Sunday, June 08, 2008
'Old school' as stylish as ever
Aaron McFarling
Recent columns
RADFORD -- Not a single eyeball strayed.
You'd think at such a moment, at least one kid would drop his head and watch his spikes kick the dirt. Or one would glance up toward Mom in the stands, or a girlfriend, or peek at some other distractive element of the Group AA baseball championship atmosphere.
No. Gary Rice was talking. That meant every Alleghany player was listening -- and believing.
"We're still alive," Rice told his huddled team, waving his arms for inflection near the third-base line. "We've got a chance. We're not dead till it's over."
Three outs later, it was over. Those of us in the stands were the only ones not surprised by that fact. We could see that Powhatan was too strong, too sound, and Alleghany's 7-3 deficit heading into the seventh was only modestly challenged before the Indians finished off a 7-4 win, ending the Mountaineers' unlikely run.
But something good happened in Low Moor this year. Until that final out, Rice had these boys buying into everything, and it took them as far as they could possibly go.
"He probably got 100 percent of the ability out of these kids," Alleghany athletic director John Hutchison said. "I think we've had more physically talented teams. Gary was just able to pull it together."
The 63-year-old coach made some unorthodox (crazy?) moves this postseason, and every single one worked.
Every ... single ... one.
Consider:
- Nursing a one-run lead in Friday's state semifinal against Poquoson, Rice intentionally walked the Islanders' No. 3 hitter to load the bases for the clean-up man who'd hit a 400-foot homer earlier in the game. The kid grounded out weakly to first to end the inning.
- In the quarterfinals against Hidden Valley, Rice stuck with starter Ryan Kessinger the entire game even though Kessinger admittedly gets tired about the fifth inning every time he pitches. Kessinger polished off the powerful Titans in the seventh for a 5-4 win.
- In a one-run game in the Region III playoffs against Amherst County, Rice sent a little-used player in to pinch hit with the bases loaded and two outs. "Does Gary think this is Little League and everybody has to bat?" Hutchison remembers telling another spectator at that moment. "And dadgum it, two outs, two strikes, kid gets a little bloop single over the second baseman that drives in two runs, which at the time was very huge. He knew what buttons to push."
Add enough of those moments together, and a team starts to believe in magic.
"I wondered sometimes earlier in the year," third baseman Ethan Craft said with a smile. "He'd do something and I would wonder, but we'd always win the game. That's how you get to be 25-2 or whatever we were. You've got to trust him and have faith in what he says."
The thing about Rice is everything else is so steady.
For 30 years, he's been telling kids the same old-school message. "If you're on time, you're late," he preaches. No long hair. No piercings. No slacking once you step through those gates in practice.
Every player but one on the Powhatan team dyed his hair blond before the district tournament started. It's a superstitious thing, a fun thing, but not a thing the Mountaineers would dare do under Rice.
"What would happen if I'd dyed my hair blond today?" said first baseman Steven Keener, who went 3-for-4 Saturday and delivered one big hit after another this postseason. "I probably would have been sitting over on the bench."
He's probably right, but Keener was laughing when he said that. They don't mind a little extra discipline. Rice has 420 career wins. He knows a thing or two about how to do things.
Fans came by the busload to watch this team play. They were rewarded with rallies and walk-off homers and upset victories over stud pitchers. And Rice was at the center of it all.
"This has been one of those years where I think we were overachievers," Rice said. "At the start of the year, nobody would have thought we would have been here.
"It just seemed like this year everything worked out. You've got a bunch of good kids who believed in each other and got the job done, whatever it was."
When will Rice retire? Maybe never. The Mountaineers lose four solid seniors off this team, but a strong nucleus returns. He's got several more of his grandchildren he'd love to coach -- and the youngest is 5 years old.
"I could go another 10 or 15 years," he said. "I'm in no hurry to go anywhere."
That's a good thing for baseball in Alleghany County. And it's a good thing for all of us when an old-school man still demands respect from young people.
Even better when he can still hold every eye.
