It was the day he took Muhammad Ali to lunch at his parent’s Canoga Park home in 1992 that he saw the look he had been waiting for in his father’s eyes.
He had dropped out of school years earlier to sell baseball cards for a living, and his parents were disappointed. Like all parents, they wanted their son to go to college and get an education that would lead to a real job and future.
The look now in his father’s eyes said something different. The disappointment was gone, replaced by pride.
Muhammad Ali was eating a sandwich in his kitchen, singing the praises of their 24-year-old son for the job he was doing handling all the merchandising agreements for Ali’s memorabilia.
From that moment on, his father became one of his biggest supporters, Harlan Werner said. What son or daughter doesn’t want to see pride in their parent’s eyes?
Meet the San Fernando Valley kid who built an empire selling dreams for a living. If a picture’s worth a thousand words, Harlan’s got a novel to write. There he is with Ali and Vin Scully — with Sandy Koufax, Joe Namath and Sly Stallone — hanging out like old friends.
They had trusted their most personal and valued memorabilia to this long-haired kid from the Valley who began trading and selling baseball cards at 13, promoting card shows at 15, and opened his own sports card store at the corner of Woodman Avenue and Ventura Boulevard in 1985 when he was 16.
By 24, he was having lunch with Muhammad Ali at his parent’s house.
“I caught a tremendous break at 15 when I met (baseball manager) Sparky Anderson,” Harlan said. “I looked him up in the phone book under ‘G’ (George) Anderson living out in Thousand Oaks, and said I’d love for him to attend one of my card shows. He came and we formed a close friendship.
“Driving back from an event one day he said, ‘Harlan, you’re going to be the guy representing the old ballplayers.’ I said I don’t know any old ballplayers. Sparky said to leave that to him. He knew plenty. That’s how my business started.”
He had grown up a Dodger fan, idolizing players like Koufax, Don Drysdale and Roy Campanella, and now he would be responsible for maximizing their financial futures, making sure they got top dollar for their memorabilia.
“When you work with someone like Sandy Koufax for over three decades, someone who’s held in such high regard, you don’t really need much of a resume because Sandy’s as good as it gets as a person,” Harlan said.
“As a kid, I wanted to play baseball, but I was horrible. I became sports editor of the Canoga Park High School paper, and decided I wanted to get into broadcasting. I wrote fan letters to all the local sportscasters asking for advice.”
Only one wrote him back — Vin Scully, the best of them all. Years later, he would form a friendship with Scully and help curate his sport’s memorabilia collection for sale.
“I still have 10 messages from Vin on my phone,” Harlan said. “The first time he said my name I got goose bumps. It was an honor to spend time with him. I loved Vin.”
It was an easy thing to do.
He also loved Ali, with whom he worked for 20 years, right up to six months before the champ died. By then, he was more of an old friend helping out with care-giving than a sports rep.
As with Koufax and Scully, he never had a contract with Ali, only a handshake. Their word was more ironclad than any legal document could ever be.
“They all had one thing in common,” Harlan said. “They were great at their job. That’s what set them apart. Their greatness and their integrity.”
Today, integrity is a much harder sell when so much money is at stake, he said.
“Back in the day, you couldn’t fill up your gas tank with (the value of) cards, now you can buy yachts with some of them. This used to be a hobby of enjoyment, now it’s a multi-billion dollar business. People buy something, put it into a box and never look at it.”
Where’s the enjoyment in that?
There’s a big effort now to get more kids into trading cards again and in bringing back more card shows. It’s going to take some time, but he’s gearing up, Harlan said.
He’s begun a Memorabilia Network to bring back that enjoyment, and opened a store in the Westfield Plaza in Sherman Oaks, not far from his old, card store he opened at 16 — nearly 40 years ago.
He hasn’t changed a bit. At 55, his hair is still down to his shoulders, only it’s white now. In the business world, looking like a hippie could be the kiss of death, but for Harlan it’s a badge of confidence.
He learned from the best. If you’re great at what you do and have integrity, nobody cares how long your hair is.
Dennis McCarthy’s column appears on Sunday. He can be reached at dmccarthynews@gmail.com.