Unfinished Business

  This weekend, I rectified a wrong that occurred just over 56 years ago. Let me explain.

Growing up in Highland Park, New Jersey, I did not long for much. What I did like was sports. Playing. Watching. Helping. Everything else was secondary. 

I was not very tall. I reached an adult height of 5’5”. I was heavy until the middle of 9th grade when I dropped 30 pounds and began a life-long love of weight lifting.  

Nobody told me I couldn’t play a sport. Baseball was easy for me. I thought I was good at football and basketball—until I learned that size and weight mattered. Being on the receiving end of a full blown hit from a 200 pound lineman during my freshman year playing football gave me pause about playing varsity. I ended my football career with one carry for a gain of five yards. 

From seventh grade on, I became proficient in keeping score and statistics in baseball, basketball and football. Which the coaches noticed. And it led me to being the football and basketball scorekeeper/statistician at Highland Park High School. I didn’t play baseball after my freshman year for reasons not germane to this blog. 

I loved my time as a statistician in high school. I became a necessary arm of the coaching staff for both sports. Which opened me up to strategy sessions when I delivered my morning after the game football statistics or post-game numbers in basketball. 

I knew I was destined for college. There was only one choice for me—if I could get in. That was my father’s school, Franklin and Marshall. At a young age, I avidly read the magazines sent to F&M alumni. I learned so much about the school. 

I devoured the sports section. I followed F&M football closely, with great interest in the undefeated 1964 team led by Seiki Murono at quarterback. 

It was that year that I set foot on campus. I fell in love with the beauty of the small school. I had my eyes set on F&M. 

I arrived in Lancaster with some athletic goals to augment my desire to graduate and attend law school. First, I fully intended to walk onto the freshman baseball team. Which started with my daily workouts in the gym and in the dusty dirt area called “The Pit.” I succeeded at that goal. 

Second, I wanted to do football statistics. So I approached a new freshman coach named Bob Curtis to volunteer my services. He said yes. Unlike basketball, which had no interest in my availability. Which worked out fine, as I could continue my studies without long road trips other than with football or baseball. 

Sophomore year I received a promotion to the varsity. Which placed me in the rickety old wooden press box atop Williamson Field, the home of Diplomats football. 

I was in heaven—even if the team wasn’t very good. I was given a sandwich of my choice, a drink and a spot on the 50 yard line to keep track of the plays. I ate with the team for the road games. I was glad to be part of the “training table’ and the older players adopted me immediately. 

My job was to tally the statistics and have them to the Head Coach by 8:00 on Sunday morning, which I did—except for the time the coach found my dorm room and woke me at 7:30, angry after a loss and wanting his numbers. I was accurate and honest in my job. 

F&M played an eight game schedule in 1969. Most of the games were at home. I did go to the first away game at Dickinson College on October 18th. We lost, as we would continue to do, except for the opener versus Ursinus. 

Next up was a road trip to Pittsburgh to face Carnegie Tech on October 25th. That would be my 19th birthday. I was excited about the chance to stay overnight with the the squad. 

Until I was called into the coach’s office. Without looking up, he told me I wasn’t needed and I wasn’t going. I should make myself available for the home game against Lebanon Valley the next week. 

I was crushed. It hurt big time. 

I continued my work, which included calls to the local media for some good pizza money, not only in my sophomore year but also for my junior year. I went to all the road contests. None were further than Baltimore at Johns Hopkins University. 

By my senior year, I had landed a summer internship in Congress as a Government major, which I parlayed into attending the Washington Semester Honors Program in Government at American University as one of the first to go from F&M. Coach Curtis, now the head coach, said it made no sense to travel to the games from D.C. My career as a statistician at F&M was over (I did fill in for Jersey City State College for two games in the 1980’s).

I had other pursuits to deal with, which included attending law school in Delaware and a career with the New Jersey Public Defender’s Office. I managed to see some F&M games. When they would come to New Jersey, which was rare, I would go. I went to basketball games at Muhlenberg and Moravian Colleges, easily accessible via Interstate 78.

I began to go to more home and away football games as my children got older. Of course, I go to baseball games—I did play two years before being injured my junior season. I watch F&M play on the computer. I guess I bleed Blue & White. 

Yet something lingered within me. With Carnegie-Mellon joining the Centennial Conference this year for football, the schedule had one date which leaped out to me. Saturday, November 8, F&M would be returning to Pittsburgh. My wonderful, understanding wife said sure to my craziness—said she would go to Pittsburgh to see this particular game which I have wanted to see since 1969. 

So with our daughter, who began her film and TV career in Pittsburgh, a city we are very at home with joining us for the trip, we drove the familiar route to the Steel City. The mid-Fall colors were as muted as they were bright. 

The loveliness and charm of Pittsburgh has never diminished. In fact, locales which were once warehouses are very trendy and upbeat. PNC Park is my favorite baseball stadium (and of all of the cookie cutter, dual purpose stadiums of the 1960’s and ’70’s, Three Rivers Stadium was the best). And I had been in the Steelers’ home field, then known as Heinz Field, to film a PSA spot as an extra. 

I visited Carnegie-Mellon previously and had driven through the area numerous times. It is one of the better-looking University Athletic Association campuses which includes a number of fine academic institutions (the UAA is the league CMU competes in with Brandeis University; Case-Western Reserve University; University of Chicago; Emory University; New York University; University of Rochester; and Washington University in St. Lous).

When I reached out to F&M Athletic Director Lauren Packer Webster about my adventure, she contacted Mark Fisher, the Sports Information Director at CMU and a good friend of hers, to make arrangements. I entered a press box for an F&M game for the first time since 1970, hopeful for a picture to document my presence. 

Instead, my wife and I were treated to the best time I ever had at an away venue. We were invited to sit in the second tier of the lower level of the press box, behind Mark, who was keeping the statistics on his computer, and adjacent to the live feed TV director and where the live stats were imputed. 

Everyone was so gracious to us. I was introduced to a Tartans sports institution, Donnie Michel, who once had my job as a CMU student. (Donnie played golf at CMU and stays jn touch with his coach, Richard Erdelyi—who was one of my coaches in Junior League baseball in Highland Park; Rich stayed in Pittsburgh after graduating from the University of Pittsburgh and then coached a young high school quarterback named Dan Marino as well at CMU)

Donnie assisted in a very necessary way—calling out down, distance and players involved in a play so Mark could enter the information in real time, to be swallowed up and regurgitated by a NCAA program designed to give coaches and fans comprehensive data they need and want. This was so far different than what I was doing in 1969. He also does basketball stats too; that’s true love and dedication to his alma mater.

What made it more fun was that at times, Mark of Donnie called for help and I was able to aid them with the number of a yard line where something had occurred at or which player(s) may have been on the play. Throughout the game I felt that surge of adrenaline which I had on Saturdays. The camaraderie in the press box was awesome. 

Oh, and by the way, jt was a great game. Franklin and Marshall went out to a significant lead, only to have CMU come all the way back to forge ahead. F&M then went down the field and scored the winning touchdown and two-point conversion to leave Pittsburgh with a crucial win and ruin CMU’s Homecoming. (In 1969, Carnegie Tech won 7-6)

This sets up a Centennial Conference winner-take-all matchup in Lancaster on Saturday between #3 Johns Hopkins (9-0; 6-0 CC) and #25 F&M (8-1; 6-0 CC). If I recover from this weekend and the long road trip with high speed crazy drivers out everywhere, my wife and I might just be inside Shadek Stadium on November 15th. 

Many thanks to Lauren Packer Webster, Mark Fisher and Donnie Michel for helping me relive the magic which a press box had for me all those years ago. And for allowing me to take care of unfinished business in the best way possible.