Bill Little Articles part IX

Bill Little articles For https://texassports.com–

• Integrating athletics at University of Texas @ Austin

• Johnny Jones & Roy Williams -’ Receiving’ Life’s Lessons

• The Master Painter

• The Legend of Johnny “Lam” Jones

• kaleidoscope

• 4th and inches

• 1963 National Champions (Part 2)

• Memories in the Glass

• NCAA Regional Chronicles…Last Man Standing

• Scott Appleton’s Journey to Redemption

• Only the Best

 02.27.2014 | Bill Little Commentary

Bill Little commentary: Looking back

Integrating athletics at The University of Texas at Austin.

Bill Little, Texas Media Relations

In celebration of Black History Month 2014, it is appropriate we take a look back at the journey as far as University of Texas athletics is concerned.

For reference, the most significant events came 50 years ago in the 1960s, when the UT Board of Regents cleared the way for black athletes to participate in varsity sports at The University.

The pathfinder from that era was James Means, an Austin native and high school track athlete. Means enrolled as a student at UT in spring 1964 when the Southwest Conference, as well as UT, took an affirmative step to allow participation in athletics for all eligible students.

On Feb. 29, 1964, Means participated in a track meet at Texas A&M as a member of the UT Freshman team — in the days before freshmen were eligible to participate with the varsity. In 1965, he became the first black athlete in the Southwest Conference to earn a letter. He went on earn three letters at Texas before graduating in 1967.

About the same time, a young man named John Harvey was etching his name in Austin history as perhaps the greatest athlete ever at the original Anderson High School. Anderson had remained an all-black school on the east side even though Austin’s schools had technically been integrated since the mid-1950s.

Harvey actually signed a letter of intent to play football at Texas for Darrell Royal. He never entered UT, choosing instead to go to Tyler Junior College, where he became an All-American and later a star in the Canadian Football League. In the fall of 1968, a linebacker from Killeen named Leon O’Neal became UT’s first black football recruit to participate, playing as a freshman.

O’Neal had left school by the time Julius Whittier signed and enrolled as a freshman in 1969. Whittier, who was inducted into the Longhorn Men’s Hall of Honor last fall, lettered in the seasons of 1970 through 1972.

Other pioneers included Sam Bradley, who was the first black men’s basketball letterwinner in 1970, and Andre Robertson, who lettered in baseball as a freshman in 1977 — before going on to a career that included starting shortstop for the New York Yankees.

Royal made a strong statement in 1972 when he chose Alvin Matthews, a NFL star with Austin roots, as the first black assistant coach at Texas. Matthews, who was playing for Green Bay at the time, had been a star at Texas A&I (now Texas A&M-Kingsville), and was a product of Austin High.

Matthews served dual duty for two years, spending time at Texas in the off-season and reporting to Green Bay, until it became clear that his success in the NFL would keep him in the league longer than anticipated, and he gave up the Texas job.

The first black head coach at Texas was Rod Page, who led the UT women’s basketball team to almost 40 wins in two seasons in 1975-76 and 1976-77 until turning the program over to Jody Conradt.

It has been 50 years since James Means changed the face of UT Athletics, but in truth, the powerful legacy of the contributions originally manifested itself more than 100 years ago.

Emerging from the early days of Texas Football was perhaps the most interesting character in The University’s young history, and he wasn’t even a player.

He would dress in a black suit, with a black Stetson hat, and he touched more football players — with his hands and with his heart — than any man in the first 20 years of Texas Athletics.

Henry Reeves was a special kind of pioneer. He was born April 12, 1871, in West Harper, Tenn. He was the son of freed slaves, a black man who would set forth to make his mark in a new world of freedom.

No one knows when he came to Texas, but he was a fixture in athletics almost from the beginning. He carried a medicine bag, a towel and a water bucket.

In fact, Henry Reeves became almost as well known as the team itself. The cries of “Time out for Texas!” and “Water, Henry!” brought the familiar sight of his tall, slender figure quickly moving onto the field. There he would kneel beside a fallen player, or patch a cut, or soothe a sore muscle.

“Doc Henry” he was, and in the 20-plus years from 1894 through 1915, he was a trainer, masseuse, and the closest thing to a doctor the fledgling football team ever knew.

In the 1914 publication “The Longhorn,” he was called “The most famous character connected with football in The University of Texas.”

“He likes the game of football, and loves the boys that play it,” they wrote.

But who was this man? Where did he get his knowledge? How did he earn acceptance and respect?

You can look at the pictures and see a mature, studious face — a man whose skills and understanding were obvious. It is likely, folks surmised years later, that Reeves had been trained as a doctor at some of the historically black colleges of the time, and had worked in segregated hospitals.

Once, a new athletics administrator tried to dismiss him and the students rose up in protest. Henry Reeves stayed on. The Cactus yearbook listed the all-time teams of the early days, and one team was picked by the coach, Dave Allerdice. The other was called “Henry’s Team.”

As the team boarded a train to go to College Station to play the Aggies in 1915, Doc Henry felt a numbness that all his self-taught medical knowledge couldn’t cure. He went on to the game, but by halftime the stroke that would kill him had paralyzed the lanky trainer so that he could no longer run.

Henry Reeves lingered for two months after the stroke, and the entire student body took up a collection to pay his medical bills. After his passing, the athletics council voted to award his widow a small pension.

When he died, the Houston Post gave him a special tribute. To put it into perspective, in that day, a black man could not attend The University of Texas, nor for that matter, eat at the same table with the men he treated.

“The news of his death will be heard with a sense of personal loss by every alumnus and former student of The University of Texas, whose connection with the institution lasted long enough for him to imbibe that spirit of association which a quarter century and more of existence has thrown around the graying walls of the college.

“No figure is more intimately connected with the reminiscences of college life, none, with the exception of a few aging members of the faculty, associated with The University itself for so long a period of time.

“In the hearts of Longhorn athletes and sympathizers, Doctor Henry can never be forgotten. A picture that will never fade is that of his long, rather ungainly figure flying across the football field with his coattails flapping in the breeze. In one hand he holds the precious pail of water, and in the other the little black valise whose contents have served as first aid to the injured to many a stricken athlete, laid out on the field of play.”

Henry Reeves left the young university a message it would take years to resolve.

It was a message that the color of a man’s skin made no difference in his mind, his skill, or his heart. All are given a chance to make of themselves what they choose.

They are the pioneers — whose legacy we celebrate — and whose memory we honor. 

  

04.19.2004 | Football

Bill Little commentary: Johnny Jones and Roy Williams — ‘Receiving’ life’s lessons

 It was Tuesday in Lampasas, as opposed to Saturday in New York.

On Saturday, with the live television cameras bringing every smile and twitch into our favorite restaurants and living rooms, the NFL Draft, the version of the year 2004, will take place. Roy Williams will be right there in New York City’s Madison Square Garden, waiting to become the first Texas Longhorn receiver in almost 25 years (it actually is 25 drafts) to be picked in the First Round.

And somewhere in Central Texas, Johnny Jones will smile, and remember.

Johnny Jones of Lampasas, Texas, that is. Folks just called him “Johnny Lam.”

Roy’s family will be there with him, and the analysts will pour over every statistic, every rumor, every fact, until the NFL commissioner walks to the microphone and announces, “With the (to be determined) pick of the draft, the (to be determined) select Roy Williams, wide receiver, The University of Texas.”

Johnny Lam Jones sat with his 86-year-old grandfather, who had helped raise him, at his home in Lampasas that Tuesday, April 29, 1980.

“My grandfather always said he hoped he lived to see me make it. If I should have been with anyone, it was him,” Jones said.

The Rev. Arthur Anderson was almost 90 when he laid down his Bible for the last time.

And what he had seen, by Johnny’s own admission, was the best and the worst of the life of a Texas legend.

It was on a late spring night in 1976 when Johnny Jones ran his way into immortality in Texas high school sports. A signee for Darrell Royal’s Longhorn football program, he had already won both the 100-yard and 200-yard dashes at the UIL State Meet. Lampasas, with three little guys, and Johnny running the anchor leg, needed to win the Mile Relay to claim the team state AAA championship.

The dampness of the evening was beginning to move from humid to pleasant, and the slight wind stirred the banners in the infield and billowed the flags at the south end of the track inside Memorial Stadium.

Those who were there, and there are legions who swear they were, all have differing opinions of the moment in time. But everybody agrees that when Johnny Jones took the baton from the third runner for Lampasas, he was at least 50, and probably more like 75, yards behind the race’s leading runner.

That is when Johnny Jones, in a burst of speed seldom seen in track annals in any high school meet, started to run. He passed the runners between him and the leader, and, like a great horse heading down the back stretch, steadily made up ground. By the last turn, he was within 10 yards of the lead.

Then, as the race’s leader saw the tape at the finish line, he slid over to lane two, anticipating a winning conclusion. And Johnny Jones of Lampasas, Texas, gracefully ran by him in lane one, took the lead, broke the tape and sprinted into history.

By the summer, he was on the 1976 United State Olympic team, and his relay team won a gold medal in Montreal.

The state, and the sports world in general, wasn’t far removed from the presence of another legend. “Bullet” Bob Hayes had moved from the track world to the football world as a wide receiver for the Dallas Cowboys. As the “world’s fastest human,” he had used his sprinter’s speed to become a quality NFL receiver.

Now, Darrell Royal and Texas surely had recruited his equal. Despite a season where injuries riddled Royal’s last Longhorn team in 1976, “Lam” Jones (as he was now known in order to tell him apart from Johnny Jones from Hamlin, who was to become Johnny “Ham”) led the team in all-purpose yards (714). He also ran for 182 yards (No. 3 on the UT all-time freshman rushing list) against Rice and 122 versus SMU. His 624 yards on the year at the time ranked second only to Earl Campbell and now still stands sixth on the Longhorn freshman chart.

That spring, the young man who had finished sixth in the 100 meters in the Olympics won the Texas Relays in hand-timed 9.85 seconds, a time that would have been a world record had not the electronic clock malfunctioned.

Then in 1977, he moved to wide receiver under new head football coach Fred Akers. He led the Longhorns in receiving three straight years, the only player in Texas history to do that until Roy Williams tied the mark over the last three years.

Jones ranks 10th on the UT all-time all-purpose yardage list (3,042). He also is one of only three players in Longhorn history that have rushed for 100 yards in a game and registered a 100-yard receiving game during their careers. His 100-yard kickoff return for a touchdown against SMU in 1978 is a UT record.

That is a capsule version of his odyssey before that April day in 1980. The New York Jets, not that far removed from their famous Super Bowl victory 11 years earlier in 1969, traded two first round draft choices to move up to No. 2 in the draft, and with their pick, they selected Johnny Jones of Lampasas, Texas.

“I remember that it was an exciting time,” says Jones. “I think the thing I remember the most was being happy for my teammates, because a lot of us were going to get a chance to play and live that dream.”

In fact, Jones and six other Longhorns were drafted that day, with defensive backs Johnnie Johnson and Derrick Hatchett also going in the first round. That marked a Longhorn best for first-round picks in a single draft. Steve McMichael went in the third. Darrell Royal’s last team at Texas had been injured, but his last recruiting class did not leave the cupboard bare for his successor.

It was the beginning of a dream, but for Johnny Jones of Lampasas, Texas, it would turn into a nightmare.

First of all, games and challenges never scared Johnny. People did. Folks thought he was just extremely shy, and sometimes rude. Years later, they would diagnose the condition he had as Social Anxiety Disorder. Ricky Williams suffered from it, so did Earl Campbell. Only in 1980, nobody had a name for it.

And if you are afraid of crowds and people, New York City, New York, ain’t your style.

Signed as the first player ever to get a million dollar contract in the NFL (he signed for $2.1 million over six years), he was an instant celebrity in The City that Never Sleeps. And neither did Johnny.

Temptations called, and he answered. In 1985, far from the quiet kid who earned a Gold Medal before he ever entered college, Johnny Jones quit football and returned to Texas.

Injuries? Contract disputes?

No.

“I needed to get my personal life in order,” said Johnny. “I came back to live in the real world.” Tracing the story, it is easy to see how it could happen. Small town kid. Big city. Lots of money. But Johnny Jones, circa 2004, won’t let you go there.

“You’re trying to be nice to me,” he says. “But that’s making excuses for me. I made my own choices, and I have to take responsibility for them. I got to run in the Olympics, got a great education and played for The University of Texas, and played for the New York Jets.”

Any regrets?

“How could I? I learned a lot, and I had some tough lessons. The only regret I have is if I hurt somebody else. I never wanted to hurt anybody,” he said.

And now, as Roy Williams awaits that moment when his name is called, what advice do you have for him?

“I am not qualified to give him any advice,” Johnny said. “He has made the right decisions, like coming back to school for his last year. He has done the right things both athletically and personally. He’s got his head on straight, and is handling it well. He’s much more mature than I was. He is better prepared to face the things he’s going to face. The only thing I would tell him is ‘don’t do what I did.'”

Monday, when Roy Williams is beginning negotiations for an exceedingly multi-million dollar contract, Johnny Jones will be heading to work as a track and field consultant for Track Masters, Inc., a company that installs running tracks all over the country. He’s a salesman. Not bad for a guy once afraid of people.

He talks to groups, particularly kids, about his experiences. He is a hero to many, but none more so than the participants of the Texas Special Olympics, to whom he gave his Olympic Gold Medal some years ago.

He has no bigger fan than the man who recruited him all those years ago.

“Johnny has done well,” says Darrell Royal. “A lot of guys seek help, but a lot of them don’t pay attention to it. Johnny did.”

It is an exciting time for Roy Williams, and a reflective time for Johnny Jones of Lampasas, Texas, who was voted into the Longhorn Hall of Honor in the fall of 1994. It’s appropriate that we celebrate Roy, and remember Lam Jones.

And somewhere beyond the sky, you have to figure that Reverend Anderson celebrates, too.

Roy is about to embark on an adventure.

But Johnny Jones, of Lampasas, Texas, has made it.

 

  

08.24.2010 | Texas Athletics

Bill Little commentary: The master painter

 Aug. 24, 2010

Bill Little, Texas Media Relations

I don’t remember the circumstances, but I remember the moment.

It was somewhere in the latter part of the 1980s. We had expanded what was then called our “Sports Information Office” and hired — for the first time — a Publications Editor for Longhorn men’s sports. At the time, the men’s and women’s programs were completely separate.

Debbie Havis had been a student assistant in our office, and had worked with the sport of baseball. She was energetic and creative, and as athletics department publications made the transition from the old 4″ by 9″ press guides to a magazine format with a color cover, Debbie was the perfect fit. And it didn’t take her long to realize that to create good publications, you needed good pictures.

To that point, the Texas Sports Information had survived by contracting the shooting of mug shots and the purchase of a few select photos from some talented free-lance photographers. That process had produced some historic pictures, but there were not enough photos to fill the new books that Debbie was planning.

In the vernacular of politics — and things were often quite political in those days — Debbie dared to look “across the aisle” at the office operation of Chris Plonsky, who was the sports information director for women. In 1982, Chris had contracted with a young UT graduate named Susan Allen to become her staff photographer.

In those times, you had to have two pretty basic things to produce pictures. One was the equipment to take the pictures, and the other was a space to process the film and prints. Susan had neither. She borrowed $1,500 to buy photographic equipment, and she somehow found darkroom equipment and space.

All of that mattered to me, because as the son of a photographer who as a kid remembered his dad processing film in a closet under the staircase at the house at 707 Heights Street in Winters, Texas, I knew where she was coming from. In fact, I had been the lucky one of the two of us — Susan and me — when we both had started generations apart in photography. I was the photographer for my high school yearbook. Susan’s yearbook sponsor wouldn’t let a girl in the school dark room.

In her odyssey, Susan married and had a little boy. A few years later, she was divorced and a single mom with a son who was deaf. But that didn’t stop her. She would take Christopher with her to women’s basketball games, and he would go to sleep in her lap as she shot pictures from the baseline.

When Debbie Havis proposed the merging of Susan’s talents with the needs of the men’s sports information office, her workload doubled, and she was faced with the challenge of learning a sport called football, and how to photograph it.

It was during that time that Susan came into my office to visit with me as her supervisor. I remember that day because I learned a valuable lesson about managing people. Too often, we see only the production, and we miss the story of the producer. Whatever the cause, Susan was in tears that day, and it required a level of understanding that as a new boss I hadn’t yet had to encounter.

How ironic it was that I learned that lesson from a photographer — because what I came to understand was that you have to look beyond the picture, into the person.

Susan never quit working, and she never quit learning. Making friends with master sports photographers such as Rich Clarkson, Susan went to summer clinics and practiced her art continuously as she became one of the best sports photographers in the business.

Time would bless her with a new husband, a kindred spirit and a great photographer in his own right in Jim Sigmon. They would add a daughter, Wes, to the family, and together they would build a photography department without peer at any university in the country.

Some people know about history  The roll film and darkrooms have given way to digital cameras and photo shop computers. The early photographs of Texas Athletics, once preserved carefully in manila folders by Bill Sansing and the late Wilbur Evans and Jones Ramsey, are now being transferred to computers by Jim and Susan and their staff.

Talented photographers have come and gone, working with Susan and Jim and heading on to new opportunities.

Tuesday afternoon they will honor Susan at a retirement party, and for the first time in a while, she won’t have to bring her camera to take the pictures.

They say that one picture is worth a thousand words, and Susan’s work is a testimony to that. She is the living example of the premise in which I have always believed: photographers are born, not made. Rapid fire shutters, digital cameras, all of the modern inventions which make hundreds of pictures where one shot used to be all you could get are part of the business today.

All of that, however, will never replace the single most important part of any life’s work — the passion.

In the books and the magazines, on the walls and in countless memorabilia that every Texas Longhorn fan has come to cherish — that is where Susan’s work will always live.

And I will always remember a young college student, who was brave enough to believe in herself, and in a future that she could only imagine. Great artists using paint and brush sign their work. Artists like Susan sustain themselves, not only by what they did, but who they are.

 

08.17.2008 | Football

Bill Little commentary: The legend of Johnny ‘Lam’ Jones

              

Aug. 17, 2008

Bill Little, Texas Media Relations

(Editor’s note: As the track events begin in Beijing at the 29th Olympiad, memories are stirred of one of the Longhorns’ most famous two-sport athletes, Johnny “Lam” Jones. Arguably the fastest man in football, Johnny began his legend when he came from behind to win the Class AAA mile relay at the UIL Championships in Memorial Stadium. But it would be his performance in Montreal as a sprinter in the 100 meters and a gold medal winner as a member of the 4×100 relay team that would cement his fame. Here, in his own words from the book “What it Means to be a Longhorn,” as told to Bill Little and Jenna McEachern, is Johnny’s story. Today, he continues to battle a rare form of cancer with which he was stricken several years ago, but as the races run in Beijing, his legend as a Longhorn lives on. “What it Means to be a Longhorn” is published by Triumph Books, and is available online and at most book stores.)

JOHNNY “LAM” JONES (in his own words)

Before I came to Texas, I’d qualified for the Olympic team, gone to the Olympic trials, gone to Montreal for the Olympics and won a gold medal. It was pretty much like a haze for an eighteen-year-old kid to be going through. It was a blur for me, but someone else may have handled it a lot better.

Once you decide where you’re going to school, even if you’re still in high school, people view you as being part of that new family. Even though I was at Lampasas running in the Olympics, I was representing The University of Texas. At the state track meet we won the state AAA championship for Lampasas High, but a part of me was still representing The University of Texas. I’ve been very fortunate in sports; I don’t have a single most memorable moment. I have been real blessed that I’ve had a number of moments.

People ask me, “Hey, what was it like to win a gold medal in the Olympics?” They look at me like I’m crazy when I say, “It’s almost as exciting as running in the state meet in Texas.” Winning our team championship was probably my most special moment.

It wasn’t the race, the mile relay, that made it so special, but that winning the state championship was our goal. People talk about “The Race”, but the special part about that was that a lot of people were involved. We were in that position all the time; we were behind like that every week, but that’s the way we ran. Those guys didn’t have to run as fast as I did, they just had to run as fast as they could. As long as everybody did his best, we’d have a chance to win. All those people saw it at the state meet, but that’s what we did every week.

Lampasas High had the track records posted on a banner in the gym. I had the record for the 440 and for the 220, so I’d been pestering the coach to let me run the 100. I wanted that record, too. He got tired of me pestering him, so on Wednesday before the Brownwood track meet he let me run the 100, a practice race. He marked off a hundred yards on the old dirt track, and I ran the race. He had a little smile on his face as he looked at his clock, but he wouldn’t let me see the time. He said, “Don’t worry about it. You did pretty good. Run another one.” He made me wait while he marked off the track again. He stepped it off all over again. I didn’t think about what he was doing at the time, but he was double-checking the distance. So I ran another one. This time he had a bigger smile on his face, but he still wouldn’t let me see my time. On Saturday, Coach said, “I’ll let you run the 100, but you still have to run your other races.” So, that day I ran the 440, the 220, the mile relay, and in the 100 I ran a 9.2 in the finals. That’s what I had run that day on the high school track.

So that was the beginning of “The Race.” When I came into Coach’s office that next Monday, he had newspapers spread out all over his desk. The papers used to publish all the best times across the state. He had figured out that if he took me out of the quarter and if Mike Perkins, our other quarter-miler, could make it to state, and if I won the 100 and 200 and we could win the mile relay, and if we picked up some points with the long jump or with Perkins, then we could win the state meet by two or four points. The state championship came down to that last race. It was between us and two other teams, and whoever won the mile relay was going to win the state meet.

That special moment wasn’t about me. The joy came from us winning. I had gone to state my junior year by myself and had won state in the quarter. It wasn’t as much fun; it wasn’t half the joy of those other guys getting to come along.

As a player in high school, you felt so honored that Coach Royal would even consider you to play at his school. You might be thinking about going to some other school, but when you found out that UT wanted you, it was a done deal. That’s how it was for me, anyway.

Texas recruited me as a running back. I came through with Coach Royal’s last class; then he retired and Coach Akers switched offenses. With Earl back there we didn’t throw the ball that much. But when we did throw it, we were pretty good at it.

I might have gotten closer to my coaches had I done things differently, had I not been so dysfunctional in some areas. I didn’t take advantage of having someone older to help guide me and keep me on the right path. When I think of how I spent my time and how disorganized I was, I see that I didn’t allow myself the opportunity to develop special relationships with coaches. There were guys who were more mature than I was who were close to their coaches. It was like having a homing beacon, somebody to keep you close to the ground. And back then, my feet were planted firmly in mid-air.

But when you’re a Longhorn, you’re part of a special family, a special group. You get the feeling that other people feel it’s special, too. They might be an alum of another school, but deep down inside they wish they could say there were a Longhorn. Some might admit it and some might not, but it’s like if they went somewhere else, they settled. Some people will tell me, “I went to such and such school, but I wish I could have gone to UT.”

This school impacts your life because you’re placed in an environment where you always want to do your best. That’s the kind of people you’re around at Texas. It helps guide you and mold you and puts you in a conscious awareness about what The University is about, the pride and the traditions.

I wouldn’t change anything, not for a minute, not for a second. A person couldn’t ask for a better roller coaster ride than what I’ve been on — still standing and fortunate to be able to sit here and talk about it. You know that poem “Footprints in the Sand?” I’m the reason they wrote that; I’m the one He’s been carrying all this time.

—–

Johnny “Lam” Jones won a gold medal in the 1976 Olympics the summer before he entered Texas and was known as the fastest football player in the country. He was a two-time all-SWC selection and an All-American in football and held the world record in the 100 meter dash. He was a first round draft choice of the New York Jets and played five seasons of pro ball. At the end of his racing career, he donated his gold medal to the Texas Special Olympics.

 

10.07.2011 | Football

Bill Little commentary: The kaleidoscope

 Oct. 7, 2011

Bill Little, Texas Media Relations

DALLAS – A kaleidoscope is an optical instrument, with varying symmetrical colorful patterns being displayed on rotation. It is ever changing in beauty and form, and yet somehow always the same.

So it is with the Texas-Oklahoma game. It is a montage of sights, sounds and smells.
It is a corny dog, a roller coaster ride, a tour of new cars and a livestock show on the Fairgrounds. It is a stadium split down the middle, with burnt orange and red.

At the south end is “The Tunnel.” Much has been made through the years of the moment when the two teams, prepared for battle, walk together down the ramp, ready to burst into the arena.

The dynamic of the game, like the turning colors, changes regularly. For years, when the Longhorns were in the Southwest Conference and Oklahoma was in the Big 8, the game was unique in that nowhere in the country did such an intense rivalry exist which did not involve a battle for a conference championship, nor match two teams from the same state.

With the coming of the Big 12 Conference in 1996, that changed dramatically. Starting then, the game has regularly had a huge effect on the determination of the league champion. Now, it takes on different proportions. As the Big 12 has evolved into ten teams this season, the conference championship game matching two division champions has gone away. The league winner will be determined straight up, with all the teams playing each other. Where once you had to have the best conference record among six teams to win your division, now the league champion will be crowned based on the best conference record among the ten teams.

In other words, win or lose in this one, there will be a lot to play for the rest of the season.

The contrasting of the senses – those of sight, sound and smell – is a constant on the Fairgrounds, but all of those are idle if not for the people. And that is the real story of why this game, and this setting, mean so much.

Juxtapositioned with the thousands of burnt orange and red clad fans who pack 90,000 strong into the stadium are more than 100,000 more who come to the Fair because they are more interested in how little Johnny’s lamb does in the livestock show and how Aunt Sally’s pickles are judged in the food contest. And most of them absolutely do not care who wins this football game. Perhaps they are the blessed ones. Stress is, after all, what you choose it to be.

But in the arena, memories are carved and heroes are made. You cannot think of the Texas-Oklahoma game – now officially dubbed the AT&T Red River Rivalry – without it becoming personal. Players who have played in the game will tell you the same thing. National championships have been launched, Heisman trophies have been won, all in the space of less than four hours during an October afternoon.

On this field, legends have played. That is why it has been so important that Dallas businessman Pete Schenkel spearheaded stadium renovations that added 15,000 seats and provided upgrades to the old stadium in a successful effort to convince the two schools to stay at the Fairgrounds. It is history at its grandest scale.

But like a forest where the tall trees live, seedlings grow. And that brings us to the present.

The game, and the series, survives and thrives on momentum. Like no other game, this one is about the ebb and flow of emotion. David McWilliams, who played on the Longhorns’ 1963 National Championship team and later served as UT’s head coach, put it best.

“It is important not to get too high in the high times, or too low in the low times. Because it will change,” he said.

There are many theories as to why the momentum swings so in the stadium. Perhaps it is the split of the crowd down the middle, with one end of the stadium pulling for one team and the other end for the other. Whatever the reason, it is a game where comebacks are common place.

The game will be televised for the 59th time, and has been a sellout since the 1940s.

The 2011 game marks the 31st time in 105 meetings that the two schools have both come into the weekend unbeaten.

Even though Mack Brown at Texas and Bob Stoops at Oklahoma are regulars in the game, it will be a “new look” Texas team which arrives in Dallas this weekend. Not only are the Longhorns a very young team, the change in offensive and defensive coordinators reflects a dramatic difference from what UT has been doing over the last several years.

That is what makes this one so intriguing. Where history tells us of the games, the plays and the stars that are to be remembered, the very best thing about this game is what happens next.

There are a lot of things in life that grow old, perhaps stale, and out of style – and that has never happened with this game.

The reason for that doesn’t lie in the arena, or on the Fairgrounds, or even the tunnel. Coaches battle each other, locked in a game of wits. The bands play for the show, and for the pride. The fans come, some because they always have, and others because they are locked in on something new for them.

At the heart of it, however, are the players. Keith Moreland, who played both football and baseball at Texas and spent 13 years in the Major Leagues, once said of this game, “I have stood at home plate in the World Series, and it was a great moment. But nothing compares to that feeling you have when you run out of that tunnel into that stadium.”

Perhaps that is because the ghosts of games past make that field a hallowed space. More likely however, it is the showcase of pride and togetherness that only the ultimate definition of the word “team” can produce.

You play games for fun. But there is no greater feeling than that of playing for and with each other, especially when it translates into accomplishment. And it is in that space where Texas-Oklahoma thrives, not only for the events of today, but for the memories of tomorrow.

10.08.2010 | Football

Bill Little commentary: Fourth and inches

·  Oct. 8, 2010

Bill Little, Texas Media Relations

As he came to the line of scrimmage and surveyed the Nebraska defense in the first-ever Big 12 Championship Game, James Brown stood at the edge of history.

Or maybe, better said, he was right smack in the middle of it.

To understand the moment, it helps to understand the situation.

The story begins long before that December afternoon in 1996 in the TransWorld Dome in St. Louis. Less than three years before, there was no league championship game, because there was no league. Texas was the linchpin of the Southwest Conference, and Nebraska had become the dominant team in the Big Eight. But the college football world had been undergoing a metamorphosis that had actually been evolving since the summer of 1984, when the universities of Oklahoma and Georgia won a television rights suit against the NCAA.

As the college football world watched, major players jockeyed for position on the national collegiate scene. The result of that, for Texas and Oklahoma, was a marriage of the teams of the dissolved Big Eight, and four teams (Texas, Texas A&M, Texas Tech and Baylor) from the now defunct Southwest Conference. The collection of these dozen schools became known as “the Big 12.”

As with any blended family, there were immediate issues, and they all were never more obvious than at the first-ever Big 12 Championship Game that early December day in St. Louis.

James Brown had already been a significant figure for the Longhorns in the mid-1990s. When the Big 12 officially was formed in February of 1994, it was broken into two divisions. The North was made up of Nebraska, Kansas, Kansas State, Iowa State, Missouri and Colorado. In the South Division were the four former Southwest Conference schools as well as Oklahoma and Oklahoma State. And despite opposition from the coaches at all Big 12 schools, their presidents voted to have a championship game matching the division winners and sold the package to ABC-TV.

That is how James Brown came to stand with his team on the field of the TWA Dome, with less than three minutes remaining and Texas nursing an improbable lead of 30-27.

Since the league’s formation, the South Division had been viewed as simply cannon fodder for the powerful North Division. There was open resentment among some media, fans and officials in the old Big Eight toward the interlopers from the four Texas schools. So it was with a degree of irony that Texas and Nebraska, two of the winningest programs in college football, would be the first representatives of the divisions to decide the first-ever championship.

Nebraska, which along with Florida State, would be the most dominant team in college football in the 1990s, was 10-1 and within striking distance of playing for a national championship. All the No. 3 ranked Cornhuskers had to do was eliminate the Longhorns, who were twenty-one point underdogs after winning the South Division with a 7-4 overall record.

James Brown had emerged as a Longhorn hero when he got his first start and beat Oklahoma, 17-10, as a redshirt freshman in 1994. He went on to lead the Longhorns to a Sun Bowl victory that season, becoming the first African-American quarterback at Texas to start and win a bowl game.

In that 1994 season, a year that was tenuous at best for the Longhorns’ head coach John Mackovic, it was Brown who effectively turned the year–and Mackovic’s tenure at Texas–around, as he led Texas to a 48-13 win over Houston and a 63-35 victory over Baylor. ?In 1995, he had piloted Texas to the final Southwest Conference Championship, including a gutsy performance despite a severe ankle sprain in a 16-6 victory over Texas A&M in the league’s last game ever. In leading Texas to a 10-1-1 record, he helped the Longhorns earn an appearance in the Bowl Alliance at the Sugar Bowl.

The Monday before the Nebraska game, Brown had walked into a press conference in Austin and stunned the media. When he arrived, he was confronted by an Associated Press reporter named Chip Brown about the fact that Texas was a 21-point underdog and “How do you feel about that?” The reporter, an SMU grad who had arrived in Austin a few years earlier from Lubbock, was a harbinger of “fan website” reporting before there were fan websites. After repeated questioning, James Brown finally responded, “I don’t know…we might win by twenty-one points.”

In less than five minutes, it was on the national wire.

“Brown predicts Texas victory.”

John Mackovic, who was in his fifth season at Texas, told his quarterback in a meeting that afternoon, “Now that you’ve said it, you better be ready to back it up.”

The TWA Dome was packed, with a decided Nebraska flavor for that game which would decide the first Big 12 Championship. James Brown had led his team on the field in warm-ups, and was out-cheering the cheerleaders in the pre-game drills.

Mackovic, who was known for creatively scripting his offense at the beginning of games, put the Cornhuskers on their heels immediately with an 11 play, 80-yard drive for a touchdown to open the game. Texas had led 20-17 at half, but when Nebraska took its first lead of the game at 24-23 in the third quarter and then made it 27-23 with ten minutes remaining in the fourth quarter, things looked bleak for Texas.

The representatives from the Holiday Bowl in San Diego, who had come poised to invite Texas after the `Horns were dispatched by Nebraska, had marveled at the Longhorn Band at halftime and had delivered to the Texas representatives material advertising the attractiveness of San Diego as a bowl destination site.

But four plays later, Brown hit receiver Wane McGarity for a 66-yard touchdown pass, and Texas was back in front, 30-27.

Nebraska’s ensuing drive stalled at the Longhorn forty-three, and with 4:41 remaining in the game, Texas got the ball at its own six. A penalty on the first play pushed the ball back to the three. Five plays later, Texas had moved the ball to their own twenty-eight yard line.

It was fourth down, with inches to go.

Mackovic called time-out and summoned Brown to the sidelines.

“Steelers roll left,” he said. “Look to run.”

Mackovic had used his weapons well in the game. He had taken Ricky Williams, who would win the Heisman Trophy two years later, and used him primarily as a decoy. Priest Holmes, who had been the third back after coming off of a knee surgery earlier in his career, had been the workhorse.

Both players, of course, would go on to fame in the NFL, with Holmes becoming the league’s top rusher at Kansas City in 2001. Holmes finished the game with 120 yards on 11 carries, and Williams carried only eight times for seven yards. Everybody had seen the pictures of Holmes as he perfected a leap over the middle of the line for short yardage. He had scored four touchdowns that way against North Carolina in the Sun Bowl alone.

Nebraska geared to stop Holmes.

And now, there was James Brown, right where you left him at the start of this story.

“Look to run,” Mackovic had said. But as the team broke the huddle, Brown looked at his tight end, Derek Lewis, and said, “Be ready.”

“For what?” Lewis responded, as he turned to look at his quarterback as he walked out to his position.

“I just might throw it,” Brown replied.

Brown took the snap, headed to his left, and saw a Nebraska linebacker coming to fill the gap. He also saw something else. There all alone, seven yards behind the closest defender, stood Derek Lewis.

Seventy-thousand fans and a national television audience collectively gasped as Brown suddenly stopped, squared and flipped the ball to Lewis, who caught it at the Texas 35, turned and headed toward the goal. Sixty-one yards later, he was caught from behind at the Cornhusker 11-yard line. Holmes scored his third touchdown of the game to ice it at 37-27 with 1:53 left.

The next morning, Mackovic was on a plane to New York to attend the National Football Hall of Fame dinner, and to accept on national television the Fiesta Bowl bid to play Penn State. The reaction and reception he received was amazing. In choosing not to punt from his own 28-yard line, thus leaving the game in the hands of his defense with three minutes left, Mackovic had swashbuckled his way into a significant amount of fame. Had it failed, he would have been second-guessed forever, because the Cornhuskers would have had the ball only 28 yards from the goal, where a very makeable field goal attempt would have tied the game, and a touchdown would have won it.

There is an old Texas proverb that says it is only a short distance from the parlor to the outhouse, and there was John Mackovic, sitting on a stuffed sofa in a studio at CBS-TV, accepting a bid as the Big 12 representative to the Fiesta Bowl, as Nebraska dropped from national title contention and went to the Orange Bowl.

“The call” seemingly had been seen by everybody in America. Ushers at the David Letterman show were high-fiving the Texas coach, and managers of leading restaurants were sending him complimentary bottles of wine.

James Brown had made good on his promise, even if he didn’t quite get the 21 points margin of victory. He passed for 353 yards, hitting 19 of 28 passes, including the touchdown pass to McGarity. He had led Texas to a stunning victory. The mystique of the North Division of the Big 12 had been shattered, and the guys from the South had proved they belonged.

In the years that have followed, Big 12 schools have played in the BCS National Championship Game seven times, as the young league quickly solidified itself as a true power in college football. Now, of course, it is in its swan song, with Nebraska departing for the Big Ten and Colorado for the Pac 10 after this season. The Texas-Nebraska game next weekend in Lincoln is the last regular season meeting between the two schools for the foreseeable future.

The victory marked the high water mark for Mackovic, who was able to enjoy the popularity of “the call” for a short spring and summer. When Brown sprained his ankle in the season opener of 1997 and couldn’t play the next week against UCLA, disaster struck. Texas came apart as the Bruins beat the `Horns, 66-3. Brown never really got well, and neither did his coach. When the Texas season ended at 4-7, Mackovic was removed from the head coaching position and reassigned within the athletics department.

James Brown made a run at arena football and spent some time playing in Europe. In his time at Texas, he had earned a special place. He was inducted into the Longhorn Hall of Honor and is now an assistant coach at Lamar University.

As a trailblazer, he destroyed the myth that an African-American couldn’t play quarterback at Texas, and secondly, he had taken “fourth and inches,” and made it into a euphoria that will forever rank as one of the greatest moments in the storied history of Longhorn football.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Excerpts from this commentary came from the book “Stadium Stories–Texas Longhorns,” by Bill Little.

 

  

07.28.2013 | Football

Bill Little commentary: The 1963 National Championship (Part 2)

Texas’ quest for a National Championship in college football had followed a star-crossed path.

Bill Little, Texas Media Relations

         

Editor’s note: This season marks the 50th anniversary of Texas Football’s first National Championship. The following is the first part of an excerpt detailing that magical season from “Stadium Stories: Texas Longhorns” by Bill Little, published by Globe Pequot. You can read Part 1 here.

At Austin’s Municipal Auditorium, the crystal glasses and silverware were all in place, as the seal of the President of the United States adorned the speaker’s podium, waiting for a dinner that would never happen. At a campus hangout called Fritz’s, students lunched and grabbed a quick beer as suddenly, somebody ran to the bar to listen to the radio. First one, and then another.

“Must be something about the President,” someone said. “You know he’s coming to Austin this afternoon after his speech in Dallas.”

Royal, who was to meet President John F. Kennedy when his flight landed in Austin, got the word as he was dressing to go meet the plane.

“I was the person chosen to welcome him to Austin,” Royal said. “He had learned how to do the “Hook ’em, Horns” sign and was prepared to flash it as I shook his hand. I went into our living room and just sat stunned until Walter Cronkite came on TV and said that he had died.”

The shots fired in Dallas reverberated around the world, but particularly so in Austin. On the UT campus, the President had been popular, even in the state of his chief Democratic opponent, Vice President Lyndon Johnson. Now, Johnson, by virtue of an assassin’s bullet, was President. The Texas governor, John Connally, a former student body president at UT, had been seriously wounded.

Royal, who had become friends with both men, was faced with a dilemma. College football games that weekend were cancelled, but the Longhorns and Texas A&M were scheduled to play the most important game of Royal’s career, and perhaps in Texas history, six days later on Thanksgiving Day.

For the first time, national live television became a major factor in America’s life. We saw the man accused of killing the President gunned down in the basement of a courthouse before our very eyes, and watched as the dream of the new order and “Camelot” faded with a little boy’s salute to his Daddy’s casket.

Now less than a week later, life dictated that it must, somehow, go on.

Thanksgiving Day, Nov. 28, dawned cold and dreary in College Station. The field, which had been dampened with rains during the week, was made even worse when the grounds crew brought in dirt which quickly turned the surface into a quagmire.

And just as it appeared Texas was on the verge of that first-ever National Championship, Texas A&M jumped to a 13-3 lead in the season finale in College Station. Carlisle and reserve quarterback Tommy Wade led a comeback, which included some great fortune.

With the Aggies still leading 13-9 in the closing minutes, Texas A&M intercepted a Texas pass, but fumbled on the return when they inexplicably tried to lateral the ball. Tom Stockton, the fullback who had scored the only touchdown in the Baylor game, recovered to give Texas new life. Then as Texas zeroed in on the goal line, another Aggie tipped a Texas pass and gained control only after he had fallen out of the end zone, missing what would have been a game-saving interception. A photographer named Jim Seymour captured the descriptive picture of the defender’s knee ruts, where he landed just beyond the end zone line.

Finally, Carlisle plunged over from the one, and Texas prevailed. The National Championship was accomplished. The polls crowned Texas as champions at the end of the regular season, but there were doubters in the media in the eastern part of the country. Navy, which had lost only that game to SMU in Dallas back in October, openly challenged the Longhorns’ ranking.

Wayne Hardin, the coach of the Naval Academy, had lobbied for a post-bowl game decision. On the field before the game, Hardin told a national TV commentator in an interview broadcast across the nation as well as to the crowd in the stands, “When the challenger meets the champion and the challenger wins, then there is a new champion.”

To which Royal answered a crisp, “We’re ready.”

Despite owning three National Championship recognitions, Texas was almost the underdog going into the game.

The Longhorns were lambasted as “fraud” and “unable to pass” and generally not what they were cracked up to be.

Finally, on top of all the publicity, Royal spoke back to the critics.

“Look,” he said in obvious ire, “We’re not a darned bit afraid to put it on the line.”

Hardin’s strategy was to make Texas pass, and the Longhorns did. The Midshipmen came out in an eight-man line, which left gaping holes in the secondary for Carlisle to exploit. And he did, setting a Cotton Bowl total offense record and earning all but one vote as the game’s outstanding back. Texas actually held a 21-0 lead at one point and finished the game with its reserves on the field, a yard away from another score at the Navy goal line.

Texas hammered the Midshipmen, 28-6, and Staubach would say years later that the hardest he was ever hit, as a quarterback in college or during his illustrious career with the Dallas Cowboys, was in that Cotton Bowl game.

Allison Danzig, the respected writer for the New York Times, summed up the game pretty well.

“The first University of Texas football team ever to be recognized as national intercollegiate champion sealed its claim to preeminence today with an overwhelming 28-6 victory over Navy in the Cotton Bowl.

“Roger Staubach, Heisman Trophy winner and the most celebrated player of the year in leading Navy to a ranking second only to Texas, was harried unmercifully and eclipsed by Duke Carlisle as the Texas quarterback threw two tremendous touchdown passes and scored one touchdown in one of the most shining performances on record in the New Year’s Day fixture.”

Joe Trimble of the New York Daily News added, “Texas brags. But they’re entitled to talk big. The powerful Longhorns clearly proved their right to No. 1 rank in the nation today when they thoroughly thrashed second ranked Navy, 28-6, in the 28th Cotton Bowl.”

And finally from George Minot of The Washington Post, “The winner and still collegiate football champion of the world — Texas. Advertised as the title game between the nation’s number one and number two ranked teams, the 28th Cotton Bowl Classic was turned into a shambles by a rampaging Longhorn line and a quarterback who they said couldn’t pass, but did.”

On the season, Ford and Appleton each earned All-American honors, and they were joined by a young sophomore named Tommy Nobis, who gained the first of his three years of national recognition honors. The heroes were legion. When their tenure on the Forty Acres was finished, the seniors of 1963 had posted an incredible three-year record of 30-2-1.

Looking back, the most remarkable thing about the season of 1963 was the closeness of the games, yet except for the frightening moments late in the Aggie game, one never had the feeling that the team was threatened.

But in the short span of their college days, life as they had known it changed.

Just as the 1941 team will forever be linked with the events of Dec. 7 that year, so the fall of 1963 was to be remembered more for tragedy than it was for football. A year before, the missiles of October in Cuba had given them their first taste of actual fear, as the country and the world stood on the brink of war, and there were stirrings of a conflict in some faraway place called Vietnam. But when President Kennedy was killed in Dallas, we were all forever changed.

Today, elevators are run by computers, and all doors have exit bars and keys. The hole in the stadium where the old door was is now full of video cables and concrete. Our world is one of caution, and security is a device in an airport, or a search at the stadium gate.

But in the chambers of the mind, on a fall evening where you can see the stars and remember, there was a team which made Texas proud and won it all, and set a standard that opened the way for more.

And in that space, in the memory of a time gone by, we are once again safe.

 

 07.08.2016 | Baseball

Bill Little Commentary: Memories in a Glass

Former Texas Baseball head coach Augie Garrido was inducted into the National College Baseball Hall of Fame last weekend.

By Bill Little, Texas Media Relations Columnist

       

Photo Gallery | Video Recap

LUBBOCK, Texas – Given that Saturday night, July 2, had been billed as a “Night of Champions” for college baseball, it will come as no surprise that much of the web woven in the ballroom of the Overton Hotel was linked with threads connected to The University of Texas.

The finest piece, of course, was the induction of Augie Garrido into the National College Baseball Hall of Fame. Augie, who was a dual inductee from both Texas and Cal State Fullerton, became the tenth Longhorn to enter the Hall in its 11 short years of existence.

He is the fourth coach, joining Billy Disch (2008), Bibb Falk (2007) and Cliff Gustafson (2006). Longhorn players enshrined include Brooks Kieschnick (2006), Greg Swindell (2008), Burt Hooton (2008), Keith Moreland (2009), Kirk Dressendorfer (2009) and Richard Wortham (2010).

The 2016 class included retired coaches Robert Braddy of Jackson State and Tommy Thomas of Valdosta State. The players named were J. D. Drew of Florida State, Matt DeSalvo—who won a collegiate record 53 games at Marietta College—Rick Monday of Arizona State and Tom Paciorek of Houston.

Other award winners were Trinity’s Tim Scannell (Skip Bertman National Coach of the Year),  Clemson’s Seth Beer (Dick Howser Player of the Year), Kent State’s Eric Lauer (Pitcher of the Year), OU’s Sheldon Neuse (Brooks Wallace Shortstop of the Year), Louisville’s Brendan McKay (John Olerud Two-Way Player of the Year) and the late Gus Steiner (National Collegiate Umpire Award).

As each award winner spoke, there was an obvious theme permeating their thoughts about the game. Garrido—as usual—set the philosophical tone.

In an interview late in his life, Darrell Royal was asked the question about “What It Means To Be a Texas Longhorn.”  

“It is a chance,” Darrell had said.

As he spoke on that Saturday, Augie noted that many people think of baseball as a game of failure. Often it has been said that the sport respects hitters who bat just over .300—which means you have made an out two-thirds of the time.

As each speaker was interviewed Saturday, their path to that night was illuminated. Jackson State’s Bob Braddy spent 28 years at his alma mater and in 2003 became the first African-American coach to be inducted into the College Baseball Coaches Hall of Fame. He remembered working in the fields, picking cotton. Another coach recalled cropping tobacco leaves in the fields of North Carolina.

Augie remembered picking fruit in the valleys of California.

“It wasn’t easy for any of us,” Augie told the crowd of over 400. “But it helped us become who we are. Baseball coaches don’t come from the country clubs.”

“But I see the game as something different from a game of failure. It is a cruel game. It will break your heart,” he said. “But it is like the cliché of the glass being half empty or half full. I choose to see baseball as an opportunity.”

When asked about his decision to go to college rather than enter professional baseball out of high school, one of the honorees said, “I thought about it, and I decided it [going to college] was a piece of life I didn’t want to miss.”

And so with that, “opportunity” became the pervasive theme of the night.

The late Gus Steiner had become a superb collegiate umpire, despite losing an arm at a young age. Tom Paciorek turned out to be one of those threads connected to Texas. He had gone to the University of Houston as a football and baseball player. In 1966, he was part of history when his Cougars played Texas in the NCAA District playoffs in the Astrodome—the first indoor college games ever played. And then a year later, he was a part of another kind of Longhorn history, as UH came from behind to knock Texas out of the 1967 NCAA playoffs, defeating a favored Texas team in the final game Bibb Falk ever coached.

And then there was Augie.

When his 1995 Cal State Fullerton team won the College World Series, it was Garrido’s third national championship in 17 seasons. That squad is still considered perhaps the best in the history of the game. By 1996, Augie had established the Titans as a national power, and taken a three-year swing in the Big Ten where he brought Illinois its first league title in years. 

Texas had parted ways with Cliff Gustafson, who at the time was the winningest coach in the history of the game. The Longhorn job was open. Was it a glass half empty? Or half full?  The answer, it turned out, came from his root. Augie’s mom had been part of a west Texas family, growing up not far from Lubbock. The Dust Bowl had driven her family from the state, but the lure of the Lone Star was always a part of his DNA. 

And so, following the 1996 season, he surveyed his life, and with his life partner Jeannie Grass, agreed with DeLoss Dodds and Butch Worley to become the coach of the Longhorns. What followed would be two more CWS titles, and two second-place finishes. And as television brought the college game into the bright lights, he became the winningest coach of all-time in 2003 in a series where the Longhorns eliminated No. 1 ranked Florida State in Tallahassee.

More than that, he taught kids about baseball, and about life. He told them how to conquer fear, saying the only way to do it was with confidence. He taught them that they had been given a gift; a chance to play a kid’s game at the highest collegiate level.

And there, my friends, is that word again.

What was it Darrell said that it meant to be a Longhorn?

“It is a chance,” he said. No more, no less. An opportunity.

And therein comes the final piece of the “Night of Champions” that connected the evening to the Longhorns.

In the period from 1968 through 1974, Cliff Gustafson’s Longhorns were a fixture at the College World Series. Time after time, they and others would be thwarted because of a dynasty built by Rod Dedeaux at Southern Cal. In short, as teams came to Omaha, most teams came “hoping” to win. Southern Cal came “expecting” to win.

But when the Longhorns got to Omaha in 1975, Southern Cal was not there. That was because a young coach named Augie Garrido, whose small school had a budget of less than $5,000, had shocked the Trojans in a regional in their own park.

That was when Augie met Cliff, and a friendship ensued that would be a part of the fabric of Texas baseball. Texas won the 1975 title because of the heroics from players like Keith Moreland, Mickey Reichenbach, Jim Gideon and Richard Wortham.

But there was one other guy who made a difference.

In the Longhorns’ win over South Carolina that led to an eventual championship game, a power-hitting outfielder was struggling at the plate. Gustafson called time out, and with a count of 0-2 on the batter, called on Mark Griffin, a little guy whose limited career had produced only a .263 batting average. And he sent him to the plate. With only one strike left, he laced a single that plated a run, and ignited a six-run rally.

In the program for College Baseball’s “Night of Champions”, page 14 is a full page ad with a collection of baseballs photographed in sepia tone, as if they are artifacts from the past. Centered in the middle of the page is this quote from the legendary Cleveland Indians pitcher Bob Feller:

“Every day is a new opportunity. You can build on yesterday’s success or put its failures behind and start over again. That’s the way life is, with a new game every day, and that’s the way baseball is.”

The page is sponsored by Mark Griffin, a former Texas Tech regent, and the head of his dad’s oil empire which included Griffin Oil, Griffin Fuel and Transportation, Pro Petroleum and Rip Griffin Travel Centers.

It is, after all, about opportunity.
 

 

 

06.01.2009 | Baseball

Bill Little commentary: NCAA Regional chronicles — Last man standing

        

June 1, 2009

Bill Little, Texas Media Relations

It is hard, if not darn near impossible, to be all alone in a crowd.

And yet there Preston Clark stood, watching with the rest of the baseball world in Austin, as his line drive to left field battled to defy nature, to somehow best a 25 mile per hour wind that seemed determined to blow it foul.

Close to 14,000 eyes were watching the ball, including those of the three Texas runners on base who had somehow produced a 10-10 tie out of a four run deficit heading into the ninth inning of the NCAA’s Austin Regional Championship game against Army.

Frozen just a few feet from home plate, locked in his dreams, was Preston Clark.

The road for the senior from Rockwall had been as tough as it has been for any Longhorn ever. He had come to Texas as a highly touted catching prospect in 2005, the heir-apparent to Taylor Teagarden, the Longhorns’ all-American catcher who would be spending time in the Big Leagues in just three years. He is the only remaining Longhorn who was a member of that 2005 National Championship team. He has pride in being a member of that team, but doesn’t take ownership of the title, since he wasn’t on the suit up squad for the CWS. His National Championship ring, with all of its glitter, is put safely away.

Two shoulder surgeries, a costly knee injury just before the regional in 2007 and more work and rehabilitation coming into this year had relegated him to utility work, and a lot of bench time. And yet at Oklahoma City in the Big 12 Tournament, he had homered. The long missing stroke with the bat was back. Still, with sophomore Cameron Rupp playing well behind the plate, Preston was searching for a place in the lineup.

The guy once heralded as a “can’t miss” super star even moved quietly into the 2009 Austin Regional, inserted in the lineup in the Longhorns’ opening game against Army as the designated hitter-a right-handed batter in the fifth spot of the lineup against a left-handed pitcher. But-and you have heard this before-playoffs do make strange heroes, and Preston Clark‘s regional run was only beginning.

First, Brandon Belt was hit by a pitch, knocking the Longhorn first baseman out of the game in the first inning. So Clark, the designated hitter, moved to first base, where he played superb defensively, while collecting two hits and scoring two runs. In the 25-inning game against Boston College, he started at first base, had four hits and scored one of the runs in Texas’s 3-2 victory.

From the beginning of the tournament, Army coach Joe Sottolano had warned that his team, which batted .334 over a 53 game regular season-could hit. He also made it very clear. Army had not come to the NCAA Regional as a fourth seed with expectations of a nice visit to Austin and a box of “you were here” medals.

“It is not our nature,” he had said, and his steel eyes and those of his players made you know he meant what he said.

Augie Garrido has often said that baseball is a game of the unexpected, and this 2009 Austin Regional proved to be that for many of the so-called analysts who at one point called it the easiest of the 16 regionals. It was, without question, the best balanced, and the most competitive, of all of the many regionals held in Austin since the first was held at what was then Disch-Falk Field in the summer of 1979. Any of the four teams could have won it. Texas State went out first, suffering two late losses to Boston College, 8-7, and Army, 7-4.

Boston College had rallied to beat the Bobcats, and then became part of that 25-inning game in a 3-2 loss to Texas. The tournament ended in heartbreak for Coach Mik Aoki’s Eagles in a 4-3 loss to Army, with the tying run at third base and heading home when the first base umpire rang out the BC runner on a double play-and video replays showed the runner was safe.

No team, however, has ever visited an Austin Regional and commanded more respect and captured more hearts than did the Black Knights of the Hudson. Garrido would say at the end of the day that baseball was “spiritual.” Perhaps so, because there was a unique spirit in the entire tournament. This was a four-team field of really good college baseball teams in which there were no bad guys. At the end of the BC-Texas marathon, the teams embraced. At the end of the tournament, the UFCU-Disch Falk Field crowd gave one of its best applauses ever to the men of Army.

Most times, the team that comes out of the afternoon game in a four-team regional will come into the evening session and run out of gas about the sixth inning. But not Army. It was not, as their coach had said, “in their nature.” The Black Knights pounded Texas starter Taylor Jungmann for six earned runs and chased him from the game after three and a third innings. When Kevin Keyes ignited the ‘Horns and the crowd with a two run homer to cut Army’s lead to 7-6 in the seventh inning, it appeared the momentum had swung. Instead, Army swung. A two run home run by stellar sophomore shortstop Clint Moore and booming shot over the centerfield “Green Monster” by 6-7, 250 pound Joey Henshaw (he, too is a sophomore) gave Army a 10-6 lead with only two innings remaining in what was now being viewed as the region’s “first Championship Game.” If Army won, the two would play again on Monday.

The focus of the weekend, to that point for Texas, had been the dramatics of the Saturday night winner’s bracket game with Boston College. The two teams had played more innings (25) and for a longer time (just over seven hours) than anybody in NCAA history. Texas closer Austin Wood had achieved immortality in Longhorn lore by pitching 13 innings in relief, including more than 12 before yielding a hit. He was matched on the other side by Boston College reliever Mike Belfiore, who shut out Texas for nine and two thirds innings himself.

Mack Brown has a saying when qualifying something that is really good, and it’s “I won’t say it is the best, but I will say no one has anything better.”

So it was with Wood’s truly remarkable performance. He threw 169 pitches and basically pitched more than 12 innings of no-hit baseball. Old timers at Texas will tell you how Bobby Layne pitched a no-hitter at Texas A&M to claim the Southwest Conference title while nursing a cut foot and a dozen cold beers. The “gold standard” for Texas pitching masterpieces prior to Saturday night was thrown by Burt Hooton during his junior season in an SWC showdown against Texas Tech. Hooton, who was credited with a no-hitter by pitching a perfect game over the regularly schedule contest, defeated the Raiders’ Reuben Garcia, 1-0, in a 13-inning game many claim was the best pitched game ever in the SWC. Hooton didn’t walk a batter, wound up allowing one hit (the batter was retired on a double play), struck out 19, and faced the minimum 39 batters.

Now, here on a surprisingly still late May Saturday night, Austin Wood matched Hooton’s 13 innings, but he did it all in relief. And what sets this one apart is that he did it in a game of sudden death. From the bottom of the ninth inning until he was replaced by Austin Dicharry in the 20th inning, Wood played Russian roulette with Boston College’s bullets. One run, however it came, and it was over. And as the evening wore to morning, both teams realized that the goal of winning the regional was getting dimmer and dimmer for the team which finally lost the contest.

Mik Aoki knew it, even as he regrouped his club for the game against Army which began less than eleven hours after the 25-inning game was over. Still, the Eagles were in the game with the Cadets to the very last second.

When the final press conference was over, Joe Sottolano’s voice almost broke as he talked about his team. The Black Knights had taken an early lead over Texas, and dominated the game until the fateful ninth inning. Keyes had provided the big blow, but time after time, the Longhorns were thwarted by good pitching and outstanding defense. Moore, the young shortstop, made an unbelievable play to throw out Travis Tucker from deep in the hole. Andy Ernesto’s diving catch had taken runs and an extra base hit away in centerfield, and Kyle Fleming went to the right field wall to haul in Brandon Belt‘s bases loaded blast that ended the sixth inning.

“When we came here,” Sottolano said, “our team has been given courtesy and respect because of the name on the front of our jerseys.” He looked over at Moore, and Ernesto-a senior who will be leaving to become a helicopter pilot-and said softly, “what I would like them to be remembered for is being very good baseball players.”

Preston Clark stood at home plate, awash in the dream of every player who ever picked up a bat or threw a ball. It is that moment of the spirit, when time stops, and the world is in freeze frame. Folks down the left side of the ball park looked at the third base umpire, who thrust his arm toward the field. Preston Clark raised his hands, and started to first base.

“When,” they asked Joe Sottolano, “did you believe your team was in trouble?”

“When the grand slam happened,” he said. “Until then, we have enough confidence in ourselves and in our team to believe we had a chance. It is not in our nature to do anything else.”

What happened at UFCU Disch-Falk Field Saturday night and early Sunday morning was historical. The record will show it was the longest game in school history, and in NCAA history. Individual records were set, and they will all be dutifully recorded in the annals of time.

But what happened on Sunday night and throughout the tournament was memorable. It is the essence of sport that you remember the moment. It is then that iPhones and digital cameras give way to the pictures that hang on the hallways of the chambers of the mind. Because the wonders of technology are proven and true, but they can never capture one thing: A feeling.

That is the pride Joe Sottolano felt as he looked the young men he had recruited to come play baseball and become American soldiers at The United States Military Academy, a similar kind of pride that Augie Garrido has felt in watching young men grow, year after year as the winningest coach in the history of the game.

Most of all, it is about Preston Clark, and all those like him who have battled adversity.

It is, once again, about waking up knowing who you are, and going out and realizing who you can be. And that is the best dream of all.

Bill Little commentary: Scott Appleton’s journey to redemption

Like the lead character in Thomas Hardy’s 1874 novel “Far From the Madding Crowd,” Appleton fled the hustle and bustle of the limelight and fame into the depths of despair.

Bill Little, Texas Media Relations

            

Scott Appleton was, by all accounts, the best that ever was.

Darrell Royal called him “the best defensive lineman I’ve seen since I have been in coaching. He simply makes tackles from sideline to sideline, and he’s like blocking a wall on one play and smoke the next.”

Royal’s defensive guru, coach Mike Campbell, said “He’s the only player I never remember being blocked.”

In two seasons, as the Longhorns flirted with national championship dreams in 1961 and 1962, Appleton had become recognized as the most feared defender in all of college football. By 1963 he had achieved standards of mythical proportions. Or, perhaps better said, he had re-established them. During his high school career in Brady (defined by its Chamber of Commerce as the geographical center or “Heart” of Texas), Appleton became a legend.

In short, by 1963—at 6-3 and 235 pounds—he was the biggest, baddest football player on the planet. It was a time when most guys played on both offense and defense, and Appleton could do both as a tackle, but it was as the leader of the Texas defense that he would etch his name real close to Longhorn immortality as part of UT’s first unanimous national championship selection.

In eight of the eleven games in the perfect season, the Longhorns allowed fewer than seven points to their opponents—including three shutouts. When the Longhorns opened the season in the old Sugar Bowl Stadium in New Orleans with a 21-0 victory over Tulane, Campbell said on a post-game radio call-in that Appleton was particularly brilliant.

“How do you know he had a good game without looking at the films?” challenged the call-taker.

Campbell answered without hesitation, “Because he’s never had a bad one.”

In an era of football where guys played both ways and four or five touchdowns would be an offensive explosion, the benchmark for the 1963 Longhorns would be the defense. In his book on football written by Royal after the 1961 season, he related a story where his friend, Frank Broyles, had shocked a group of sports writers by telling them that his first objective in coaching is to tie.

“What Frank was saying, however, is the basic precept of football:  You never lose a ball game if your opponent doesn’t score. Therefore, you first play to keep him from scoring. Then you play to score yourself,” Royal wrote.

At the heart of that was Scott Appleton, a small town boy in a man’s body. Compared to the giants who play the game today, Appleton was small in stature—a factor that would eventually prove his undoing at the next level. From his defensive tackle position, he had a rare combination of size, speed, strength and agility. And with all of that, he had the intangible of being a nice guy who was competitive enough to work himself into a severe case of angry by game time.

The best example of that came in the Oklahoma game, when the Sooners entered the contest as the No. 1 team in the country. Texas had beaten OU five straight times, but the No. 2 ranked Longhorns were underdogs heading into the annual showdown in Dallas.

Appleton was the perfect example of the quiet man who used other teams’ distain to motivate him, and the ready foil in the OU game was star running back Joe Don Looney—who had actually started his career as a track athlete at Texas.

The Sooners had whipped top-ranked Southern Cal to move to the top of the polls, and Looney was on track for all-star honors. But in an interview the week before the game in assessing the Longhorns’ defense, he was quoted as saying, “Appleton’s tough…but he ain’t met the Big Red yet.”

Neither, however, had Looney met Appleton.

On the game’s first play, the Texas defense dropped Looney for a five yard loss, and he finished the game with negative yardage. Appleton was named National Lineman of the Week after making a game high 18 tackles and recovering a fumble in the Longhorns’ stunning 28-7 victory which vaulted them to No. 1.

After the game, Sooner coach Bud Wilkinson was asked about the game’s “turning point.

“There was no turning point that I could see,” he said. “Except the opening kickoff.”

The week after the game, Looney’s college career ended when Wilkinson suspended him for disciplinary reasons—which did not involve his pre-game comments.

Appleton’s final appearance as a Longhorn would come seven games later in the same stadium, when he led a Longhorn defense which collared Navy’s Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback Roger Staubach in a 28-6 Cotton Bowl Classic victory that provided an exclamation point to the perfect season.

A tri-captain along with Tommy Ford and David McWilliams, Appleton became the Longhorns’ first Outland Trophy winner as the nation’s top lineman. He was a consensus all-American and a two-time all-Southwest Conference selection. In a trip to truly rarified air for a lineman, he was fifth in the voting for the Heisman Trophy as the nation’s top football player.

As the spring of 1964 arrived, Scott Appleton appeared to be on top of the football world. There were two leagues of professional football then—the AFL and the NFL. Scott was the No. 1 draft pick of both the Dallas Cowboys of the NFL and the Houston Oilers of the AFL. When the Cowboys traded his rights to Pittsburgh, however, Appleton elected to stay at home in Texas with the Oilers.

Sadly, that would be the highlight of his professional football career.

The downward spiral lasted five long seasons. Appleton, whose father had committed suicide after struggling with alcoholism, began battling the same affliction as he was asked to gain weight in the new league. Defensive linemen at that next level, even then, were taller and weighed more. With extra height and longer arms, they were more adept at pass rushing.

To gain weight, he turned to beer, often leaving the Oiler dressing room with a case under each arm. Then it was hard liquor. His old roommate, David McWilliams, remembers visiting Appleton when he drank a fifth of whiskey on each of three straight days. Beaten down by alcohol and some drugs, he lasted three years with the Oilers and two with San Diego.

Like the lead character in Thomas Hardy’s 1874 novel “Far From the Madding Crowd,” Appleton fled the hustle and bustle of the limelight and fame into the depths of despair. He picked up odd jobs as a short order cook at fast food restaurants.

And then one day, he found his way home. He had tried AA and other rehab groups, but his fame always followed him and he couldn’t ever be “anonymous.”  Finally, he wound up in San Antonio at the Fourth Street Inn, a project of the First Baptist Church and Rev. Jimmy Allen. They would feed the homeless, but before they ate, they would read the Bible.

In that space, he found redemption, and the solitude—just as Thomas Hardy’s character did so long ago. Appleton quit drinking, cold turkey, and set about becoming an ordained  minister. He worked first at the Fourth Street Inn, and then started his own ministry working with young people through organizations like the Fellowship of Christian Athletes. Speaking at places all over the country, he openly told his story of alcoholism and recovery.

The man who had thrilled fans in the arena of the game was now changing lives in the arena of life. He had the heart of a lion in his testimonies, but sadly, his own heart was failing. He was battling serious heart disease. At first, he rejected suggestions of seeking a heart transplant, saying that he was”right with God” as he was. In time, he relented, and was placed on the list for a donor heart. He was wearing a heart monitor that night in 1992, when he died. He was only 50 years old.

In his book, “Where have you gone…Texas Longhorns,” author Whitt Canning relates an interview with Scott’s sister, Tresh Steffens.

“He left a message on my phone that night,” she told Canning. “He had spoken to two groups earlier in the day and was going to stay home and watch TV that night. That’s where he died, sitting in front of the TV. I tried to call him back when I got in, but couldn’t  get an answer. I just thank God he didn’t suffer.

“It’s almost every day now that I run into someone who has a child that he touched,  and when I went through his things, I found boxes of letters—thousands of them—from young people he had helped.

“Once in his life he had chased dreams of money and success, but he always seemed to want more. But the last ten years of his life, I don’t think I ever saw him that happy and contented, and he didn’t drink for the last twelve to fifteen years.”

When Mack Brown came to Texas in 1998, he realized that UT’s trophy room was non-existent, and he further learned that the Outland Award, presented by the Football Writers Association of America, had only been a paper certificate prior to the 1990s.  By then, a bronze cast of a lineman had been created.  Brown ordered trophies for the trophy room for the three Longhorn honorees, and presented individual ones to Tommy Nobis and Brad Shearer at a home game.

He also gave one to Steffens and the family of Scott Appleton.   The folks in the stadium cheered him, one more time.  Six years after he had died, Scott’s circle of life—far from the madding crowd which now celebrated him, had completed its journey.

In his book, Canning writes that Steffens said that after Scott’s death, she was talking to a friend who wondered why God did not perform a miracle to save Appleton.

“He did,” was all she said.

 

 

04.15.2010 | Baseball

Bill Little commentary: Only the best

          

April 15, 2010

Bill Little, Texas Media Relations

It was a simple correlation, this competition that lies within us all, according to that sage philosopher Augie Garrido.

“Confidence is the only way to conquer fear,” he had said. “There is a little guy running around inside each of us whose name is fear,” he said. “And the only way to keep him down is with confidence.”

In other words, to achieve great things, you first have to believe that you can.

And as the Longhorns prepare for their weekend series with Texas A&M in baseball, they are walking into one of the most historic series in college baseball, and one that through the years has been driven by unabiding determination that spans the battle between fear and confidence.

Historically, Texas has won 126 and lost 43 games in Austin, a winning percentage of 74 percent. It is true that in baseball, that figure is always aided by the fact that the home team gets to bat last. It is also true, however, that the years in this series have reinforced, perhaps more than any other, the fact that to win, you first have to believe you will. And the corollary to that is, fear of defeat will beat you darn near every time.

Never was that more true than in likely the most memorable game of the series history at the Longhorns’ old home, the legendary Clark Field.

Today, in La Jolla, Calif., Buddy New enjoys the good life that a career that began in banking, then transcended into the manufacturing of cans, and finally wound up in the race horse breeding business. And on the coffee table at his home is a book called “Kings of the Diamond: The History of Texas Longhorn Baseball.” On page 282, captured in the grain and the shadows of the late afternoon, is a picture of Buddy New scoring the winning run in perhaps the most improbable Longhorns victory ever in the series, at least those games played at Clark Field.

It was a day that would change Buddy New’s life forever, and it all would have to do with confidence.

The setting, of course, was in perhaps the most unusual ballpark of its time. Clark Field sat roughly where the Bass Concert Hall is today, and the center field wall was atop the cliff that still can be seen at the corner of what is now Dedman Dr. and 23rd St. The park was carved so that the “cliff” ran from a 350-foot foul pole down the left field line in the direction of where the LBJ Library now stands.

The right field wall, accounting for a prevailing south wind that usually blew in, was only 300 feet from home plate, and you could easily see the north rim of Memorial Stadium over the 10-foot fence. The hill in center field was 12 feet high, and it was only 347 feet to the base of it. It was 401 feet to the base of the fence in dead center field, which sat atop a large plateau above the cliff. A ball that cleared the fence in center would have to be at least 40 feet high.

But the thing that made the park interesting was that any ball that landed on the cliff was in play, meaning that an outfielder could scale the wall and actually catch or chase down a ball hit there.

Its legends were many, including a mammoth home run hit by Lou Gehrig in an exhibition game with the New York Yankess in 1929 that was called by the Los Angeles Times “without a shadow of doubt, the longest home run ever hit by man since the beginning of baseball.”

In the history of the Southwest Conference, which began its competition in baseball in 1915 and ended when the league disbanded in 1996, Texas won outright or tied for a remarkable 64 league titles. Texas A&M claimed 14, and the rest of the teams totaled 11. Fifty-six of the Longhorns’ titles were won outright.

The early 1960s were a coming of age for college baseball. The College World Series had started just a dozen or so years before, and Texas’ and their legendary coach Bibb Falk’s domination of the sport was being challenged by an old foe in Texas A&M, as well as some others who ranked as wannabes in the region of the throne room. All of this came to a showdown stage in 1962, when the Longhorns and the Aggies met at Clark Field to determine the SWC winner, and the team which would earn the right to advance to the NCAA District 6 playoff against Arizona, a series that would determine the region’s representative in Omaha.

Texas had won seven straight league games, including a key 4-3 victory over Texas A&M, but everything was on the line when dawn came on May 10, 1962. It was a typically hot spring day. If the Aggies won, they would finish 12-3 in the SWC, and Texas, which had played one less game because of a rainout, would be 11-3. The right to enter the NCAA playoffs hung in the balance.

Buddy New was a little-used first baseman, who came to Clark Field that day with not the least expectation of playing. But in the game of baseball, as Augie would say almost 50 years later, the only things certain are surprises.

The Aggies, with the nucleus of a team that would take them to the College World Series two years later in 1964, jumped to an early lead, and by the end of the fourth inning, Texas A&M held a commanding 9-2 lead.

The crowd of more than 3,000 which had packed the old ball park gradually drifted away, just as it appeared the Longhorns’ playoff hopes were ebbing. But in the seventh inning, shortstop Bill Bethea walked, and third baseman Ed Kasper doubled him home to make it 9-3. Still the Aggies had Roy Crain, the SWC’s leading ERA man, on the mound, and the Longhorns were in the bottom of the order in the eighth inning.

The bottom of the eighth began harmlessly enough when Lew Brazelton drew a leadoff walk. Then to the plate stepped Buddy New, who had been inserted at first base Falk said “to give him a chance to letter.” The left-handed hitting New drove a pitch to the top of the cliff in right center, 365 feet away, and as the Aggies scrambled to get it, New (who admittedly was no speedster) huffed and puffed his way around the bases. Brazelton scored in front of him, and when New slid safely home with what would be an inside-the-park home run, it was suddenly 9-5. The rally continued, even with two outs, and the eighth inning ended with the Aggies leading by only a run at 9-8.

In the top of the ninth, Texas A&M broke its scoring drought, and after a heroic strikeout by the Longhorns’ sore-armed troubled former ace Bobby Callaway with the bases loaded, it was 10-8 with only one inning left to play.

By now it was past 6 p.m., in a game that had started at 3 p.m., and across the campus, UT students at fraternity and sorority houses, at dorms and co-ops, were listening to the game on the radio, started heading to the park. That was when Bill Melton, a UT cheerleader who was broadcasting the game on the student station, left his post and grabbed the PA and shouted, “Gimmee a Teeee.” A crowd of maybe 4,000 — larger than it had been at the start of the day — responded with a deafening shout.

But it was still 10-8 when the first two men went out in the bottom of the ninth when Bethea, who scored four runs in the game, worked a base on balls. Leading hitter Pat Rigby snapped out of a slump and drove a double off the cliff, and as Bethea came in to score, Rigby all but flew into third base as the throw home got away from the Aggies catcher. From there, he would score to tie the game on Kasper’s infield single to deep short.

In the top of the tenth, the Aggies got two men on, but Callaway battled through and somehow got out of the inning.

There were two out in the bottom of the tenth when it happened, and not one — not then and not now — could ever figure out exactly how what happened next happened. With a short fence in right field, anything hit down the line and in the ball park would likely go for a single. But this was a day of destiny for our friend Buddy New.

New ripped a ball down the right-field line that somehow took a nosedive toward the ground at the end of its flight and bounced with one huge hop up and over the ten-foot fence for a rare ground rule double. And that was where he stood when catcher Gary London hit a ball soaring toward the cliff in left center field.

When the ball was hit, the crowd of 4,000, the ghosts of every Texas baseball player who ever was or ever will be, rose as one. Behind home plate, the late Orland Sims, was standing at the scorer’s table, dutifully recording in his official scorebook. “That goes as a double and an RBI,” he said. Then, he looked at his companion standing in front of the metal chair behind the old plank that represented the press area at the old park and said, “Now how’s that for a comeback?” Texas had scored eight runs in the final three innings, six of them coming with two men out.

The team would go on to beat Arizona and finished third in the CWS, when they finally ran out of pitching and out of miracles.

“It was a day I will always remember,” says New. It had a lot to do with confidence, and the fact that Coach Falk always had a way of looking down and digging deep into his bench and playing a hunch.

But just as Mack Brown told his National Champion football team after the Horns’ victory in the BCS title game in the Rose Bowl in 2006, New realized that his future lay somewhere else than between the base lines.

“Mike Thrash (who was a teammate and life-long friend) and I were working out at the ball park one day with a bunch of minor league players. I had come to school figuring on playing Major League baseball. We looked at those guys and they ran faster and were hitting everything off the cliff and beyond. Then we looked at each other and decided we’d better start going to class, because our future wasn’t here.”

Clark Field as a baseball venue disappeared after the 1974 season, and when the expansion came to UFCU Disch-Falk Field three years ago, one of the major donors was a former Longhorns first baseman named Buddy New.

And in La Jolla, New’s grandchildren look curiously at the picture on page 282 of the book, showing a disconsolate Aggies catcher staring at the plate as New, surrounded by joyous Texas teammates, prepares to plant his foot on history.

“Granddad,” they ask, “is that you, scoring that run?”

“Baseball is like life,” he said the other day. “It teaches you a lot. And the way I see it, I got the best of both worlds.”