Alexander: Yes, the L.A. Sports Hall of Fame is really happening

It probably shouldn’t be surprising that the idea of finally launching a Los Angeles Sports Hall of Fame came to Dave Klewan early in 2020, when so many of us had so much time on our hands and so little to do because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Inspiration is the best way to fill a vacuum, right?

Klewan is the chairman of the board that runs the Los Angeles Sports Council, a group originally formed following the 1984 Olympic Games to eventually help bring another Olympics to Southern California. With that achieved and the 2028 Games on the horizon, it is a nonprofit that connects the many entities in what we’ve long described as the most diverse sports market on this continent, and maybe the entire planet.

During those days of shutdowns and the uncertainty of whether and when games would actually resume, Klewan thought: Why not launch a Hall of Fame to recognize the best of the best, both those who have played for SoCal teams and those athletes born or raised here who became superstars elsewhere?

That was one rhetorical question. The other: Why has this never been done before?

Maybe the answer to the latter is easier. Even if anyone had thought of it, no single entity had the myriad of connections necessary to put the whole thing together. The Sports Council seems uniquely positioned to at least begin the effort.

Klewan, who had been named chairman of the council’s board a few months prior to that brainstorm, was well aware that the council’s mission had changed to “focusing on the day-to-day ecosystem of the teams, the properties, the venues, the athletes here in this market,” he said Friday in a video interview. “For us it’s really about all of the properties here and what can we do to continue to strengthen the market? What can we do to help provide services to our constituents? And how do we continue to kind of foster the sense of Los Angeles being the epicenter of sports?

“It just clicked one morning to me. I was like, ‘What we’re missing here in this market is that kind of signature flagship, that all things that we’re doing can kind of funnel into and support … And you look at the rich history of this market, and I just couldn’t believe – I’m maybe missing something, right? Like, there has to be a Hall of Fame here.”

Nope. Individual entities had their own Halls of Fame or groups of immortals, but there was nothing representing the region as a whole.

“I thought that was a huge miss for the market, but also something that made perfect sense for us to spearhead and be involved in,” he said.

The gestation period in this case, from a glimmer of an idea to being sure enough about it to make the announcement nearly six years later, seems small when you consider how long this region has existed without a Hall of Fame, and how many athletes, coaches, contributors, media members, etc., would be legitimate candidates for the first ballot alone.

“I think I have about 772 names as of right now,” Klewan said Friday afternoon. And I’ve received a bunch myself, in response to my initial stab at a first ballot in this week’s notes column.

Yes, folks, I realize I left off John Wooden, Tiger Woods, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Kobe Bryant, Venus and Serena Williams and Fernando Valenzuela, along with the broadcasting triumvirate of Vin Scully, Chick Hearn and Bob Miller, among many, many others. Now that I know you’re paying attention, we can continue.

There are several aspects to creating an entity like this.

Who does the selecting? Klewan said the “first task” is to form a nomination and election committee, which will sift through tons of names.

How do you decide how many are inducted in the first class? Remember, we’re talking about eight full decades of big-time sports in this community – dating to the Rams’ arrival from Cleveland in 1946 – and the number of elite athletes that have played here professionally and on the major college level and those who came out of the high schools and communities of this sprawling region to become stars elsewhere.

“We could very easily put 100 people up in Year One,” Klewan said. “That’s not an issue and no one would argue you on those names. But (then) you’re going to have 20 people that get focus and attention and 80 well-deserving recipients that will not get the attention and be celebrated the way they should.

“How do we do this the right way, that we can honor everyone and have them get the attention they deserve, but also not wait for 20 years to recognize the greats that have come before us?”

It make take another year just to figure that out. In the meantime, as we’ve said, let the debates begin. That may be the best part of all of this.

“That was the first thing that popped in my head,” Klewan said. “… (The) engagement from the community, the conversations that will be here, the debates, the arguments, it’s fantastic. You know that’s what we love doing as sports fans, that shared language that cuts across barriers and across cultures and communities, right? The shared language of sports and fandom. It’s going to be really exciting.”

The next steps, beyond the mechanics of deciding who to induct, will be to make this accessible to the public. Eventually there will be a physical manifestation of the Hall, a building somewhere with plaques and memorabilia and exhibits honoring the rich history of sports in Southern California, but that will be at the back end.

More immediately, the Sports Council will use its partnerships with media and tech partners to create an virtual presence, a Hall of Fame without walls, as it were. And there will be rotating exhibits that land at various venues throughout Southern California.

And that “throughout Southern California” phrasing isn’t an accident. It may be titled the Los Angeles Sports Hall of Fame, but it will include athletes from the five counties that make up this region: L.A., Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino and Ventura.

“When we talk L.A., I look at it as the L.A. DMA (designated market area), right?” Klewan said. “Sometimes that’s hard to put in a press release, hence why we talked about the region.

“This is an area that we want to look at and recognize and embrace the greatness that has come here. (And) yes, Orange County is part of that. As much as many other Angelenos may not say it, that is part of our extended family.”

Klewan noted that in the first 24 hours since Thursday’s official announcement, he received a ton of positive feedback, the buzz matched by this reaction: “How do we not have a Hall of Fame here in Los Angeles?”

That’s one reaction that suggests this will be a huge success.

The other? Once the arguments begin about who should be in, we’ll realize what a no-brainer this was, and what we’ve been missing all these years.

jalexander@scng.com