When I told my parents I had scored an interview with Dan
Guerrero, they were pretty worried.Â
“You better get your act together for this,” my dad
said.
My dad was right; I mean, this guy fired Bob Toledo and Steve
Lavin, so imagine what he could do to me. I conducted the interview
with one question in mind: who is Dan Guerrero? What makes this guy
tick? Does he prefer Dijon or deli mustard on his corned beef
sandwich?
So I sat down for an interview with Dan last Tuesday in his
office on the third floor of the Morgan Center.Â
We lounged on adjacent couches in his expansive office. I was a
little intimidated, but I kept telling myself that the interview
was just two Daniels talking about life.
In talking to Guerrero, it quickly became apparent that he is a
true Bruin. When Dan played baseball here in the early 1970s he was
nicknamed “warrior.” This is a moniker he feels
still applies to himself.
“My coaches gave me that name because I was always a very
aggressive player and I demanded a lot from myself and from my
teammates,” he said.
By the way, guerrero is the word for warrior in
Spanish. What a coincidence! How perfect is that (you know
because Dan’s last name is the Spanish word for his
nickname)?!
Since I want to be a linguistic anthropologist when I grow up,
it’s super interesting that Mr. Guerrero goes by Dan and not
his full name, Daniel.
I go by Daniel.Â
Here’s the transcript of our discussion of semantics.
Daniel Miller: I was wondering if you always went by Dan? I go
by Daniel.
Dan Guerrero:Â Yeah, I go by Dan. My family calls me Danny.
My old friends call me ““
(I excitedly cut him off)
DM:Â People call me Danny; nobody has ever called me Dan. It
never stuck.
DG: Yeah.
(awkward silence)
Guerrero played second base and hit .343 during his three years
on the varsity team ““ good enough to get him into
UCLA’s Hall of Fame.
When I first heard Guerrero played baseball here my little ears
perked up just like a little cute doggie’s because I knew
this meant Dan had faced the Trojans in his playing days. When
Guerrero was on the team, the Trojans were a national powerhouse in
baseball, winning four national championships in that time. Surely
bringing this up with Guerrero would elicit a malicious anti-USC
diatribe.Â
I asked Guerrero how deep his dislike for USC runs.
“If you’ve ever worn the UCLA uniform that emotion
runs very deeply. That’s what’s great about the rivalry
““ there are very few rivalries across the country that have
the uniqueness of the USC-UCLA rivalry, being that the schools are
in the same town,” diplomatic Dan said.
It’s not politically correct for an athletic director to
talk about hatred for another school, so that’s as close as
we are going to get. But I think that means he hates USC.
Since I wanted to know what Dan the man is like, I naturally
asked him about his taste in music. Because you can tell a lot
about a person by the type of music they like. I like Pavement.
Other people like Savage Garden.
Well, Guerrero likes 1950s jazz ““ John Coltrane, Miles
Davis, Johnny Griffin, Eddie “Lockjaw” Davis and the
like. I’m not a jazz maven, but I’ve always felt that
in my development as a music fan and as a human being, being
obsessed with jazz for at least a little while would be
essential.
Everyone has a jazz fan in the family ““ you know,
that freaky cousin who after coming home for Thanksgiving
weekend during his first year of school at Humboldt can only blab
about the sheer genius of Coltrane.
While I don’t think Guerrero is that weird, I’m glad
he likes jazz. The interview was brief, and I only got glimpses of
his personality, which was hidden in pretty standard responses to
my questions, but I was impressed by the fact that the former UCLA
second baseman did come off like a Bruin.
Guerrero and I have more in common than he may know. I played
second base in Little League. And miller is the French word for
something.
See, he’s just like the rest of us.
I’ll be back later. Say goodbye at
dmiller@media.ucla.edu.