Fame is not only fickle but weird, and being a California community-college football coach might be the least likely path to achieving it. It's a rough landscape: no scholarships, no dorms for players, no media coverage. Nobody really wants to be there. It's a stop along the way for an often-colorful contingent of wanderers and seekers and fighters, those who believe in themselves despite all available evidence. And what they're seeking is pretty consistent: someone who shares their belief, or is at least willing to entertain it.

John Beam did more than entertain it. He created it, fostered it, and held onto it with a fierce defiance. He could take your belief and make it his belief, and vice versa. Beam spent 45 years teaching and coaching in Oakland, first at Skyline High and then Lan

See Full Page