On the 21st
of the month, the best man I know will do what he always does on the 21st of the
month. He'll sit down and pen a love letter to his best girl. He'll say how much
he misses her and loves her and can't wait to see her again.
Then he'll fold it once, slide it in
a little envelope and walk into his bedroom. He'll go to the stack of love
letters sitting there on her pillow, untie the yellow ribbon, place the new one
on top and tie the ribbon again. The stack will be 180 letters high then,
because the 21st will be 15 years to the day since Nellie, his beloved wife of
53 years, died.
In her memory, he sleeps only on his
half of the bed, only on his pillow, only on top of the sheets, never between;
with just the old bedspread they shared to keep him warm.
There's never been a finer man in
American sports than John Wooden, or a finer coach. He won 10 NCAA basketball
championships at UCLA, the last in 1975. Nobody has ever come within six of him.
He won 88 straight games between
January 30,
1971, and January 17, 1974. Nobody has come within 42 since.
So, sometimes, when the Basketball
Madness gets to be too much -- too many players trying to make Sports Center,
too few players trying to make assists, too few coaches willing to be mentors,
too many freshmen with out-of-wedlock kids, too few freshmen who will stay in
school long enough to become men -- I like to go see Coach Wooden.
I visit him in his little condo in
Encino, 20 minutes northwest of
Los Angeles,
and hear him say things like "Gracious sakes alive!" and tell stories about
teaching "Lewis" the hook shot. Lewis Alcindor, that is...who became Kareem
Abdul-Jabbar.
There has never been another coach
like Wooden, quiet as an April snow and square as a game of checkers; loyal to
one woman, one school, one way; walking around campus in his sensible shoes and
Jimmy Stewart morals.
He'd spend a half hour the first day
of practice teaching his men how to put on a sock. "Wrinkles can lead to
blisters," he'd warn. These huge players would sneak looks at one another and
roll their eyes. Eventually, they'd do it right. "Good," he'd say. "And now for
the other foot."
Of the 180 players who played for
him, Wooden knows the whereabouts of 172. Of course, it's not hard when most of
them call, checking on his health, secretly hoping to hear some of his simple
life lessons so that they can write them on the lunch bags of their kids, who
will roll their eyes.
"Discipline yourself, and others
won't need to," Coach would say. "Never lie, never cheat, never steal," and
"Earn the right to be proud and confident."
If you played for him, you played by
his rules: Never score without acknowledging a teammate. One word of profanity
and you're done for the day. Treat your opponent with respect.
He believed in hopelessly out-of-date
stuff that never did anything but win championships. No dribbling behind the
back or through the legs. "There's no need," he'd say.
No UCLA basketball number was retired
under his watch. "What about the fellows who wore that number before? Didn't
they contribute to the team?" he'd say.
No long hair, no facial hair. "They
take too long to dry, and you could catch cold leaving the gym," he'd say. That
one drove his players bonkers.
One day, All-America center Bill
Walton showed up with a full beard. "It's my right," he insisted. Wooden asked
if he believed that strongly. Walton said he did. "That's good, Bill," Coach
said. "I admire people who have strong beliefs and stick by them, I really do.
We're going to miss you." Walton shaved it right then and there. Now Walton
calls once a week to tell Coach he loves him.
It's always too soon when you have to
leave the condo and go back out into the real world, where the rules are so much
grayer and the teams so much worse.
As Wooden shows you to the door, you
take one last look around. The framed report cards of his great-grandkids, the
boxes of jellybeans peeking out from under the favorite wooden chair, the dozens
of pictures of Nellie.
He's almost 90 now. You think a
little more hunched over than last time. Steps a little smaller. You hope it's
not the last time you see him. He smiles. "I'm not afraid to die," he says.
"Death is my only chance to be with her again."
Problem is we still need him here.
"There
is only one kind of a life that truly wins, and that is the one that places
faith in the hands of the Savior. Until that is done, we are on an aimless
course that runs in circles and goes nowhere. Material possessions, winning
scores, and great reputations are meaningless in the eyes of the Lord, because
He knows what we really are and that is all that matters."
-
John Wooden