The coolest guy I know was a big-time ballplayer and a great singer

Who is the coolest guy you ever met?

Columnist Bob Greene once wrote about a similar subject, interviewing football great Frank Gifford about what it was like to always know he was the coolest guy in the room.

Flan.

I never met Gifford, although I did interview him over the phone in August 1983. I would have to say that if any one person stood out to me as the coolest I ever met, it would have to be Tim Flannery.

Think about it. If you look at two of the greatest things a guy could do to be cool, you might come up with ballplayer (in whatever sport) and singer.

Flannery has done both -- in spades. He played 11 seasons in the majors with the San Diego Padres and since then has stayed in the game first as a minor league manager and then as a third-base coach for his friend Bruce Bochy.

Flan.

He has earned two World Series rings with the San Francisco Giants in 2010 and 2012, but he has done something else as well. Beginning more than 20 years ago with a band that covered Jimmy Buffett songs, he has gone on to make a dozen albums. The boy can sing.

I have one of them -- "Highway Song" -- on my iPod, and I definitely plan on adding a few more as time goes on.

I became acquainted with Flan in 1994 when he was manager of the Class A Rancho Cucamonga Quakes of the California League. I was the only reporter covering the team, so we had numerous opportunities to talk. It was always enjoyable.

Like I said, the coolest guy I ever met.

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A lot of the people I worked with knew me only as a metro columnist (1996-2001) or as a business reporter and editor (2001-08), but I did spent my first 16-plus years in the business covering sports.

When I first decided to become a journalist, my ultimate goal was to be a baseball writer, covering a big league team year round -- spring training, home games and road games. I never quite accomplished that, although I covered 80-90 Dodger games in both 1990 and 1991.

The one season I covered a team home and away for the whole season, it was a minor league team. In 1995, when Tim Flannery moved on to manage at Las Vegas and former Red Sox second baseman Marty Barrett took over the Quakes, I traveled to cover road games. At least four of the away trips were day trips, and there was nothing outside California. Still, I went as far north as Visalia and Modesto in the Central Valley, and Stockton and San Jose up near San Francisco.

It was definitely fun.