But there is more to Mike Shaw than just his business. The son of a Pasadena police officer, Mike played on possibly the best high school football team ever in San Gabriel Valley. And one of the best ever in all of Southern California.
Mike was the starting center on the 1969 Blair High team that finished its season 13-0 after defeating Bishop Amat 28-27 in the CIF 4-A championship game played in front of nearly 30,000 people at the L.A. Coliseum.
I happened to be at the game and remember it well. It was played on Dec. 12, 1969, less than two weeks after I started a new job as a sportswriter at the old Los Angeles Herald Examiner.
I was assigned to help cover the game, which pitted the Bishop Amat splendid junior twosome, Pat Haden, who went on to quarterback USC to three Rose Bowls and two national championships before joining the Los Angeles Rams and taking them to the NFC Championship Game, and John McKay Jr., a wide receiver who also went on to play at USC and later the NFL's Tampa Bay Buccaneers, against the famous Blair Pair, seniors James McAlister, who played at UCLA and with the NFL's Philadelphia Eagles and New England Patriots, and Kermit Johnson, who also went to UCLA before the San Francisco 49ers in the NFL.
You could say, without Mike Shaw, running backs McAlister and Johnson would have never gotten the ball.
Shaw, who is 6-2, weighed 196 in high school. He’s a little over his playing weight these days, but his memories of that historic championship game have remained constant.
“I’ll never forget the winning touchdown,” Shaw said. “Charles Phillips, who went on to star as a defensive back for USC and the Raiders, was our No. 2 quarterback. He was in for Kenny Lipken and threw a 42-yard touchdown pass to our tight end, Eugene Jones.”
According to the Los Angeles Times’ account of the game, that touchdown came with about seven minutes left to play. Earlier in the fourth quarter, Johnson ran 78 yards for a touchdown to give Blair a 22-13 lead. Phillips’ touchdown pass to Jones made it 28-13.
Bishop Amat put up two more touchdowns, but a failed two-point conversion attempt after the first one put the game out of reach. Bishop Amat’s touchdown and two-point conversion on the last play of the game was just window dressing.
McAlister scored two touchdowns on runs of 25 and 33 yards and finished with 129 yards in 19 carries. Johnson had 171 yards in 18 carries, with 78 coming on his fourth-quarter touchdown.
I called Haden, a good friend, to asked about that game and he told me: "What I remember most vividly about that game is standing on the sidelines and watching McAlister just run over people. Johnson was also amazing. I'm glad I didn't have to play defense. McAlister and Johnson were men among boys."
While McAlister and Johnson went on to play at UCLA, Mike Shaw went to USC, where he was joined by Haden and McKay a year later. Shaw was a practice-team player at USC and made only one trip with the Trojans, to Cal his senior year.
After college, Shaw dabbled in radio, working as a disc jockey. But he says he had the time of his life playing football at Blair and USC. And these days, he helps people keep time, and seems to really enjoy that as well.