A RELUCTANT 'FROM THE CHEAP SEATS'
I do not want to write this column.
That is unusual. These occasional missives are almost always a welcome break
from the grind of work. They give me the chance to spend a few hours
concentrating on something I really enjoy - Stanford sports. They are a bit of
work, but they are usually a lot of fun, too. But I do not want to write this
one. For several reasons.
First, I am too darn busy right now to take time away from what I am supposed
to be doing to write this. It is not an accident that you have seen no
contributions from yours truly around here for several months. I used to post
regularly here, but now I merely lurk. Mike Eubanks is probably considering demoting me
back to “recruit” status. Given work that I ought to be doing right now, I
really should not be doing this. [Please promise not to tell either of my bosses (the
one at the office or the one at home), okay?]
Second, although the topic of this column has been nagging at me for a while,
I cannot find the right theme for it. As a volunteer in these parts, I have a
luxury Mike does not enjoy. I never have to write anything. Instead, if some
aspect of Stanford sports tumbles around inside my head (or heart), I let that
basic idea tumble until I come up with some theme to use as a vehicle to express
it. The topic I am going to be writing about here has been tumbling for quite a
while now, but I have not come up with a theme. Perhaps it is because I want to
repress this little bugger of a thought. But it keeps fighting its way back into
my consciousness. So here I am, sans theme.
Third, I try to avoid writing about one athlete. I like team sports, and it
is my view that too much attention is paid in the sports world these days to
individuals, instead of teams. Yet, here I am, violating my own principles.
Fourth (directly related to “third”), as someone who is both a parent and a
teacher, I try to resist having favorites. With only very rare exceptions, I
love anybody who plays sports for Stanford. Even though the only shirts I have
ever owned with the word “Stanford” on them are shirts that I paid for, I feel
like I have a bond with anyone who was given a jersey with that special word on
it. As sports fans, we believe that any of “our” athletes are part of our
extended families. And we want everyone in our family to know that we love them.
Each member of the group we are about to lose from the men’s basketball team
occupies a special place in our family. We love Matt Haryasz' fire and production,
Dan Grunfeld's guts and creativity, and Jason Haas' perseverance and positive attitude. Each
of them has battled considerable adversity in his career. I apologize to each of
them for focusing this particular column on someone else.
Fifth, there is just no way for me to cover this topic without getting sappy. As several of you have correctly pointed out, I am way over my sap quota around
here. So I try my darndest to avoid adding more sap. Best to stay away from this
particular topic.
For a while, I thought those were the reasons I did not want to write this
column. This morning, on what passes for a “run” in my world, I realized that,
although each of these five reasons was sufficient to justify a decision to not
write this, none of them was the real reason. In a flurry of honesty, I hereby
reveal my real reason for not wanting to write this column: I do not want to
write this... because writing this means saying goodbye to one of my favorite
Stanford athletes ever.
As you might guess, I hate saying goodbye. But this particular goodbye is
going to be especially tough.
Like others here, I like Stanford athletes with “q & a,” with eye popping
statistics, and with limitless skill. But I really love the gamers. The ones who
fight and scratch and claw when Stanford is behind. Who really care, and are not
afraid to show it. Who relish the steep odds faced by Stanford teams. Who figure
out some way - any way - for Stanford to win or, failing that, to give us our best
chance of winning.
Stanford has been, and is, blessed with a whole lot of gamers. A very
incomplete list, just off the top of my head, would include: Babatunde Oshinowo,
who endured Navy’s relentless cut blocks with “just prop me up and I will get
after them” drive; Troy Walters, who refused to be denied his right to play in
the Rose Bowl despite an injury that should have sidelined him; Ryan Garko, who
seemed to bail out his team with key hits in game after game; Leah Nelson and
Michelle Smith, who seem to know when to blast softballs out of parks; and
Brooke Smith, who doggedly runs the floor to become a factor on offense AND
defense.
But the single athlete Chris Hernandez reminds me of the most is John Elway. Admittedly, Chris does not have Sir John’s unparalleled athletic ability. But he
does share his drive and his ability to will his team to win when the chips are
down. [The two of them also share a rather aggravating tendency to lose a bit of
concentration when their teams are ahead. That seems to go with the territory,
though. The real gamers are not that interested in trying to double a 14-point
lead, and they are often not their best at the start, or in the middle, of
games. Get their team down, though, and they focus really well.]
Both Elway and Hernandez, it should be noted, displayed considerable grit by
fighting through injuries and chronic ailments. Neither of them succeeded on
every desperate comeback they launched, of course. But when you rooted for a
team with John Elway or Chris Hernandez on it, you always thought you had a
chance, even when all common sense would tell you that you did not. They did not
always manage to get it done, but they got it done often enough that you always
had some hope that they would indeed get it done “this time.”
How many times has Chris provided the catalyst for bringing his team back
from the brink of disaster (or, at least, almost back)? How many times has he
turned to his teammates, said “follow me guys,” then charged up San Juan Hill
amid enemy gunfire? More than I can remember. Put it this way: How happy are the
citizens of Oregon to finally see him go?
Or put it this way. Your team is down three with only a fraction of a second
left in the game. You get to choose anybody in the country to shoot three free
throws. Who are you putting at the line? I’ll take Chris Hernandez, thank you. See you in overtime.
Sadly, the gamers never have quite as much success as we want them to have. [For example, we said goodbye to Ryan Garko at the end of a drubbing in the CWS
championship game.] Certainly the current basketball season has not been what
all of us, especially the basketball players, wanted it to be. But there has
been magic in Chris' Stanford career, too. Though it did not end well, the
2003-04 season was still one for the ages.
In the end, as I tell my kids and my students, you cannot control outcomes. But you can control effort. The true measure of a man is not in how many times
he wins, but in how hard he tried to win. Nobody fought harder to get Stanford
to victory than Chris Hernandez. We will long remember the glare in his eyes
when the game was on the line.
Although it does not make up for writing a column with no theme, allow me to
at least reference a movie scene that sums up my feelings. For a sentimental old
fool like me, one of the more powerful “goodbye” movie scenes comes near the end
of The Wizard of Oz, just before Dorothy leaves Oz and returns to Kansas. After
the good witch, Glinda, tells Dorothy that she can return home just by clicking
her ruby slippers together, Dorothy is at first excited about getting back to
her home and family. Then she realizes that “it’s going to be so hard to say
goodbye” to the friends she met in Oz, because “I love you all, too.” She kisses
the Tin Man and the Lion (her Matt, Dan, and Jason) on the cheek, lingering with
each long enough to remind them of details from their journey and tell them how
much she is going to miss them.
Then she turns to the friend she met first in Oz, the one she had been
through the most scrapes with during their exciting and tortured journey - the
Scarecrow. For the Scarecrow, she can only manage to choke out one short phrase. As the end of a journey through college basketball that has been both exciting
and tortured nears for Chris Hernandez, I echo Dorothy’s short goodbye to the
Scarecrow:
“I think I’ll miss you most of all.”
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