His star-studded background takes back seat on sidelines
It doesn’t happen as much as it should, but I’ve come across a real character -- with character.
The guy was goalie of the decade for Jacksonville University, like anyone cares, a P.R. guy for the Chicago Winds in a football league that disappeared because no one cared, and shadowed Muhammad Ali while carrying $100,000 in a bag -- hoping Ali might care enough about money to wear the Pony shoes he was promoting.
“There’s a picture of Bob Hope at the Great Wall of China,” said Frank Pace, our real character with character, “and he’s in Pony shoes.”
Frank Pace has done everything he could to get Jacksonville’s Artis Gilmore in the Hall of Fame, continues to work as agent for Rod Carew and early on produced the TV pilot for “Murphy Brown” before producing “Suddenly Susan” and “The George Lopez Show.”
He went from Candice Bergen to Brooke Shields to George Lopez and never once let on about the obvious change in scenery he faced every day.
He hopped a plane to L.A. as a college grad because it was snowing in Indiana, and while he had never been to L.A., it wasn’t snowing and seemed as good a place as any to get a job.
Later he had it all together in San Diego, a nice advertising firm, large home in Del Mar, just married, a kid on the way and was doing racquetball matches for a new network called the Entertainment and Sports Programming Network.
He walked away from all that to give Hollywood a whirl, producing 114 episodes of “Head of the Class” and making a well-received movie about Babe Ruth.
Somewhere in there he was spending time in Russia with Mike Tyson. So many experiences, not to mention -- as he would prefer it -- TV shows that bombed like “Billy” and “Bless This House” with Andrew Dice Clay.
Add to all the accomplishments a humongous list of friends, the result of a lifetime philosophy: “I don’t believe in passing through anything. If you make a friend in high school or college or wherever, why isn’t that person a friend for life?”
It seems like a life well-lived, and yet beyond his family, I haven’t even mentioned what he holds the dearest in life.
He’s co-soccer coach for the Flintridge Sacred Heart Academy all-girls school, and while whipty-do, he takes no money, prompting Jim Johnson, father of one of the school’s former players, to say, “One hundred grand wouldn’t pay enough to cover the effort he puts in here.”
Pace has coached high school soccer for more than a decade, but much of that time no one at the school knew about his TV/Hollywood background. If I tried to make a TV show with Andrew Dice Clay, I’d want to keep it quiet too.
The girls might not have known about his background, but they knew he was there, his voice booming on every misstep: “Eye-yi-yi.”
“Hey, I was just a father trying to buy two hours a day with his daughter before she was finished with high school,” Pace explained, staying behind then to help build Sacred Heart into a private-school power and place other girls in college.
He contacted coaches across the country, matching girl to college, 19 of his players returning last weekend to play in an alumni game and pay tribute to someone who cared.
“He understands he has the ability and capability to change someone’s life,” said Rebecca Fleming, her daughter moving on to the University of New Mexico next year. “But he’s more than a soccer coach. These are his daughters, and for a single parent, he’s also a father figure.”
He’s old enough to also stand in for anyone’s grandfather if necessary.
“When my daughter goes to college,” Fleming said, “I know she’ll stay in touch because she now has a friend for life in Frank Pace.”
Pace kept it together when the program lost an assistant coach killed in a car crash and a former player, who died from a heart defect. This season the team is honoring the father of one of the players, who recently died.
“I can’t tell you how much he helped my daughter when she lost her father,” said Valerie Harragin. “I don’t believe in fate and all that stuff, but Frank Pace is in the right place.”
His good buddy, Lopez, invited him to spend an expense-free week golfing in Hawaii, but Pace really does know his place.
“Instead, I’ll be on the sidelines for the Los Tacos Holiday Soccer Festival in Glendale,” he said.
Eye-yi-yi.
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I DO a 10-minute call-in on KLAA (830) every Tuesday, so I have to listen to Dave Smith and Roger Lodge once a week.
Before I came on Lodge was talking about the Tustin High female athletic trainer arrested for allegedly molesting an underage male student.
Smith’s immediate response: “God bless her, God bless her. I say give her a raise.”
Lodge, who would later join in on the frivolity with Smith, initially tried to remind Smith the boy was 15.
Smith’s response: “I say put a statue of her in front of the school,” later adding, “This is a good thing she’s doing.”
I can’t imagine what it must be like to listen to these guys every day, but now I have no intention of finding out.
A spokesman for KLAA said station management has addressed the situation.
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TODAY’S LAST word comes in e-mail from John Raymond:
“Why do you hate SC so much?”
and
TODAY’S LAST word comes in e-mail from Sean Sydnor:
“You remind me of my girlfriend’s dad, he is a complete USC homer. I bet if UCLA went 12-0, you’d never give them any props.”
Just another day at the office.
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