When I told my parents I had scored an interview with Dan Guerrero, they were pretty worried.
“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.
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.
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: Yeah, I go by Dan. My family calls me Danny. My old friends call me –
(I excitedly cut him off)
DM: 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.
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.