An LBC native, Mike Guardabascio has been covering Long Beach sports professionally for 13 years, with his work published in dozens of Southern California magazines and newspapers. He's won numerous awards for his writing as well as the CIF Southern Section’s Champion For Character Award, and is the author of three books about Long Beach history.
The562’s coverage of Lakewood Athletics is sponsored by J.P. Crawford, Class of 2013. The562’s coverage of Long Beach Poly athletics in the 2022-23 school year is sponsored by JuJu Smith-Schuster and the JuJu Foundation. The562’s coverage of Long Beach Poly athletics in the 2022-23 school year is sponsored by Poly alum Jayon Brown and PlayFair Sports Management.
Twelve years ago Long Beach Poly alum Chase Utley met a young cancer patient named Devin Smeltzer. Utley was a star with the Phillies at the time and Smeltzer was a 10 year-old who’d been undergoing treatment for bladder and prostate cancer for a year. “Baseball let me be a kid, that’s where my love […]
