No. 1 Best of Kornacki: How Michigan Became a Team to Remember
12/23/2019 8:50:00 AM | Baseball, General, Features
With 2020 approaching, MGoBlue.com feature writer Steve Kornacki has selected 10 of his best stories from 2019. The series begins Monday (Dec. 16) with the "Best of the Rest" and will continue through Tuesday, Dec. 31. Kornacki will also add a postscript for the top 10, sharing background and his own feelings on what made the subject special.
June 22 // Baseball
Kornacki Reflects: The Wolverines had been a good but hardly great baseball team until they reached the NCAA Tournament. And now they had bucked all the odds to reach the best-of-three championship round at the College World Series. Writing about how all this happened was a real joy because that's exactly what this team was. This was as enjoyable of an experience for me as covering the 1984 Detroit Tigers winning the World Series.
Nov. 14 // Ice Hockey
Kornacki Reflects: This was my best piece in 2019 from purely a writing and reporting aspect. I sensed there was something truly special in this story of a Korean War hero being lost in action for 67 years, only months after being the stellar goalie of Michigan's NCAA championship hockey team. And talking with his children, Rick Downes and Donna Knox, unlocked a great tale with so many layers of humanity and impact that it really would be deserving of "60 Minutes."
May 15 // Men's Basketball
Kornacki Reflects: There have been very few people in the sports world who are in John Beilein's company as those who excelled at the very highest levels in their professions and as people. Tigers Hall of Fame broadcaster Ernie Harwell is one who comes to mind. I was always moved by the deepness of the conversation I had with Beilein in Madison Square Garden after the Wolverines had won the Big Ten Tournament championship, and that became the lead of a story about a dear friend, a guy who would light candles for you after Catholic mass while praying for you at a time of need.
Nov. 26 // Football
Kornacki Reflects: This is arguably the greatest team in the history of Michigan intercollegiate athletics. These 1969 Wolverines slayed the dragon if any team here ever did, beating an Ohio State team that had won 22 consecutive games, and doing so convincingly. I've loved getting to know many of those players over the years, and talking with Tom Curtis, Barry Pierson and Bruce Elliott as they prepared to celebrate a 50th anniversary with their teammates provided some interesting insights I'd never heard before.
May 12 // Baseball
Kornacki Reflects: Michigan coach Erik Bakich included Charlie Donovan in the pre-game ceremony on senior day. Charlie, the older brother of Wolverine catcher Joe Donovan, died before he could begin his career in Ann Arbor. Talking with his parents, Karen and Jim, on a picnic table near the field was a touching conversation I'll never forget. The love they have for their sons is so very deep. When Joe hit a walk-off, 10th-inning homer two weeks earlier, he and Bakich believed Charlie was part of it. That was the foreshadowing of things to come for a College World Series team that thrived on a special spirit.
Feb. 18 // Women's Basketball
Kornacki Reflects: How do great coaches get from here to there? Kim Barnes Arico, a gym rat raised on Long Island, had to scrap and claw every inch of the way. She had the support of her parents all the way. Met Larry Arico, a football coach, and got married. They had three children, and she kept climbing the coaching ladder. She reached a top rung by landing the Michigan job and that was so great. Except she had to tell Mom, and that meant the grandkids were going to another part of the country. The emotion of that conversation between daughter and mother is at the root of everything KBA stands for -- love and challenges.
Sept. 10 // Football
Kornacki Reflects: It's pretty special to know the father and then get to know the son. Chris Hutchinson was an All-America defensive lineman when I covered the Wolverines for the Detroit Free Press, and I can still recall talking to him after he'd chosen to come north from Houston. He was a relentless player and a great leader. Aidan Hutchinson, a rising star defensive lineman, is everything his father was in a much larger body frame. But it was his mother, Melissa, who gave him a birthday present to attend a Tom Brady improvement facility. It turns out it's impossible to choose which parent more wants him to have success.
Nov. 6 // Men's Basketball
Kornacki Reflects: Juwan Howard had come home to coach the team he loves so much that he couldn't hold back tears at the press conference where his hiring was announced. Now his first game, a victory over Appalachian State, was over and there were Jalen Rose and Jimmy King, his Fab 5 brothers, hugging him in the hallway before entering the locker room, where his players decided it was their coach whom they wanted to lead them in the singing of "The Victors." It was a come-full-circle night.
May 18 // Softball
Kornacki Reflects: Meghan Beaubien put on as fine a performance as any Wolverine in any sport this year, throwing a 12-inning, complete-game shutout over James Madison in an NCAA Tournament game. Megan Good matched her with zeroes on the scoreboard until Madison Uden's RBI-single on the 348th pitch of the game. It was high drama all the way, and all Beaubien wanted to talk about after the game were her teammates, giving them credit for defense and that most timely hit. Impressive in every way.
March 28 // Women's Gymnastics
Kornacki Reflects: Bev Plocki set the record for the most Big Ten championships by any coach in any sport with her 24th conference title. And yet it wasn't those championships she valued most. The relationships with her gymnasts that have grown even in the years after they graduated mattered most. Her story is a bit like "Mr. Holland's Opus," the movie about a teacher played by Richard Dreyfus whose value went beyond the music he taught. Bev shows that there is much more to coaching than just winning.
Best of the Rest
11: Thirty Years Later, '89 NCAA Men's Basketball Champs Reflect on Feat, Feb. 22
12: Kerrs Become Baseball's Three-Generation College World Series Family, June 12
13: Football's Paye Gains Strength to Excel from Mom and Her Special Gift, Oct. 22
14: Why These Baseball Wolverines are Headed to Omaha, June 10
15: Why Harbaugh Thinks 2019 is Going to be Special On, Off the Football Field, July 22
16: Mann Uses Inspiration of His Cousin to Give His Best for Ice Hockey, Nov. 9
17: Nielsen Raises Expectations, Gets Results with Unbeaten Women's Lacrosse Team, April 4
18: How Men's Soccer Star Mertz Exceeded Expectations to Win Big Ten's Top Award, May 1
19: Glasgow Football Journey at Michigan Has Been a Family Affair, Nov. 28
20: Once-in-a-Lifetime Team: '59 Swimming & Diving Exceeded All Expectations, Sept. 26
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