The video is grainy, but Dave Roberts’ thin mustache and Aaron Boone’s peach fuzz are discernible. The year was 1992 and the future managers of the Dodgers and New York Yankees were 19-year-old freshmen immersed in a rousing chapter of Los Angeles’ prominent college rivalry.
Now 52, Roberts and Boone will lead Major League titans in the World Series beginning Friday at Dodger Stadium. Since college, they ascended on parallel paths, enjoying solid professional playing careers before becoming fixtures on the top step of the dugouts of the most storied franchises in baseball.
That’s the way it’s supposed to turn out for alums of a city’s two most prestigious universities, right?
Roberts batted leadoff and played left field for UCLA. Boone batted sixth and played third base for USC. The game was wild, with the Bruins taking an early 7-1 lead and the Trojans scoring nine runs in the eighth inning to win 13-8.
Roberts, batting left-handed, led off the game with a single on an infield chopper that bounded over the pitcher’s head. The Bruins’ all-time leading base stealer to this day with 109, Roberts was thrown out attempting to swipe third, with Boone applying the tag.
Boone, batting right-handed, scored the go-ahead run in the eighth after hitting an RBI single. He also dove to catch a bunt on the fly early in the game. Roberts was on first base and alertly scampered back to avoid a double play.
“We weren’t friends,” Roberts said of Boone, smiling at the memory. “At that point in time I didn’t care too much for him. I don’t think he cared too much for me. I do recall that they probably got the best of us, so that probably enhanced my distaste for him and the Trojans. But he was a heck of a ballplayer.”
So was Roberts, who in three seasons at UCLA batted .326 with a .425 on-base percentage, scoring 176 runs and accumulating 241 hits in 181 games. Boone played 174 games at USC, batting .302 with 11 home runs and 94 runs batted in.
Boone blossomed as a junior, batting .340 with a .922 OPS and 26 stolen bases, and was a third-round draft pick of the Cincinnati Reds. The Boone family is baseball royalty, with his grandfather Ray, father Bob and brother Bret enjoying lengthy playing careers.
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Bob Boone took Aaron and Bret to the ballpark regularly during his 19 seasons as a catcher, primarily with the Angels and Philadelphia Phillies.
“One of the things I’m so grateful for is my dad always took us with him,” Aaron Boone told USC Today in 2018. “We got to know and be around so many great guys, got to do so many great things at the ballpark as kids growing up that allowed us to fall in love with the game.”
The slightly built Roberts wasn’t as highly regarded by scouts and he lasted until the 28th round until being selected by the Detroit Tigers. He beat the odds, however, playing 10 big league seasons and earning $23.6 million.
With Boone and Roberts in the lineups, the Trojans won 11 of 20 games against the Bruins. Boone scored the winning run in the 10th inning of a different game in ’92 and his RBI single in the ninth gave the Trojans a 1-0 win in ’94. Roberts scored the winning run for UCLA in the 11th inning of a game in ’94 after hitting a single and stealing second.
Neither player made it to Omaha, Neb., for the College World Series. UCLA lost in the regional finals in 1992 and USC did the same in 1993 and 1994. Yet their postseason fortunes changed a decade later. Both are best remembered for one shining postseason moment in the storied American League rivalry between the Yankees and Boston Red Sox.
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Boone’s walkoff home run in Game 7 of the 2003 ALCS sent the Yankees to the World Series and the Red Sox home. With cheers of 56,000 fans thundering through Yankee Stadium, Boone quipped, “What I want to know is, what are all these people doing in my dream?”
Roberts’ stolen base a year later enabled the Red Sox to stay alive in the ALCS and eventually eliminate the Yankees and win the World Series for the first time since 1918 by sweeping the St. Louis Cardinals. Years later in an interview with The Times, Roberts said he leaned on advice from Dodgers stolen-base king Maury Wills: “Maury told me that anyone can do the safe thing, but it takes someone special to take a chance.”
The memories are sweet, but Boone and Roberts know better than to mention them in conversation with each other.
“I’d probably give him a lot of grief if he brought up that homer to beat the Sox and he would return the favor if I brought up the stolen base,” Roberts said.
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They have plenty of current events to discuss. Roberts is in his ninth season as Dodgers’ manager, having posted a regular-season record of 851-506 for a winning percentage of .627 — the highest in Major League history. His teams have made the postseason every year and are 52-43 with four World Series appearances, including a championship in 2020.
Boone has enjoyed sustained regular-season success in seven seasons with the Yankees, posting a winning record every year and going 603-429 (.584). He is 21-19 in the postseason and this is the Yankees’ first World Series appearance since 2009.
“We have a lot of mutual friends, we sort of have similar circles,” Roberts said. “We talked before he got the Yankees job. We’ve got a very good relationship.”
To this day Boone follows USC — especially the football team. He played football in high school and even contemplated attending a college where he could play both sports. But his brother Bret had been a Trojan.
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“I went through high school with nothing on my mind other than wanting to go to USC. And that became a reality,” he said. “It’s one of those places, where most everyone who experiences it, you understand that you are in a very special place. It’s three years of my life that I look back on so fondly.”
Roberts feels likewise about UCLA. He became the first minority manager of the Dodgers — his father is Black and his mother Japanese — and it was another former Bruin, Jackie Robinson, who broke the color barrier as a player when he debuted with the Dodgers in 1947.
“To be the first African-American manager as well, it’s kind of multilayered for me,” Roberts told UCLA’s Optimism magazine in 2015. “I played at Jackie Robinson Stadium. I played for UCLA and the Dodgers. On the road, my alias is Jackie Robinson. He’s somebody whom I have so much adoration for, and it’s fascinating to see the African American culture relate, and the Japanese culture relate, and the UCLA faithful relate.”
College allegiances must take a backseat to Dodger blue and Yankee pinstripes for now. Boone was asked during spring training a few years ago what he’d think of playing the Dodgers and matching wits with Roberts in a World Series.
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“I’d sign up for that!,” he said. “If that was in the cards, I’d definitely sign up for that.”
It begins Friday.
“It is very cool that we played against each other as college rivals and now you can just see that this rivalry with the Dodgers and Yankees, it is pretty special, it goes way back and we are doing it again, opposing one another,” Roberts said. “It’s pretty remarkable.”
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This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
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