You may notice a couple of OC faces in the upcoming baseball movie “Moneyball” starring Brad Pitt. Lake Forest resident and former El Toro High star shortstop Nick Porrazzo and Brent Dohling, first-year baseball coach at Irvine’s Tarbut V’Torah, portray Oakland Athletics teammates Jeremy Giambi and Mark Ellis, respectively. UCI head baseball coach Mike Gillespie, assistant coach Bob Macaluso and retired Long Beach State coach and Irvine resident Mike Weathers were extras who may or may not make it onto the screen. Gillespie’s son-in-law, former major league catcher and former USC head baseball coach Chad Kreuter, advised on the film, and some shooting was done at Blair Field in Long Beach …
California repeated as the worst state for business in Chief Executive magazine’s annual survey of more than 500 CEOs. Texas ranked as the best; Utah, Nevada, Arizona and Wyoming also made the top 15 …
The Golden State got a better review from recent visitor Valdis Dombrovskis. The Latvian prime minister said he’d heard all about California’s economic malaise, but found the state “optimistic and forward-looking.” “It’s a great place. I love it!” he said at Allergan’s Irvine headquarters. It was Dombrovskis’ first time in the Southland. “Is Santa Barbara in Orange County?” he asked the Insider, explaining that was as far south as he got on a tour in 1997. This time Dombrovskis was crossing the U.S. on a trade mission pitching his small country as a business-friendly and cost-effective springboard to Russia and the Baltic region. He cut spending and slashed debt to pull Latvia through the recent global financial meltdown, becoming a case study in how to implement austerity measures while maintaining political popularity. What’s Dombrovskis’ advice for government leaders here? Courage. Citizens “expect their politicians to deal with the problems.” Well, maybe in Latvia …
OC’s “Mr. Republican,” Tom Fuentes, is at home under hospice care, seeing friends and still holding court …
Ed Hart is new executive director of the Family Business Council at Cal State Fullerton’s Mihaylo b-school. He was director of business development at USC’s Marshall b-school and before that was GM of the OC Flyers minor-league baseball team in Fullerton …
New York-based fitness company Equinox has purchased the upscale Sports Club/LA in Irvine, as well as the clubs in Los Angeles, Beverly Hills and New York’s Rockefeller Center. It says over the next six months each club will switch to the Equinox brand and get multi-million-dollar makeovers …
EE RR is reading the teleprompter without contacts after Lasik surgery performed by Dr. Roger Steinert, head of UCI’s Gavin Herbert Eye Institute, using Jim Mazzo’s devices (Santa Ana-based Abbott Medical Optics’ excimer and femtosecond lasers) …
Young at heart: Dick and Toni Reiff, greatest parents ever and still madly in love, celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary over the weekend in Chicago.
