The Heartbeat Legacy

With all deference and much respect to John Feinstein…

Let me tell you another story.

This story is about a coach and a kid who the coach never knew.

The kid moved to Durham, NC in 1983.  He was 7 years old.  The kid was a baseball fanatic, and would go on to be influenced by some of the greatest baseball coaching minds of his generation.  But, that’s a story for another day.

You see, baseball may very well have been hanging on to its place as our nation’s pastime, but if you happened to be a 7 year old boy living in Durham, NC in 1983…you quickly learned that the heart of athletic competition beat to a different drum on Tobacco Road. Once armed with this knowledge, your first (and most important) task was to choose which drum to follow.  

Two shades of blue.  One very contrarian shade of red.  A few miles of back roads.  Heels or Devils or Pack?  This was every kid’s rite of passage in that particular place and time.    

Choose.  

So he chose…a baseball player…who happened to also play basketball.  When this baseball player was playing basketball, he wore the number 23 in the lighter shade of blue.  Number 23 had already done some pretty swell things by the time the boy arrived on the scene.  In fact, this player had one of his baby blue Converse sneakers already out of the door.  So, when the other baby blue Converse sneaker followed the first and started this player’s trek towards the far-off land of Chicago at the end of the 1983 basketball season, that boy had another choice to make.  Stick with the lighter shade of blue, or realign his allegiance and join with the rest of his nuclear family who had succumbed to the power of the dark (blue) side.

And, that’s when this kid became aware of Dean Smith.  

In hindsight, that last sentence is something the kid would regret admitting later.  However, he would take comfort in the idea that this is actually the way that Coach Smith would have preferred to be noticed.  Team first, player second, and then...somewhere down the line…coach.

The golden era of Tobacco Road basketball would help inform the kid’s ideologies, sensibilities and general take on the way the world should work.  As the kid marched through childhood, several coaches would inform his worldview.  Of those, three coached basketball.   As a fourth grader, the kid wrote a letter to the coach of the red team.  In fact, he wrote a letter to all three coaches, but only the coach of the red team sent him a hand written note back in the mail.  That note, and an autographed picture hung on the kid’s wall.  The words “Don’t Ever Give Up” hung in his heart.

The kid was co-leader of his sixth grade student council.  The other co-leader was the daughter of the coach of the dark blue team.  In those days, Bragtown sixth grade center is where all Durham kids spent a year before “graduating” and moving on to Junior High School.  Most of them bled one shade of blue or another.  A few bled red, but most bled blue.  The kid tried his hardest not to let the coach’s daughter know which shade he bled.  The kid had gone to her father’s basketball clinics.  Despite his loyalty to the lighter shade of blue, the kid thought the coach of the dark blue team was a pretty incredible fellow.

Alas, blood runs deep on Tobacco Road, and the coach’s daughter was no fool.  Sixth grade student council meetings at Bragtown that year were icy endeavors.

Time marched on.  The kid became a young man and moved away from Tobacco Road.  Things changed.  Ideologies and sensibilities adjusted, as they tend to do.  The coach of the red team had to stop coaching.  The coach of the dark blue team became the “double standard” that he had once quipped was the mark of Coach Smith.

Through all of that, Coach Smith was unwavering in his consistency.  And, much like mythical cornfields in Iowa…people would come.

Year after year, game after game, people would come.  All of them, recounting the same narrative of the consistently understated coach of the lighter blue team.

Yes, he was an innovator.  Yes, he was a tireless competitor.  But, Coach Smith never allowed any of that to change what he was at his core.  Coach and mentor to young men.  Advocate for those who could not advocate for themselves.  Believer in a right “way” to go about life.  Sherpa on the path that ran between what his players thought might be possible and what he absolutely knew they were capable of on the court and (more importantly to him) in life.

That 7 year old kid is now a 38 year old man with two teenage daughters.  The ideologies and sensibilities that were shaped by Coach Smith (and the other two coaches, but especially Coach Smith) have transformed into iron clad pillars.  Those pillars are something that the 38 year old man hoped would one day take seed in his daughters’ lives as he watched them grow and form their own ideologies and sensibilities.

The 38 year old man learned of the passing of Coach Smith this Sunday while attending church service in Charlotte, NC.  The pastor of the man’s church (who played basketball for Coach Smith) delivered the news to his congregation just before his weekly message.  

For the second time in his life, the kid (now a man), became aware of Dean Smith.  This time it had nothing to do with basketball.  

You see, Coach Smith helped that Pastor become what Coach Smith absolutely knew he would.   A man whose heart beats for those who have no voice.  That Pastor worked for decades to encourage the hearts of others to do the same.  Two of those hearts belong to the teenage daughters of the 38 year old man.  You cannot find two hearts that beat stronger for the people in this world who need a little help.  Legacy is as legacy does.

And the beat goes on.  All because a 7 year old kid was lucky enough to have to choose a particular shade of blue. 

I’d like to think that as the horn sounded, and Coach was called off of the court of this life, the players on the heavenly bench stood and applauded as Coach made his way back to them.    

Decked out in Carolina Blue, of course.   

 

From the bottom of my Carolina blue blooded heart…Thank you Coach Smith.  You never knew me, but your legacy had, has, and will continue to play a part in my family’s purpose far past my days on this earth.  And, that is far more important than the sum total of all of your accomplishments on the court.

To One of the Best Fights Ever Fought...

I ran into Stuart Scott in January of 2000. 

I was working at Hyatt Regency Atlanta, which as it turned out, was selected as the media host hotel for Super Bowl XXXIV.  If you have never been to a Super Bowl before, let me describe what the media host hotel looks like:

Imagine Beirut…if Beirut were organized by the most successful and meticulous TV producers available.  Then add a lot of famous people in limousines.

That’s what it was like.

Before all of the producers and limos showed up, we had a very different group of people occupying our hotel.  The national 4H convention.  Our hotel was literally filled with 9-12 year old aspiring farmers.  Those kids’ departure and the arrival of the first wave of media overlapped in a way that made for very interesting theater. 

It was a Sunday.  I can’t remember the time, but it must have been close to noon.  As the Atrium of Hyatt Regency Atlanta was almost at capacity with 9-12 year old boys and girls, many of whom who were lamenting the end of a weekend away from home, in walked Jim Kelly.

The Jim Kelly.

I watched as throngs of kids, turned their heads.  You could see the little light bulbs of recognition going off.  Then it started.  First a few…then a few more…then a huge crowd…all of them scrambling for a pen and something to write on, made a b-line to Jim Kelly.

The Jim Kelly.

Jim smiled.  Then Jim looked a little confused.  Then Jim turned and made his way to check in without being stopped and asked for his autograph.The crowd of kids had instead engulfed a smiling, larger than life, autographing at the speed of light….Stuart Scott.  He was gracious, kind, and (I realized at that moment) a bit of a rock star.

I ran into Jim Kelly later that evening in one of the Hyatt’s famous glass elevators and apologized for what appeared to be a breach of NFL fan decorum by about 1000 kids.  He smiled, thanked me, and then acknowledged that he didn’t have a chance when it came to outshining Stuart in front of the next generation of sports fans.

Those kids are 24-27 years old now.  Jim beat cancer.  So did Stuart. 

Stuart said the following while receiving the Jimmy V Perseverance Award at this Year’s ESPY’s:

"When you die, that does not mean that you lose to cancer. You beat cancer by how you lived, why you lived and in the manner in which you lived," Scott said. "So live. Live. Fight like hell. And when you get too tired to fight, then lay down and rest and let somebody else fight for you."

Amen to that.

Stuart didn't lose. By his own measure, he might have just won one of the greatest fights ever fought.

To a life well lived, a fight that was indeed “fought like hell”, and a man whose legacy is still unrealized, but those 1000 kids might have something very meaningful to say about it…

So long Stuart. 

You did it right Sir.

Jimmy V Foundation for Cancer Research

KC at the Bat

The outlook wasn’t brilliant for the baseball throngs this fall:

The teams that move the needle had already dropped the ball,

And, so when Jeter hung ‘em up, and the Sox played their last game,

A pall like silence fell upon the patrons of this game.

 

A fitful few began to trump familiar loom.  The rest clung to the hope which drowns infernal cries of baseball’s doom;

We thought, “If only KC could but get a whack at that-

We’d love to see a series, with KC at the bat.”

 

But Angels stood before them, as did those orange birds,

And the latter had the sluggers, while the former’s aces hurled;

So upon that stricken multitude grim melancholy sat,

For there seemed but little chance of KC getting to the bat.

 

But Angels fell in three, to the wonderment of all,

Buck’s birds, though much acclaimed, could not win a game at all;

And when the dust had lifted, and we saw this blessed thing,

There was but one team standing between KC and the ring.

 

Then from ten million throats and more there rose a loud refrain;

It rumbled through the heartland, it rattled through the plains;

It pounded on the fountains and recoiled upon the “K”,

For KC, mighty KC, would meet the Giants by the bay.

 

There was ease in KC’s manner as fall’s classic they did meet;

There was pride in KC’s bullpen, and wings on KC’s feet.

And when responding to the cheers, they marveled at their chance,

No stranger in the crowd could doubt ‘twas KC in the dance.

 

Forty thousand eyes were on them as they rubbed their hands with dirt;

But a million tongues applauded when they wiped them on their shirt.

And when the Giants’ pitchers ground the ball into their hip,

Defiance flashed in Gosmer’s eye, a sneer on Gordon’s lip.

 

And now the leather-covered sphere came hurtling through the air,

The nation stood a-watching it in haughty grandeur there.

From the hand of old Mad Bum the ball unheeded spun-

“That ain’t my style,” said KC.  The Giants took game one.

 

Then from couches, and the cheap seats, there went up a muffled roar,

Like the beating of a twister and an all-too-close-by storm.

“We’re done! It’s all but over!” screamed voices round the land;

And it’s likely they’d have tuned out had not KC raised a hand.

 

With a smile of midwest charity great KC’s visage shone;

They stilled the rising tumult; they bade the games go on;

And, so the games continued, and once more the dun sphere sailed;

And KC kept a fighting, as each victory availed.

 

“Please!” cried the maddened millions, and echo answered “Please!”

Game six did go to KC, which sent us to our knees.

We saw their face grow stern and cold, we saw those Royals stand,

And we knew that KC would not let the ring slip through their hand.

 

The ball was placed in Guthrie’s keep, Skip Yost declared him ready,

Against those Giants hurlers, the bats would need be steady.

And then the Mad Bum held the ball, and then he let it go,

And then the air was shattered by the force of KC’s blow.

Oh, somewhere in this favoured land the sun did set this night,

The crowd has long since left there, the crew turned out the lights;

Somewhere fans are singing, and somewhere grown men shout.

But there is no joy in Mudville, mighty KC has struck out.