I freelanced for the San Diego Evening Tribune in my younger days, as a photographer.

Back then there were a couple of swell guys named Fred Gates, and Rex Salmon who sent me on wonderful assignments, and a photographer named Barry Fitzsimmons who would take me on assignments with him.

I also freelanced at the Daily Californian for Joel Zwink, who taught me alot about news photography.

I liked to shoot Padre games especially when the LA Dodgers were in town so I could watch the antics of then pitcher Fernando Valenzuela from the dodgers dugout. Back in those days the photographers sat right on the bench with the players.

On this night, Fernando was bored by the secnond inning, and so he moved the television camera man out of the way and took his place filming the game for TV.

By the third inning, he made a lasso out of rope, and swung it around his head, and threw it over the head of one of his teammates who was walking by.

Unfortunately, the rope caused the third basemen to go flying backwards, and he came over and set fire to Fernando's rope.

So Fernando threw the burning rope at the third basemen... At this point, the umpire, seeing fire, calls time out and comes over and starts screaming his head off at Tommy Lasorda for not having control of his team..

Tommy Lasorda screamed at me to get out of the dugout, but I was too in love with Fernando to leave. Besides the poor manager had no control if a photographer wanted to sit on the bench with his players.

From then on when Joel would send me to a baseball game, I couldn't have cared less about the game. All I wanted to see was how Fernando would entertain me.