All I ever really wanted to do was be a writer. I might have settled for being a Major League Baseball player or being a professional pianist, but I wasn’t very good at baseball and I couldn’t play the piano.

No doubt because I was a precocious reader, I took to writing at an early age. I turned pro when I was 19 and became the original movie reviewer for Los Angeles magazine. But before that, I had begun reviewing movies for the UCLA Daily Bruin. How that came to be was the first of the lucky moments that have provided the impetus to my career.

I had been writing short humorous pieces for the Daily Bruin for about a year when the reviewer graduated. Unfortunately, there was a female staffer who also wanted the gig. The managing editor decided we should compete. He directed us to attend the press preview of a new movie that evening. However, when I arrived at the theater, I was told that someone from UCLA was already inside, and there wasn’t a second pass. It’s possible that my competitor, Shirley Follmer, had brought a date, not knowing he would be sitting in my seat. I don’t believe she intentionally sabotaged me because we were friends and she wasn’t that sort of person.

Fortunately, the guy at the door let me have the one-page flier, so I knew the title of the movie and the cast.

Having no option, I went home and panned “The Seven Hills of Rome” starring Mario Lanza.

I wound up getting the gig. I always felt I had an unfair advantage because while Shirley was sitting through the movie, I was home writing and honing the review.

My next bit of luck occurred when I tried getting a job in advertising as a copywriter. I knew so little about advertising that I had no idea to whom to address my query. I believe I sent it to some imaginary figure I chose to call the office manager. Fortunately, my goofy letter, which explained I needed a job because my mother wanted me out of the house, landed on the desk of the creative director. Perhaps because he, too, had a Jewish mother, I got the job.

A few years after that, because I was still reviewing movies for Los Angeles magazine, I was contacted by the LA Times. Its longtime reviewer, who had begun in the silent days, had finally reached retirement age, which, at the Times, was probably 107, and it was looking for a replacement.

I was taken to lunch and interviewed by both the managing editor and the editor of the entertainment section. I thought it went well until I found out that my competition this time was the entertainment editor. It seems he wanted to be a reviewer in addition to being the editor, but the managing editor felt that was a bad idea. But, ultimately, the entertainment editor prevailed.

By way of a consolation prize, the managing editor dangled the inside front page of West magazine, which was one of the paper’s Sunday supplements. He asked me what I would do with the space if I had it. I said I would write a little story with a beginning, a middle and an end.

He said they would pay me to write two samples, and if he liked them, I’d get the job. Fortunately, prior to all this, I had been interviewed by the newly hired editor of West. New to LA, he had been interviewing every writer and illustrator in town. When I met with him, I pitched him a story about a real life private eye after first checking the Yellow Pages to make sure they actually existed.

My notion was to compare the image we had been brought up on in movies and books with the reality. I even had one picked out. There was a one-inch ad that showed a woman wearing an old-fashioned policewoman’s cap. But for some reason I can no longer remember, I never followed up on the freelance assignment.

Now, newly motivated, I called her up.

She turned out to be an elderly woman who had worked for the LAPD, but probably 30 years earlier. When I interviewed her, I asked her what sort of cases she worked on. Mainly, she told me, she would show up at rich people’s homes pretending to be a guest when they were celebrating a wedding or an anniversary. Her job was to keep an eye on the pricey gifts, making certain that nobody went home with more than they had brought.

I asked her if she ever got involved with divorce cases involving cheating spouses. She was shocked at the question, explaining that she would never take on something that tawdry because her granddaughter typed up all her cases.

Perfect. I couldn’t have come up with anything further from the mean dark streets of Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett if I had invented my own private eye.

The piece, as they say — but are usually wrong — wrote itself.

Not one to take unnecessary chances, I didn’t write a second piece until they gave me the job.

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The next little miracle took a longer time coming. I had been trying to break into TV for some years. I had been writing sample scripts for my favorite sitcoms and writing sketches for Steve Allen’s variety show, but I didn’t even have an agent. So I would mail my material to the shows, but I’d never hear back from anyone.

But one day, my phone rang and on the line was someone claiming to be Jack Webb. So, assuming it was a former Daily Bruin colleague, Harry Shearer, I hung up. He should have known better than to call before 9 a.m. doing one of his stupid impressions.

A few seconds later, the phone rang again. This time the voice said, “This is Jack Webb. We got cut off.” This time I knew it was really Jack Webb because Harry would have been doing his favorite Paul Harvey, saying “G'Day.”

It seems Webb was a fan of my Sunday pieces and wanted to know if I’d be interested in writing a “Dragnet.” This was the reincarnation of the original series, the one with Harry Morgan as Sgt. Friday’s sidekick.

I had to explain that I had been a fan of the original but hadn’t tuned in the new version. He said that was okay, that I could drive over to Universal Studio and he’d give me some samples. I got to write eight episodes before we parted company.

My next stroke of luck came when I received a call from writer-producer Leonard Stern. It seems that he was a fan of my movie reviews. Actually, as he explained it, he and his brother-in-law, Budd Schulberg, were both fans of my movie reviews, and as he and Budd had never agreed about anything, he was dying to meet me. So he took me to lunch and I finally got a chance to write a sitcom script for “The Governor and J.J.”

The next time I required divine intervention came at a most opportune time. After working with Leonard Stern for a few years, mainly spent writing a couple of “McMillan & Wife” episodes and developing a short-lived series called “Brock,” I was once again looking for TV work and not finding it. However, I was still writing my humor column for the LA Times.

Anyway, one day I got a call from my two-person agency. It was the wife calling to say they were taking in a third partner, and he would be overseeing the area of comedy. She invited me in to meet the moron.

At the time, I had three premises for shows with them. They were a sitcom, a western and a mystery. This guy began to critique them. But he was mixing up elements of one with the other. After a while, I stopped trying to correct him. When he was done insulting my work, he said: “I have an idea for a series that you could write up.”

“But you don’t even like the stuff I’ve written.”

“True, but this time I’d help.”

Great, I recall thinking, I have an agent who wants to break into the business. I told him I’d think about it. He then asked which shows I’d like to write for. I pretty much rattled off the CBS lineup: “All in the Family,” “Bob Newhart,” “Mary Tyler Moore,” “MASH”… Then I noticed he was leaning over holding his head in his hands. I figured he had a migraine. I asked him the cause of his discomfort.

Looking up, he said: “You’re only naming the hottest shows on TV.”

“Okay, how about this — inasmuch as I have a family to support, I’ll write for any show you can get me.”

“At least that’s reasonable.”

I had arrived in an Oldsmobile, but I drove home in a huff, steaming all the way.

When I got home, my wife told me I’d had a phone call from Larry Gelbart, somebody I had never really spoken to.

However, about six months before, because I would sometimes mention my high school, Fairfax, in my column, I had been invited to emcee the school’s 50th anniversary event. Part of the festivities was having a person come on stage and reminisce about life at Fairfax in each of its five decades. Gelbart represented the ‘40s, I handled it for the '50s. But our contact had been limited to my inviting him on stage.

As it happens, the Sunday prior to my meeting my new agent, I had devoted my column to the fact that for all the bad-mouthing TV receives, the best comedy in America for the past 25 years had come to us via our TV sets, thanks to a bunch of nearly anonymous writers named Mel Tolkin, Nat Hiken, Danny Arnold, Larry Gelbart and a few others.

When I returned Gelbart’s call, he began by apologizing for not calling after the event at Fairfax High. He said that he and his wife had dreaded it, but I had been very amusing and they had had a good time. And of course he wanted to thank me for mentioning him in the column.

I thanked him for the kind words and was ready to hang up when I heard him say, “If you ever come up with an idea for 'MASH’ shoot it over to me at 20th Century Fox and we’ll give you a shot at writing a script.”

No sooner had I hung up then I called my agent and said: “You’re fired. Apparently, ‘MASH’ isn’t quite as locked up as you told me it was 20 minutes ago.”

As soon as I got off the phone, I felt great. Two seconds later, I realized that I not only didn’t have a TV career, I no longer even had an agent. Talk about your Pyrrhic victories! What’s more, I wasn’t really a fan of “MASH.” I had hated the movie and wasn’t crazy about the series. But I knew I had to do something, so I sat down in my writing chair with a pen and a steno pad and said a quiet prayer for an idea.

The idea that came to me was that a slightly wounded soldier would show up at the MASH unit without dog tags, claiming to be Jesus Christ.

I sent in the two pages to Gelbart, and a couple of months later, “Quo Vadis, Capt. Chandler” would air, the first of my eight MASH scripts.

The last miracle came in 1998. Because of age discrimination in Hollywood, I had basically been unemployed for most of the ‘90s. My wife and I had to sell our condo, cash in my life insurance and finally go through bankruptcy.

One day, through strange circumstances, I got a call. I was going to get a chance to write an episode of the Dick Van Dyke series “Diagnosis Murder.” One of the show’s writers let me know they were looking to add another staffer. They had already narrowed it down to a couple of writing teams, but if I came through with flying colors, I might snag the prize because the show’s budget was pretty small and one writer is cheaper than two.

Fortunately, everyone, including Van Dyke, loved “Santa Claude” and I was hired.

I suspect I have just about run out of miracles, but, then again, I’d say I’ve had more than my fair share.