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Saturday, November 18, 2006
Bo Schembechler's heart, the one that failed him Friday, was shaped like a football.
I discovered that many times, once poignantly when I became a baseball writer. Before then, I mostly covered football, including Miami University when Schembechler was the head coach.
Extras
When I told Bo that I was leaving the Miami beat to cover baseball, he gave me a stare that would peel paint from the Sistine Chapel and said incredulously, "You are quitting football to cover baseball? Why would you want to cover a sissy sport?"
Schembechler and I go way back — back to when he played football in Barberton, a suburb just west of Akron, where a few years later I played baseball and basketball at Akron East High School.
We became friends when I covered his Miami teams, and he trusted me enough to permit me quick entrance into the locker room after games, in time to hear some of his, uh, postgame talks. Bo didn't lose often, but when he did, a damsel tied to a railroad track was in less distress than his players.
One of Bo's quarterbacks, left-handed Ernie Kellerman, once told me, "Bo never gets mad if you win every game and execute every play to perfection."
After a loss, not even the sun would cross to the side of the Oxford street on which Bo walked. He and Ohio State coach Woody Hayes were so much alike they were two yolks in one egg shell.
After Schembechler left Miami for Michigan, I covered a few Bo-Woody UM-OSU encounters that were as big to both sides as today's game is to the football universe. Because I knew Bo, the paper would send me to Ann Arbor, Mich., the week of the game to cover the Michigan aspect.
During one of those weeks, when the game was in Columbus, Schembechler handed me a maize-and-blue Michigan cap and said, "If you don't wear this in the Ohio State press box, our friendship is over."
I didn't wear it, but I stuffed it into my briefcase, just in case Bo asked me after the game where it was. He didn't, and our friendship continued. But as long as I covered Ohio State games, his eyes were wary, believing I might carry a secret back to Woody, never realizing that my knowledge of the intricacies of football matched that of Princess Diana.
I got the last laugh on him over the football-baseball thing when Bo accepted a short-term executive position with the Detroit Tigers, an unfortunate period for him in that he was part of the group that removed Ernie Harwell from the radio booth.
"I thought you said baseball was a sissy sport," I said to Bo. He didn't say anything, but the fact he didn't stay long with the Tigers said it all.
Schembechler's record against Hayes was 5-4-1, and if football coaches go to heaven, the place is never going to be the same with those two. There is an old joke that was used about Woody that now applies to Schembechler: A recent arrival at the pearly gates sees a guy wearing a whistle and a blue cap with a maize "M" on it. The arrival asks St. Peter, "Who's that?" and St. Peter says, "That's God. He thinks he's Bo Schembechler."
In Oxford and Ann Arbor, Bo was God.
Contact this reporter by e-mail at
hmccoy@DaytonDailyNews.com.
