Les Bowen: Checking out Andy Reid's old neighborhood in Dodger country

Young Andrew played Little League and Babe Ruth baseball on a diamond in Elysian Park, the 600-acre public area that includes the site of Dodger Stadium.

"Our ballpark was right there where the players came out, and they used to stop by,'' Reid said. "I had a Steve Yeager catcher's mitt and a Manny Mota bat. They always gave us stuff.''

Reid did not, however, acknowledge rooting for his hometown team in the National League Championship Series, which the Phils hope to close out in Game 5 tonight.

"There's still a part of me that's blue, but I've gotten to know all the Phillies guys on a personal basis. Charlie's done a phenomenal job," Reid said, giving props to his fellow oft-criticized Philly helmsman, Charlie Manuel. "His players are unbelievable. I guess I'm a little like [fellow LA exile] Chase Utley . . . We grew up Dodger fans, but we're pullin' for red right now."

Reid, a pitcher and a catcher in his youth, said his favorite Dodger Stadium memory was the usual one - Kirk Gibson and 1988. Asking a Dodgers fan of Reid's generation that question is like asking a Baby Boomer Flyers fan what he recalls from the '70s.

Reid said Yeager and second baseman Davey Lopes - now a Phils coach - were his favorite players.

"That's quite an honor. Just shows you how old you are,'' Lopes said, when informed of this fact the other day.

He and Reid have never met in Philadelphia, but Lopes wasn't surprised to hear the Eagles coach fondly recalled interacting with players in the '70s. The Dodgers organization stressed that sort of thing, Lopes said, asking players to connect with the community formally and informally.

"It makes goodwill," he said.

Reidian lore holds that the coach hails from Frogtown, a gritty, warehousy sort of neighborhood that was home to a notorious street gang in the '70s. If there are any gangs roaming Holly Knoll Drive today, their tags must be ceramic address tiles set tastefully in stucco.

Reba Poor, a 79-year-old retired nurse who has lived across the street and two doors down at 4016 Holly Knoll since 1959, laughed and shook her head at the notion that this tree-shaded, narrow, winding, tucked-away lane with its immaculately tended one-to-two-story bungalow-style homes, most built in the '20s and '30s, was part of Frogtown.

In fact, Holly Knoll shares the prestigious 90027 zip code of the Los Feliz neighborhood, and is part of a subset of that area known as Franklin Hills, Poor said. Internet research shows that similar-looking three-bedroom homes in Franklin Hills run upwards of $1 million these days. The Griffith Park observatory is nearby.

No one was home at Spanish-style 4027 when a reporter rang the doorbell yesterday, while admiring the graceful masonry archway the door is set into, and standing on the tidy, tiled front porch, which held a couple of redwood chairs and several large plants, including a few potted cactii.

"They were a very nice family,'' Poor said of the Reids.

"We've always had very good luck with our neighbors."

Elizabeth Reid, a radiologist who worked at a hospital in Burbank, was a pioneering female physician, Poor recalled. "She was from Rhode Island, but she went to medical school in Canada, in Montreal.''

Walter Reid was an artist who worked on movie sets at a studio a few blocks away, across the street from the junior high attended by Andy and his 10-years-older brother, Reggie. Both Reid boys played football a block and a half down the hill, at stately, gothic John Marshall High, which would not look out of place on the Main Line. (Leonardo DiCaprio and Heidi Fleiss, among many other notables, also attended.)

Poor, who still sees Andy whenever he's in the LA area, she said, recalled him as "a plump little guy, always active.''

He looked nothing like his much smaller-scaled parents and brother, she said, though she recalled a grandfather who was "very tall and, you know, somewhat heavyset.''

She said Andy had a more outgoing personality than his brother.

"Andy's a fun guy," she said, as the reporter standing next to her in her driveway, taking notes, silently began to wonder if he had entered some strange, parallel universe. "He's serious about his business, but he's a great guy. My daughter calls him her second brother.''

Poor is aware, she said, that

Reid is not known for demonstrating emotion or for offering insight in public settings.

"On TV, I can just tell by the expression on his face on the sideline how he's faring," she said.

She said she was not surprised that the former neighbor became a football coach.

"Andy was always a football guy," she said. "It was either football or he was going to be a sports writer. Jim Murray, he loved."

Reid, who briefly penned a sports column for the student paper at BYU, has said he tried to copy the distinctive style of Murray, the late, legendary Los Angeles Times columnist.

Poor recalled when Reid returned a few years ago to give the John Marshall High commencement address. (Apparently, he did not begin by listing injuries suffered by the senior class.) She and Reid agreed that Poor is the only neighbor remaining from his days living in the neighborhood. When he visits, she said, they don't talk about football.

"Old times, family, things like that," she said. "I guess he's not having a great year right now. I was really relieved they won in San Francisco."

That Sunday Eagles victory and the Phils' postseason success have taken a little of the heat off Reid (though seeing the Cowboys trade for Detroit wideout Roy Williams yesterday certainly did not mellow the citizenry).

Lopes is eager to share a little of the winning mojo, should the Eagles' coach find time to make his way across Broad Street when the baseball team returns home, hopefully with a World Series berth in its pocket.

"Maybe he can come over for a practice or something," Lopes said. "That'd be great." *

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