank’s “Golden Bachelor” moment?

DeVito: I had no idea what they had in mind at first because I must admit, I’m not a “Golden Bachelor” watcher. Once I got there and figured out what they had up their sleeve, I just went with it big time. Being Frank is really wonderful, I must say. It gives you the opportunity to do a lot of things that you wouldn’t. And they push the envelope and come up with all these crazy things, and I go along with it, and from the time my feet hit the ground, when I get there, I’m smiling.

Day: Rob and Glenn and I spend weeks and months really digging in and arguing and pushing each other out of our comfort zones in all sorts of directions. And then towards the end, we’re all invested in the same thing. And what really makes it work is that Danny comes in and gives it a hundred percent. Really, if Danny wasn’t so supportive, it would be really challenging. But pretty much everything we bring to you, Danny, you say, “OK, I’m going to make this work.” “Golden Bachelor” was a perfect example. We had a lot of arguments about how to do that, whether to do it. And then once we committed to it and tried to write what we thought was the best version of it we could, Dan, you come in and just sell it in a way that it needs to be sold.

I don’t want to spoil anything, but there’s also a very sweet “Taxi” reunion in there.

DeVito: That was big for all of us. We were blessed to have that in our show.

“Frank gives me just the wonderful opportunity to be naughty. I can go where other characters can’t go,” Danny DeVito says.

(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)

Danny, you said you love being Frank. Why do you love it?

DeVito: I felt operatic as the Penguin [in “Batman Returns”]. There’s a freedom to that. Even in “Taxi,” there was a freedom. I am not like that. I don’t boss people around. I mean, I do a little bit, but I don’t do over the top stuff. Frank gives me just the wonderful opportunity to be naughty. I can go where other characters can’t go. And it’s kind of like we’re bringing people along with Frank. Maybe it’s something that you would say, “Oh god, I would never do that.” But it’s so much fun to imagine the taste of that turd in that soup.

Charlie, Lynne Marie Stewart, who plays your mother, died before the release of this season. How did you think to honor her?

Day: It was pretty tragic and unexpected. She was on the show, and then about a month later we got an email that she was close to the end, and then I think a day later we got an email that she had passed. Mary Elizabeth [Ellis, who plays the Waitress and is married to Day,] and I got to go to her memorial service, and it was luau-themed. It was packed, and there was so much love for her. She always elevated the material that we wrote for her, and she was just as lovely a person as a performer, and I’m going to miss her a lot. We were still in the editing room when she passed away, and so we felt as though it was right to build a little tribute to her because she’s been there since Season 1 and we’ve worked together for over 20 years. Other than it just being a tragedy, I don’t know how we’ll deal with it next season.

DeVito: She was always a favorite of Frank’s.

Day: And we would always have great stuff for the two of you guys.

DeVito: And maybe one day Charlie and I will sit down and have the talk.

For how long do you want to keep coming back to these characters?

DeVito: Well, why does time exist?

Day: Look, we have a contract with FX up to 18 seasons, and all of us feel as though we can do that. So that’s at least one more. Beyond that, I’m not sure they’ll ask for more seasons, so next year could be it.

DeVito: Yeah, they might have some kind of mental defective thing happen to them between next year and not ask for another bunch. That’s always the case. Then also, maybe, they might want to pay us more.

“It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” was renewed up to Season 18. “Beyond that, I’m not sure they’ll ask for more seasons, so next year could be it,” Charlie Day says.

(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)

Day: Who knows? But this far in the run, I think Rob and Glenn and I, at least in terms of having to sit and write them, really sort of just say each year: Do we have it in us? Do we think we can do a good job? That has to do more with the people that we’re working with. If we can get the band together and have all the musicians that we want, then we’ll try to make some music, to use a bad sort of analogy.

DeVito: It’s a lot of fun. And we have good times. You guys always deliver. Everybody comes with their game, and you can’t ask for anything more. I just feel like I don’t want to let these guys go. I want to be with them all the time. I nag everybody. I call Charlie all the time, even if it’s to call up and say, how’s Mary Elizabeth and Russell? I just feel like I need that connection. I miss these guys. I miss Kaitlin and Rob and Glenn. Every time I see Glenn [I] go, “Is that Glenn?” He does radical things. He, like, shaves his hair.

Speaking of shaving, Charlie, you shaved your beard off for a gag this season. What was that like?

Day: It was horrible, just to see how old the man is under the beard. Once you take off the eyebrows, that’s when it really starts to look freaky. We had that idea, and we knew we had to shoot it last because if I was going to shave, that had to be the last thing we were going to shoot. Right after we wrapped, I went on a little vacation with my wife and son, and I rarely got recognized, which is funny. Every now and then, people who were fans of the movie “Pacific Rim,” because I didn’t have a beard in those movies — they’d be like, “Hey, man, where have you been? Why you not been working?” The funny thing was I couldn’t unlock my cell phone with that look because I looked so different.

In a time of exploding success and creativity in rock music, Creedence Clearwater Revival was quite possibly the finest singles band of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Formed in suburban El Cerrito in Northern California by frontman John Fogerty, his brother Tom on guitar, bassist Stu Cook and drummer Doug Clifford, CCR put up an absurd number of all-timers in the space of about 2 1/2 years, including most of the 20 collected on “Chronicle,” the 1976 greatest-hits LP that still sits on the Billboard 200 album chart today, nearly half a century later.

The band’s instantly identifiable sound — which the members began developing first as the Blue Velvets and then as the Golliwogs — combined blues, rock, psychedelia and R&B; John Fogerty’s voice, preternaturally scratchy and soulful for a guy in his early 20s, gave the music a feeling of sex and grit even as he flexed his commercial pop smarts as a producer and hook-meister.

For all their popularity, Fogerty refused to play Creedence’s biggest hits for decades due to a prolonged legal battle with his old label, Fantasy Records, over the rights to his songs — a feud that reached a kind of apex when Fantasy’s head honcho, Saul Zaentz, sued Fogerty for plagiarizing himself with his solo song “The Old Man Down the Road,” which Zaentz said sounded too much like CCR’s “Run Through the Jungle.” (Fogerty eventually won; Zaentz died in 2014.)

Yet two years ago, Fogerty regained control of his publishing, and now he’s made an album of Taylor Swift-style rerecorded versions of the band’s songs called “Legacy: The Creedence Clearwater Revival Years,” due Aug. 22. Ahead of a concert Sunday night at the Hollywood Bowl, where he’ll be accompanied by a band that includes his sons Shane and Tyler, Fogerty, 80, called from the road to tell the stories behind five of his signature tunes.

‘Proud Mary’ (1969)

After charting in 1968 with covers of Dale Hawkins’ “Susie Q” and Screamin’ Jay Hawkins’ “I Put a Spell on You,” Fogerty scored his first hit as a songwriter with this funky and propulsive country-soul jam.

“Proud Mary” came as a bolt of lightning and inspiration from heaven. I’d received my honorable discharge from the Army in the middle of 1968, and I was overjoyed — I mean, absolutely euphoric. It meant that I could now pursue music full-time. So I went in the house with my Rickenbacker guitar and started strumming some chords, and the first line I wrote was “Left a good job in the city / Working for the man every night and day.” That’s how I felt getting out of the Army.

But what is this song about? I really didn’t know. I went to my little song book that I’d only started writing in a few months before — it was a conscious decision to get more professional — and, lo and behold, the very first thing I’d ever written in that book was the phrase “Proud Mary.” I didn’t know what it meant — I just wrote it down because that was gonna be my job. I’ve got this little book, and I’m gonna collect my thoughts.

At the very bottom of the same page was the word “riverboat.” I remember saying to myself, “Oh, this song’s about a riverboat named Proud Mary.” How strange is that? Who writes a song about a boat? But after that I was off and running — finished the song within the hour, and for the first time in my life, I was looking at the page and I said, “My God, I’ve written a classic.” I knew it was a great song, like the people I admired so much: Hoagy Carmichael or Leiber & Stoller or Lennon & McCartney. I felt it in my bones.

Where did the narrator’s accent come from? “Big wheel keep on toinin’” and all that?
Howlin’ Wolf was a huge inspiration to me when I was 10, 11, 12 years old. He said things like that a lot, and I guess it went into my brain. I didn’t do it consciously — it just seemed right to me when I was writing the song.

CCR had five singles that got to No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100, including “Proud Mary.” Do you recall what was at No. 1 when “Proud Mary” reached No. 2?
Let’s see, this was early 1969 — I’d love to think that it was [Otis Redding’s] “Dock of the Bay.”

“Everyday People” by Sly and the Family Stone.
No kidding. How cool.

Did you know Sly?
I never met Sly Stone. I really loved the records. I was at Woodstock, and he was a couple acts after me. I watched Janis [Joplin] and then some of Sly, and then we retired to our Holiday Inn — must have been 4 in the morning by then.

Ike and Tina Turner remade “Proud Mary” for themselves.
It’s almost a different song. First time I heard it, I was driving in my car — was one of those times you pump your first and go, “Yeah!”

‘Lodi’ (1969)

This twangy account of a musician fallen on hard times first appeared on the B-side of the “Bad Moon Rising” single.

My mom and dad loved traveling from our little town of El Cerrito. We would drive up San Pablo Avenue — I don’t think there was a freeway back then — and cross the Carquinez Bridge into Vallejo and keep going up into the northern-central part of California and all those wonderful places like Stockton and Tracy and Modesto. I got to know all these towns like Dixon and Davis, and I heard my parents talk about Lodi. As a youngster, that was one of the words I saved in my book, like I was talking about earlier. I told myself, “That’s important, John — you need to save that and remember it.”

As I started to get a little older, I remember playing on campus at Cal Berkeley with a ragtag group of guys — a local dance kind of thing for the students. The guy from Quicksilver Messenger Service with the afro [David Freiberg], he was there too playing with his band, and they did a song where it sounded like he was saying “Lodi.” I was heartbroken. When he got done with his set, I went over and asked the gentleman, “What was that song you were doing? Was it called ‘Lodi’?” He said, “Oh, you mean ‘Codeine.’” Boy, did I crack up. Here I am, the farmer boy thinking about Lodi, and he’s the downtown guy talking about drugs.

Anyway, all that meandering my family did through the Central Valley was very important to me. There came a time when I was inspired to write a song framed in a place that was kind of out of the way. I was 23 or so, but I was picturing a much older person than myself — maybe Merle Haggard when he gets older. There he is, stuck in this little town because he’d drifted in and he doesn’t have the money to get out.

‘Fortunate Son’ (1969)

Immediately adopted as an anthem among those opposed to the Vietnam War, Fogerty’s searing protest song was later inducted into the Library of Congress’ National Recording Registry.

You said in 2014 that you weren’t entirely satisfied by your lead vocal.
I still feel the same way. The basic tracks for “Down on the Corner” and “Fortunate Son” were both recorded, and one afternoon I went over to Wally Heider’s studio to finish the songs. For “Down on the Corner,” I did the maracas and the middle solo part, then sang all the background vocals, then sang the lead. So I’d been singing at the top of my lungs for probably an hour and a half, then I had to go back and finish “Fortunate Son.” I was screaming my heart out, doing the best I could, but later I felt that some of the notes were a little flat — that I hadn’t quite hit the mark. I always sort of cringed about that.

There’s an argument to be made that the raggedness in your voice is what gives the song its urgency.
I know that in the case of the Beatles, John would just sit in the studio screaming and screaming until his voice got raw enough, then he’d record some takes. Perhaps the fact that it was a little out of tune made it — what’s the word? — more pop-worthy. I don’t know.

“Fortunate Son” was heard at President Trump’s recent military parade, despite your asking him not to use it during his 2020 campaign.
I didn’t watch other than a few seconds. I was trying to find the Yankee game and came across the parade. I was expecting it would be like the Rose Bowl Parade on New Year’s morning, but it seemed really kind of sleepy. Somebody emailed me later that night and told me. I thought it was strange — thought it would be something that someone would be wary of.

Because of the cease-and-desist — and because the song is literally about a person of privilege avoiding military service.
I thought to myself: Do you think somebody did it on purpose? Are they doing it as some weird kind of performance art? I might be giving too much credit to the thought that went into it.

“Fortunate Son” is one of the great rock songs about class, which is a concept that Trump has deeply reshaped in his time.
He’s a rich guy but he manages to make himself look like the underdog and the victim. I’m from the ’60s — the hippie era — when young people were much more unified in the sense that everybody should be equal and everyone should be tolerant and respectful of each other. It’s a little different now, even though I’m very happy that people are protesting and making noise and pointing out injustice — I’m thrilled that’s going on instead of just standing by and watching somebody get lit on fire.

But we’re so polarized in America now. I’m hopeful, though. You didn’t ask me the question, but I am. I think we’re all starting to get tired of that. It doesn’t work very well — what we’re doing right now is certainly not working. If we fire everybody and quit all knowledge and science and education and manners and morality and ethics and kick out all the immigrants — well, I guess you and me are probably gone along with everybody else. I mean, it’s just such complete negativity. As Americans, that’s not us — that’s not how we roll.

‘Run Through the Jungle’ (1970)

With worries about the spread of gun ownership in his head, Fogerty devised one of his eeriest productions for this swampy psych-rock number.

I was trying to do a lot with a little — certainly got the band cooking and got a good groove going. For the intro, I wanted to create maybe a Stanley Kubrick movie soundscape, but of course I didn’t have a symphony orchestra or synthesizers or any of that kind of stuff. I had to imagine: How do I use these rock ’n’ roll instruments — basically guitar and piano and a little bit of percussion and some backward tape — and create that ominous, rolling vibe?

Along with the Beach Boys’ Brian Wilson, you were one of the few rock and pop musicians of that era who produced your own records.
To me, it was natural. I remember a time in the little shed that Fantasy had built outside the back of their warehouse to use as a recording studio — I was working there one day, had the earphones on and I was at the mic. This was Golliwogs time, probably ’65 or ’66, and I was trying to get something accomplished that was not getting accomplished. I said out loud, “Well, I guess Phil Spector’s not gonna come down here and produce us, so I’m gonna have to learn how to be a producer myself.”

Saul Zaentz famously took you to court for self-plagiarism. Is there anything at all in your mind that connects “Run Through the Jungle” and “The Old Man Down the Road”?
Other than both of them having a very deep footprint within the blues, which is what has influenced me greatly in my life, I never thought they were even similar. The whole thing was preposterous.

‘Have You Ever Seen the Rain’ (1970)

After CCR’s “Pendulum” LP — which included this tender ballad that now boasts more than 2 billion streams on Spotify — Tom Fogerty quit the group; the remaining three members went their separate ways less than two years later.

I loved my band — I thought it was the culmination of everything I’d been working for — and to watch it sort of disintegrating, I just felt powerless. That’s why I use the strange metaphor of rain coming down on a sunny day: We had finally found our sunny day, and yet everybody seemed to be more and more unhappy. I just felt completely befuddled by what was going on — I didn’t know what to say or do that was gonna fix it.

Up to that time, I’d thought the way to fix it was: Well, I’ll just write more songs and we’ll have more success — that’ll take care of all our problems. That’s how I felt — pathetically so — even as far as my relationship with Saul Zaentz and the horrible contract. I thought if I just showed that I was a great songwriter and could make these records that perhaps he would have some empathy and go, “I should treat John better because I want to have more of these songs.” When I say that now, it sounds utterly foolish.

In spite of the pain you were in at the time, this song is one of your sweetest.
That’s true. It’s like an atom bomb going off in your backyard — it’s so horrible that you just sort of cling to your positive human emotion. Even if it’s painful, you try to feel rather than be numb.

“Have You Ever Seen the Rain” has been covered widely: Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash, the Ramones, Rod Stewart. You have a favorite rendition besides yours?
I really liked Bonnie Tyler’s version.

The transformation happened quickly in May 2009.

Early into his second year in the majors, a young Clayton Kershaw was enduring a sophomore slump with the Dodgers. Looking for a way to complement his predominantly fastball/curveball mix, he began toying around with a slider in his between-starts bullpen sessions.

When Brad Ausmus, the well-traveled 40-year-old backup catcher on that year’s Dodgers team, heard about the experiment, he didn’t initially think much of it. That a raw 21-year-old talent would be tinkering with a new pitch didn’t come as much of a surprise.

But when Ausmus asked the club’s bullpen catcher, Mike Borzello, how Kershaw’s new pitch looked, he got his first inkling it might be special.

“He was like, ‘It’s really good,’” Ausmus recalled recently. “I said, ‘Oh, so maybe he’ll throw it in a couple more bullpens before taking it into the game.’ And he’s like, ‘Ehh, I think he might take it into the game his next start.’”

A few weeks later, Ausmus got his first chance to see it up close, calling it sporadically in a Freeway Series game at Angel Stadium. That day, Kershaw spun a gem, throwing seven scoreless innings in a Dodgers victory.

But it was afterward, as Kershaw, Ausmus and longtime Dodgers pitching coach Rick Honeycutt reviewed the outing, that the longtime catcher started to understand that Kershaw wasn’t just any young pitcher. That his tantalizing talent was matched by a preternatural aptitude. That his precocious battery mate was both a physical force and pitching prodigy.

Dodgers pitcher Clayton Kershaw, left, talks with former teammate Brad Ausmus, right, and coach Matt Martin before a game in 2019, when Ausmus was the manager of the Angels.

(Alex Gallardo/AP)

“Keep in mind, this is a rookie, basically, talking to a guy who’s been in the big leagues 17, 18 years,” Ausmus said. “And he goes, ‘Brad, I wish you would call more sliders.’”

Initially surprised, Ausmus thought to himself: “Really? This is a brand new pitch. We probably threw 10 or 15 of them.”

But Kershaw could already see the bigger picture. He immediately sensed how the new pitch might profoundly influence his game.

“If you think about it, the fastball was 95, the curveball was probably in the low-to-mid 80s, so there was a lot of separation in terms of velocity. It almost gave the hitter time to reload before swinging,” Ausmus said. “The slider did not allow the hitters to do that.”

Seventeen years, three Cy Young Awards, two World Series titles, and — very nearly — 3,000 strikeouts later, the rest has been singularly impressive history.

“It speaks to not only his knowledge, but his ability and his confidence,” said Ausmus, now bench coach for the New York Yankees. “He has an aptitude for the game. He adjusts. And he continues to perform at a high level. It really is remarkable … I miss having that guy as a teammate.”

When Clayton Kershaw takes the mound on Wednesday night at Dodger Stadium, he will need just three strikeouts to become the 20th member of Major League Baseball’s 3,000 strikeout club.

And, just as it was almost two decades ago, it will be the same primary three-pitch mix that is all but certain to lift him into such rarified air.

For better or (very rarely) worse, at full strength or in ailing health, the now 37-year-old future Hall of Famer has managed to perfect one of the sport’s all-time signature plans of attack on the mound:

Establish the fastball on the edge of the plate for a strike. Tunnel the slider on the same trajectory to get awkward swings when it tails off late. Mix in a curveball when a change of pace is needed. And never be afraid to change the sequence and tendencies of that infallible trio of pitches, using instinct and feel to amplify his physical talent.

“It’s what’s upstairs [that makes him special],” current Dodgers pitching coach Mark Prior said. “He’s always a step ahead.”

Countless big-league pitchers have used a similar fastball-slider-curveball repertoire. Even in Kershaw’s prime years, there were always others who could throw harder, or produce more break, or manipulate the ball with more gravity-defying spin.

What separates Kershaw are more foundational skills. His unwavering execution, in seasons he threw 200-plus innings or those in which he battled increasingly persistent injuries to his back, shoulder and even a bothersome left big toe. His unflappable persistence to move from one pitch, one start, one year to the next; never satisfied with his best moments nor shaken by his rare failures.

“He just knows the ins and outs of baseball, and has such good feel,” longtime teammate and backstop Austin Barnes said. “He’s like a train that comes at you consistently.”

That’s why, when Kershaw does inevitably cross the 3,000-strikeout threshold, it will be equal parts a testament to his talent and durability — an accomplishment that required him to continually reinvent his game without ever changing his fundamental nature as a pitcher.

“Clayton has everything the right way, on the field, off the field, over a long period of time,” manager Dave Roberts said last week.

“It’s hard to wrap your head around what it takes,” he added, “as far as longevity, and greatness.”

“He’s like a train that comes at you consistently,” former Dodgers catcher Austin Barnes, center, said of pitcher Clayton Kershaw, left.

(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

Few players have produced the kind of prolonged period of greatness Kershaw did during the peak of his career. Starting in that 2009 season, he went on a run of sub-3.00 ERA campaigns in 11 of his next 12 years. In seven of them, he had 200 or more strikeouts, including a career-high 301 punchouts in 2015. Eight of his 10 All-Star selections came in that stretch, as did his three Cy Young Awards and a 2014 National League MVP (still the last time a pitcher won the game’s highest individual honor).

His only blemishes in that time were repeated disappointments in the playoffs. But even in most of those, he was tasked with trying to save the team’s season while pitching on short rest or desperately-needed outings out of the bullpen.

“Even with all the pressure he’s had as the Dodgers’ ace … he’s always out there, he’s always willing to take the ball,” Barnes said. “I think that goes underappreciated. He’s willing to put himself out there, even when he doesn’t feel his best.”

To Barnes, who has caught more Kershaw starts than anyone other than A.J. Ellis, the way Kershaw strives to always be better is what has made it all possible. It was a trait he noticed in one of his first games catching him in 2017 against the San Diego Padres.

“I kind of went against the scouting report, and I called a fastball that froze the guy,” Barnes, who signed a minor-league deal with the San Francisco Giants this week after being released by the Dodgers earlier this year, recalled recently. “I remember him coming up to me after, kind of sizing me up and down, like, ‘Why’d you call that?’ I just said, ‘I just kind of felt it.’”

It was a small example of how Kershaw’s pitch mix — unchanged over the years, outside of an occasional flirtation with a variety of changeup grips — could be weaponized in ways opposing batters have long struggled to expect.

“Not everybody gets to his caliber of pitching and stuff,” Barnes said. “But the work he puts in, in the weight room, in the video room, for him to go out there and have clarity and conviction in what he needs to do, I think that’s what helps most. And the level of competitor he is. He can do it all.”

Even, in recent years, as his stuff has gradually diminished.

At the start of this season, Kershaw was just 32 strikeouts away from the 3K club — an exclusive fraternity that includes only three other left-handed pitchers, and two who spent their entire career with one team.

In past seasons, that would’ve been a total he could clear in less than a month.

But now, he joked early in his return from offseason foot and knee surgeries: “Maybe by September I’ll get there. We’ll see.”

After all, Kershaw barely touches 90 mph with his fastball even on a good day now. His slider and curveball don’t always have as much bite as they once did. Such has been the case for much of the last three seasons, as the miles on Kershaw’s arm and body have steadily caught up to him.

At the end of 2020, when Kershaw finally won his first World Series and began more seriously starting to contemplate when he might retire, he was less than 500 strikeouts away from 3,000. He seemed like a virtual lock to get there, perhaps as the last new entrant for the foreseeable future.

“He’s always a step ahead,” Dodgers pitching coach Mark Prior, left, said recently about pitcher Clayton Kershaw when discussing the key to his success.

(Ross D. Franklin / Associated Press)

Since then, however, he had a season-ending elbow injury in 2021 that nearly required Tommy John surgery; back and shoulder problems that limited him in what were nonetheless All-Star seasons in 2022 and 2023; consecutive offseasons of surgical rehabs each of the past two winters, first on his shoulder and then his lower-body ailments; all on top of the normal aches and pains that come with pitching into someone’s late 30s.

His three-pitch arsenal remains unchanged, but figuring out ways to maximize it has been an ongoing challenge.

“He’s doing it the same way, but he’s having to figure out different ways to do it, if that makes sense,” Prior said.

Just like when he first broke into the majors, it has required him to trust what’s working best and adjust on the fly to his ever-weakening capabilities.

And yet, entering Wednesday’s potential milestone outing, Kershaw is 4-0 with a 3.03 ERA in his eight starts this season (the second-best ERA among Dodgers starters behind only Yoshinobu Yamamoto). He is coming off a particularly productive June, giving up just seven earned runs in 27 ⅔ innings. And, while they don’t come as frequently as they once did, the strikeouts are still present, with Kershaw averaging 7 ½ per nine innings over his last five starts.

To Prior, it’s a testament to Kershaw’s enduring ability to still pitch his way through a start.

“He knows when guys are looking hard and he can get them with the slider. The fastball and slider still do look the same, when he’s on, so he can pull the trigger on one or the other … And he has the equalizer with the curveball, to be able to use that to change speeds like he has his whole career.”

“Again, it’s the same pitch mix,” Prior added, “but he’s still finding ways to do it at this stage.”

To Roberts, it’s made Kershaw an example for the rest of the team to follow.

“It’s a lesson in life,” the manager said. “You don’t always have to feel perfect to be productive. I have a lot of respect for him.”

The great irony, once Kershaw does eclipse the 3,000-strikeout mark, is that punchouts have never been his primary objective.

“No, no,” Barnes said with a laugh. “He cares about winning the game and throwing up zeroes. That’s the biggest thing for him. The strikeouts are just a byproduct of him getting ahead of hitters, and being able to have [the pitches in] his mix playing off each other.”

But once that moment does arrive — fittingly, as things have lined up, likely on the Dodger Stadium mound he has dominated for almost two decades — the total will be indicative of all he has accomplished in a career of unmatched excellence, and the way he has elevated himself as one of the best pitchers in the history of the sport.

“He’s teaching me that so much of this game is still about mindset,” Prior said. “There’s so much object data, which is helpful in all aspects of our game. But part of it is still so unquantifiable. He’s just someone who has willed himself to be better than everybody else.”

Alex Caruso is an NBA champion!

Of course, Caruso already had a ring before he and the Oklahoma City Thunder closed out the Indiana Pacers in Game 7 of the NBA Finals on Sunday night. His first one came with the Lakers after the slightly shortened 2020 season and a postseason played entirely in the NBA bubble in Orlando during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Now I got a real one,” Caruso told reporters following the Thunder’s 103-91 victory over the Pacers. “Now nobody can say anything.”

He was joking, of course, making reference to the trolls who try to diminish the Lakers’ title from five years ago because of the unique circumstances under which it was won.

That Lakers team had an average age of nearly 29 and was led by LeBron James, who was 35 years old upon winning his fourth NBA championship.

This Thunder team is led by league MVP Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, who is 26 and — like the rest of his Oklahoma City teammates, except for Caruso — hadn’t won an NBA title until now. Their average age is 25.68 years, making them the youngest NBA champion team since the 1977 Portland Trail Blazers.

“I think just because of the way the team is constructed now versus the team I had in 2020, it was much harder with this team just because of the experience [level],” Caruso, 31, said. “… I think through the playoffs, this team grew up and learned on the fly. Most teams have to learn through losses and learn though defeat, and I think this team learned through success. And it’s a unique capability to be able to do that for 21- to 27-year-old kids.

“For me, I’ve seen greats do it, so I knew the way, I knew the mindset. But to see these guys do it, man, it’s really cool to see it in person, and I’m so happy for the guys just to be able to figure it out and be able to get this done.”

Caruso was a valuable player off the bench en route to both of his NBA championships, averaging 6.5 points per game in 2020 and 9.2 this season. He scored 20 points in three different games during the 2025 season, including twice during the Finals; his high score during the 2020 campaign was 16 points.

He signed with the Chicago Bulls as a free agent during the 2021 offseason and was traded to Oklahoma City for guard Josh Giddey last summer. Caruso’s previous championship experience was also valuable after Sunday’s game, when Caruso had to give his teammates a crash course on popping champagne to celebrate the victory.

“We didn’t do it all at the same time until like the third try,” Caruso said of popping the corks. “I tried my best when we got in there, I was like, ‘All right, let’s get a head count, let’s make sure everyone’s here before we do the first one.’ And through the learning experience of taking the foil off, undoing the metal and having the cork ready, there was like three or four guys that popped their corks. And then it happened again. …

“We went through the process a couple times and eventually we got everybody on the same page. But, yeah, it was a good first try. We’ll get some rest, reset, try to go again next year and see if we can do it again, and we’ll be better.”

Donald Trump’s coalition has always been a Frankenstein’s monster — stitched together from parts that were never meant to coexist.

Consider the contradictions: fast-food fanatics hanging out with juice-cleanse truthers chanting “Make America Healthy Again” between ivermectin doses, immigration hardliners mixing with business elites who are “tough on the border” until they need someone to clean their toilets or pick their strawberries, and hawkish interventionists spooning with America Firsters.

Dogs and cats living together — mass hysteria — you know the bit.

Navigating these differences was always going to be tricky. But in recent days — particularly following Israel’s bombing of Iran, an operation widely believed to have been greenlit by Trump — the tension has reached new highs.

Signs of strain were already emerging earlier this year. We got early hints of discord during the “Liberation Day” tariff fiasco — where Trump declared an “emergency” and imposed steep tariffs, only to suspend them after they riled markets and spooked his business-friendly backers.

The tariff blunder was a harbinger of things to come. But it was the House’s passage of Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” — a budgetary monstrosity that self-respecting Freedom Caucus deficit hawks should’ve torched on principle — that truly exposed the rift.

Enter Elon Musk, the billionaire tech bro and MAGA ally, who publicly trashed both the bill and Trump in a flurry of posts. He even referenced Trump’s name reportedly appearing in Jeffrey Epstein’s files — a claim that, though unverified, was tantamount to “going nuclear.”

But before there was enough time to say “Republican civil war,” Musk deleted his mean tweets, adding to the evidence that this is still Trump’s party; that modern Republicans view deficits the way the rest of us view library late fees — technically real, but nothing to lose sleep over; and that ketamine is a hell of a drug.

The next internecine squabble was over immigration. Trump proudly ran on rounding ’em all up. Mass deportations! Load up the buses! But then it turned out that his rich buddies in Big Ag and Big Hospitality weren’t so keen on losing some of their best employees.

So Trump floated a carve out to protect some “very good, long time workers” in those particular industries.

It even started to look like some exemptions were coming — until his Department of Homeland Security said “no mas.” (The raids will presumably continue until the next time a farmer or hotelier complains to Trump in a meeting.)

But the real fissure involves some prominent America First non-interventionists who thought Trump was elected to end the “forever wars.”

In case you missed it, Israel has been going after Iran’s nuclear capabilities with the same gusto that Trump aide Stephen Miller applies to deporting Guatemalan landscapers, and Trump is all in, calling for an “unconditional surrender” of the Iranian regime.

This didn’t sit well with everyone in the MAGA coalition.

“I think we’re going to see the end of American empire,” warned Tucker Carlson on Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast. “But it’s also going to end, I believe, Trump’s presidency — effectively end it — and so that’s why I’m saying this.”

And Carlson (co-founder of the Daily Caller, where I worked) didn’t stop there. “The real divide isn’t between people who support Israel and those who support Iran or the Palestinians,” he tweeted. “It’s between warmongers and peacemakers.”

Then he named names, alleging that Fox’s Sean Hannity, radio firebrand Mark Levin, media titan Rupert Murdoch and billionaire Trump donors Ike Perlmutter and Miriam Adelson were among the warmongers.

Trump hit back, calling Tucker “kooky” and repeating his new mantra: “IRAN CAN NEVER HAVE A NUCLEAR WEAPON.”

It’s tempting to see this spat as the beginning of a schism — a break that might finally yield a coherent Trump Doctrine, at least, as it pertains to foreign policy (possibly returning the GOP to a more Reaganite or internationalist party). But that misunderstands the nature of Trump and his coalition.

These coalitional disagreements over public policy are real and important. But they mostly exist at the elite level. The actual Trump voter base? They care about only one thing: Donald Trump.

And Trump resists ideological straitjackets.

If Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu rubs him the wrong way next week (as he did by congratulating Joe Biden in 2020), or if Israel’s military campaign starts slipping in the polls, Trump could flip faster than a gymnast on Red Bull.

There is no coherent philosophy. No durable ideology. What we’re watching is a guy making it up as he goes along — often basing decisions on his “gut” or the opinion of the last guy who bent his ear.

So if you’re looking for a Trump Doctrine to explain it all — keep looking. There isn’t one.

There’s only Trump.

Matt K. Lewis is the author of “Filthy Rich Politicians” and “Too Dumb to Fail.”

Ben Howland planned it like this. Of course he did.

This was a coach so engrossed in details that he would grumble about the room temperature at news conferences and call a timeout when his team was in the middle of a big run just so that he could set up his defense.

So it should come as no surprise that before his 10-year run as UCLA’s basketball coach ended in 2013, Howland had schemed for his dream retirement.

In 2011, he bought a four-bedroom, ranch-style house in his native Santa Barbara close to so many old friends and family, knowing the full remodel job would take years. The Howlands moved in three years ago, after the coach’s final season at Mississippi State.

The home is now his departure point for frequent trips to see another old friend — the program he guided to back-to-back-to-back Final Fours from 2006-08. Howland likes to leave many hours before tipoff, arranging his schedule so that he can visit friends or fit in a doctor’s appointment.

He recently learned that he was only one day younger than former Bruins star forward David Greenwood, who died earlier this month from cancer.

“It’s sobering, you know? Sixty-eight now seems young,” Howland said between bites of a Tuscan chicken sandwich inside the Luskin Center on the campus that once served as his basketball home. “But there’s always something. You’ve got to make sure you’re on top of your colon and your prostate, and that’s one of the reasons I come to UCLA for all my doctor appointments.”

The old coach remains close to several retired doctors he’s known for many years, including Jean B. DeKernion, the former longtime chair of UCLA’s urology department, and Bennett Roth, the gastroenterologist who established the school’s endoscopy unit.

Perhaps nobody at the school can put a smile on his face like the current basketball coach. Mick Cronin and Howland have known one another since the former helped run Sonny Vaccaro’s ABCD Camp in the 1990s, going on to forge a friendship rooted in mutual respect.

UCLA coach Ben Howland celebrates after a basket by Malcolm Lee against Michigan State in the 2011 NCAA tournament.

(Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times)

There’s so many similarities between the coaches, from their demanding practices to their relentless defenses to their wry senses of humor to their lack of hair to their admiration for things that are difficult but worthwhile.

“Coaching’s changed and I can still appreciate Mick because he comes from the old school and what he’s doing is no different than what [Bob] Huggins and [Rick] Pitino did as he’s working for them and watching these guys, who are both Hall of Famers, two of the greatest coaches ever,” Howland said.

“And because you’re demanding — I mean, I think my players always knew at the end of the day that I loved them and was trying to get the most out of them, I’m trying to push them to be their very best, but as long as they know that you really love them and care about them and you want what’s best for them most of all, then they respect that and I think he does that.”

A regular at UCLA practices and games, Howland sometimes comes alone and other times brings his wife, Kim, and some combination of children Meredith and Adam and grandsons Benjamin, Elijah, Asher and Abraham.

“I really enjoy it,” Howland said of coming to games at Pauley Pavilion. “I mean, I’m a fan too. I was yelling like crazy during that Wisconsin win. I’m telling you, I was so pumped up; that was such a great win, really, really exciting because they were good and you knew how important that game was. The same thing with the Michigan State win, that was an incredible win.”

During his first year of retirement, Howland received a standing ovation during a timeout when he stepped onto the court as an honorary captain. Fans who recognize him during games shower him with appreciation, telling him that he did a great job or they really love him or they treasured his decade-long run at UCLA that was the longest by any Bruins coach since John Wooden’s 27-year reign ended in 1975.

Legendary basketball coach John Wooden, right, sits next to then-UCLA coach Ben Howland during a news conference at Honda Center in December 2006.

(Christine Cotter / Los Angeles Times)

Howland said he agreed with those who believe the school should honor its Final Four teams with a banner inside Pauley Pavilion alongside those that recognize national championships.

“I mean, in this day and age, it’s incredibly difficult to, No. 1, get to the Final Four,” Howland said, “and we can’t be arrogant to where we don’t recognize that.”

Maybe the game that gets mentioned most in any conversation with Howland is the comeback from 17 points down against Gonzaga in the Sweet 16 of the 2006 NCAA tournament. In the final seconds, with his team trailing by only one, Howland could be seen in front of the UCLA bench mimicking the defense he wanted his players to apply, waving his arms wildly.

Cedric Bozeman and Jordan Farmar complied, trapping J.P. Batista in the backcourt before Bozeman knocked the ball loose. Farmar grabbed the ball and threw a lob to teammate Luc Richard Mbah a Moute, whose layup put UCLA ahead with 9.2 seconds left. In an even more remarkable display, Mbah a Moute tackled the ball at midcourt to force a jump ball, giving the Bruins possession on the way to an eventual 73-71 triumph.

“That’s incredible — I’ve never seen that,” Howland said of Mbah a Moute’s heroic defense. “The best thing about it was the whole idea that you never stop, you keep fighting the entire time until the clock is at 0:00.”

The clock ran out on Howland’s time at UCLA after a season in which the Bruins won the Pac-12’s regular-season title but lost in the first round of the NCAA tournament. The coach whose admiration for UCLA went back to watching Wooden’s first national championship in 1964, held a farewell news conference to convey his gratitude.

“It was a real blessing to be here,” Howland said, “and I wanted to leave taking the high road, doing it the right way.”

By that point, a narrative had emerged that Howland had changed his ways, forgoing the sort of grinders such as Mbah a Moute and Lorenzo Mata-Real who had fueled his early success in favor of more prolific scorers. Howland disagreed, pointing out that he left replacement Steve Alford with five eventual NBA players — Zach LaVine, Norman Powell, Kyle Anderson, Travis Wear and Jordan Adams — upon his departure.

UCLA coach Ben Howland prepares to talk to his players during a timeout against Washington in December 2010.

(Katie Falkenberg / For the Times)

Having been offered a job by a Big Ten school — he won’t say which one — during his second-to-last-year at UCLA, Howland remained a coveted coach. He agreed to go to Mississippi State in 2015, ringing a cowbell at his introductory news conference and getting to know quirky football coach Mike Leach. (“He loved the microphone, loved to be on camera, very funny,” Howland said of the late Leach.)

Yet the recruiting challenges in rural Starkville, Miss., made winning far more difficult than it was in Westwood.

“Kids aren’t growing up saying, ‘I always wanted to be a Mississippi State Bulldog’ like they do a Bruin,” Howland said.

The Bulldogs went to one NCAA tournament in Howland’s seven seasons, losing in the first round, though they were on the bubble during a COVID-19-shortened 2019-20 season that ended after they had secured a double bye in the Southeastern Conference tournament. The school dismissed him in March 2022.

The timing proved fortuitous in that it allowed Howland to come home and spend two years with his mother before she passed away. Other family remains nearby. Howland’s son, Adam, is a deputy district attorney based in Santa Barbara and his daughter, Meredith, is a nurse who lives in Valencia. A granddaughter is expected to arrive in October.

Howland said he misses the relationships with his players and assistants, not to mention the practices and games. But old friends abound. He recently went to a Dodgers game with Mata-Real, and several links to his time at UCLA remain on campus. Doug Erickson is the do-everything director of basketball administration, Chris Carlson an associate athletic director, Kenny Donaldson a senior associate athletic director and Alex Timiraos the director of athletic communications.

“I hired Kenny as our academic coordinator,” Howland said. “Now he’s [athletic director] Martin Jarmond’s right-hand guy, along with Chris.”

The current UCLA players might as well be Howland’s given his glowing praise. Consider his takes:

On transfer point guard Donovan Dent: “Boy, to have him coming in here as the point guard next season, it’s such a critical element.”

Donovan Dent is among the new players on coach Mick Cronin’s UCLA roster for the 2025-26 season.

(David Richard / Associated Press)

On transfer big man Xavier Booker: “I watched him in our game here [against Michigan State]; I was like, who’s that guy? I liked the way he moved, I liked his athleticism. He just needs minutes. I think Mick will get a lot out of him to help his team.”

On returning forward Eric Dailey Jr.: “He had big games in big games. He’s just got to consistently bring that, but he’s only a junior.”

Howland acknowledged being “heartbroken” that center Aday Mara transferred to Michigan on the cusp of a huge season after two years of development under Cronin.

“They had done such a great job of bringing him along,” Howland said, “and he was finally going to really have the kind of year that he’s capable of this year. I think he’ll be heartbroken that he’s not here come this next season.”

One guy who can be counted on to be there at big games for the foreseeable future is a face familiar to a generation of UCLA fans, clapping wildly, his heart full, a Bruin until the end.