So the day today is August 24th and 824 for those uninitiated happens to also be Kobe

Bryant Day because 8 was his first crazy number, 24 was his last Jersey number but we wanted

to bring you an episode, an encore presentation of an episode that isn't just about Kobe

today. We wanted to bring you a story that's also about another person who lost his life

in that fateful helicopter crash. A crash which happens to be in the news still because

this person's name was John Altabelli and as Chris Connelly explains, he was a legend,

a sports legend in his own right. It is August 24th, Wednesday, yes. And this is ESPN

daily. Chris Connelly, where does the story begin? Pablo, we start two years ago. The date

is January 28th, 2020 and we've got a junior college baseball team, the Pirates of Orange

Coast College. They're playing in their home opener in a stadium that's sort of conventionally

known as the House that Alto built. Chris Connelly is a correspondent for ESPN and ABC News.

And yet for the first time in almost three decades, this team is taking the field for its

opening day without the man who defined the program, John Altabelli. When I say this

is the House that Alto built, he didn't do it lightly. This was his dream job and he

loved every second of this job. His leadership, his love of competition, he kind of embodied

the bombardmentality. I've described him as a Kobe Bryant junior college baseball because

he knew how to win. And so while two years ago, so much of the world was mourning the

loss of Kobe Bryant, this team and this community was mourning someone very close to them as

well. They were mourning a loss of a husband, a father, a leader, a role model, and a pillar

of the community. I know that he's proud of our guys for being out here today and we're

going to do the best we can to honor him and everything we do moving forward.

It's been exactly two years since a helicopter crashed in the mountains near Los Angeles,

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