For this Cincinnati guy who worked for the hometown Reds for some of the years Sparky Anderson managed there, it was a wonderful surprise to see the Hall of Fame manager, who died Thursday in Thousand Oaks at the age of 76, at a USC football practice a few years back.

I'd gotten to know many of the Reds just by being around as the night stadium superintendent at Riverfront Stadium. But Sparky, who took over the Reds at the age of 35 and looked like he was 50 with his all-white hair, wasn't in that group. He was all baseball.

My first connection to him came from collecting his signed lineup cards from the dugout after Reds games. They were supposed to tear them up. But they didn't always and when they didn't, I had a souvenir.

The last time I'd seen Sparky, before that USC practice came on a day in November of 1978. A friend of mine had played for him in the minors and he'd just gotten a call. Sparky had been fired by the first-year Reds general manager just hours before and was going to be at Riverfront Stadium packing up all his things and we could help.

As we did. And there I was, with this Cincinnati baseball icon, helping him load up all his memorabilia and awards from his nine years of leading the Big Red Machine. It was kind of surreal. He'd been as surprised by the firing as we were.

And as you might guess, he was not pleased. He'd pick up one packable piece of whatever and cuss, and chuck it into a bag or box, and then move onto the next one. And all the two of us could do was join in. He couldn't believe it. We couldn't believe it.

Helping him take that stuff out to his car almost made you feel like a traitor to your hometown.

And then came that day at USC football practice. And there he was, not sure exactly why although I'm guessing he was there with legendary USC baseball coach Rod Dedeaux. In those Pete Carroll days, it was never a surprise to see anybody there.

And even though he'd already had his first heart attack and was suffering a bit from Parkinson's, Sparky was the guy he always was. I reintroduced myself to him, saying I'd finally gotten to the West Coast. And I knew he'd gone to Dorsey High not too far away so I asked him how close he lived to USC as a kid.

And it was like a light turned on for Sparky. He started pointing and talking about how, as a kid he'd walked the streets to USC's Bovard Field and how they let him be the bat boy and how it might have made all the difference in his life.

He loved USC for the chance it gave him. It got this young man from South Dakota off the tough streets of the big city where he'd moved when he was nine.

And it did something else. It made him realize even if he wasn't college material academically, he had a gift.

And thanks to his early days at USC, he was able to realize that gift.

I read somewhere that five times in the Dodgers minor league system, he was voted "Smartest man in the league." But he made it clear that "They weren't talking about books."

I can still see him now, a big smile on his face, reliving his days as a kid, with a single care in the world -- baseball.

And how it was USC, he said, that made it possible for the neighborhood kid to live a Hall of Fame life in the game he so loved. He'd go on to win three World Series and become the first manager to win 100 games in each league.

But he never forgot where he started.

So long Sparky. Thanks. You were special.