T.J. Simers: Lou Zamperini dishes it out, even at Pete Carroll Pete Carroll is back in town and onstage. He's sitting beside Lou Zamperini. They are here in the Clive Davis Theater in the Grammy Museum at L.A. Live. It's a "Winforever" event, Pete Carroll's approach to achieving success, which probably should be called "Winoccasionally" since he moved to Seattle. Uncle Pete is not amused, and right away it's like old times. Zamperini is 95, a former USC student and inspirational speaker now. He's telling everyone what it was like to be stranded on a raft in the Pacific Ocean for 47 days during World War II, no drinking water after a while, wrestling sharks and eating a four-footer's liver to remain alive. I figure the best Carroll can do is talk about the time he found himself in troubled waters against UCLA and had to suffer while explaining how he lost to Karl Dorrell's football team. It's that kind of here-and-there night, Zamperini meeting Adolf Hitler and Carroll running from the NCAA. PR whiz Steve Webster gives everyone a chance at evening's end to personally tell Carroll he can't win without a quarterback in Seattle. Moderator Yogi Roth is terrific and does his best to find common ground in this inaugural "Always Compete" fundraiser with two men who mean something entirely different when they say, "Never say die." Zamperini is talking about his bomber crashing, nine of 12 killed, a comrade later dying on the raft. He finds land only to become a Japanese prisoner, and later when released is blown away and nearly dies in a typhoon. Roth mentions something about overcoming obstacles, and Carroll recounts what it's like to be a coach fired by the Jets and Patriots. You know what they say in sports: You really don't learn something about someone until the bullets start flying. Zamperini makes the 1936 Olympic team out of USC, goes to Berlin, and Jesse Owens is his roommate. Zamperini runs the 5,000 meters, finishes eighth, but has a great finishing kick. Hitler asks to meet him. "No big deal," Zamperini explains. We thought of him as a dangerous comedian. His mannerisms, stomping his feet, that mustache. A decade later Zamperini is the one still living, but how many times does he think he will live no more? He turns to alcohol after the war, and cannot sleep without dreaming of "the Bird," the Japanese guard who tortured him the most. "I dreamed of strangling the Bird every night," he says. I got married, woke up in a cold sweat and found my hands around the throat of my wife thinking it was him. That scared me to death. Apparently it does her as well. "In time she's filing for divorce," he says. Zamperini accepts her invite to meet Billy Graham. It changes his life. He never has another nightmare. He forgives everyone, he says, and goes to Japan to say so. But the Bird won't see him.