Kornacki: A Farewell to Loyal Readers, Memorable Times and Michigan 'Family'
10/2/2020 12:25:00 PM | General, Features
By Steve Kornacki
ANN ARBOR, Mich. -- This is a tough one to write.
Saying goodbye to loyal readers is never easy, but this will be the last of well over 1,000 features and columns I've written for MGoBlue.com. My position in the athletic department is being eliminated in what they call a RIF (reduction in work force), and so six truly great years are ending.
I'm now searching for one more great challenge and a chance to make an impact elsewhere. This process can leave your head spinning as many can attest after losing their jobs, their health and worse to this numbing coronavirus pandemic.
But I wanted to pause and reflect with you today.
So many great things have happened for the Wolverines since I joined them in 2014. The baseball team reached the championship game of the 2019 College World Series and the 2018 men's basketball team and 2015 softball team also came within one victory of winning it all. The 2017 women's basketball team won the NIT in a triple-overtime title game, and the 2018 ice hockey team reached the Frozen Four before losing on a last-second goal.
I was there to experience all of that, along with the Michigan football resurgence triggered by head coach Jim Harbaugh, whose college career I covered for the Ann Arbor News before moving on to the Detroit Free Press, Orlando Sentinel, Tampa Tribune, MLive.com and FOX Sports Detroit. Then I returned to cover the Wolverines for the Wolverines.
What I liked best was the behind-the-scenes look received by traveling with the teams to most big games, and being in the locker rooms and clubhouses before and after them.
It was the time with John Beilein, the winningest coach in Michigan basketball history, that made me realize what I believe is the most important point to athletic competition: It's not what you win that matters most, it's what you represent.
Trophies look great in display cases, and the Wolverines have plenty of them. But watching Beilein and many of our coaches conduct themselves as second fathers or second mothers to their players was my top takeaway. I received countless compliments from stadium and arena employees around the country about how Michigan was the best group of people they had ever been around, win or lose.
What you treasure are special moments with exceptional people.
I'll never forget sitting behind the indoor batting cages at Fisher Stadium with baseball coach Erik Bakich for some long, personal discussions about life -- its challenges and meaning. And about our faith in God.
Then there was that cool, windy afternoon at Willow Run Airport when "staying alive" in March Madness became quite literal.
The pilot arriving as I awaited my ride home after a harrowing afternoon told me the pilot behind the controls of the men's basketball team charter plane saved all our lives by deciding to crash into a fence and ditch rather than attempting what would have been an ill-fated takeoff.
I hit my head on the seat in front of me during that crash even though my seat belt was on tight. Everything went flying as we came to an abrupt stop and somebody shouted, "Get out of the plane! Take nothing."
Point guard Derrick Walton Jr. opened the emergency door, cutting himself in the process and later requiring stitches. I ran off behind him, D.J. Wilson and Moritz Wagner onto the right wing of the plane, and we all jumped to the ground before sprinting a few hundred yards to safety.
Radio announcer Matt Shepard opened his leather bag in that field and held up a laptop, asking, "What is this?!" It was my laptop, which flew off my seat during the crash, slid on the floor up several rows, and somehow made its way into Matt's bag. It was a day to defy the odds, and that's just what the Wolverines did in the 2017 Big Ten Tournament in Washington, D.C., winning four games in four days for the championship after nearly losing everything.
Kornacki and Wagner
One year later, Wagner stopped a golf-cart driver shuttling him around the Alamodome concourse for interviews during the Final Four in San Antonio so I could jump on with him for the ride back to the locker room. I thanked him, and Moe smiled and said, "You are family."
That is one of the things I'll remember most about the Wolverines, how so many of our teams truly are families.
Austin Hatch and the late Scott Matzka are great examples of that.
Matzka, who assisted on the game-winning goal in the 1998 national championship game, entered the room in Yost Ice Arena where Wolverine coach Red Berenson was following the Lou Gehrig's Disease (ALS) fundraiser game three years ago.
"There he is!" said Berenson, who rose from his leather chair and walked two steps to hug Matzka, seated in a wheelchair.
Matzka was beaming and said, "I want to thank you so much for letting us do this ... That's the family (Matzka motioned outside the door). That's way bigger than hockey and the team, and it's pretty incredible."
Hatch lost his family in two separate single-engine plane crashes, nearly died himself, and spent three years recovering before finally making it to Michigan in 2014. Here, he found not only a basketball family under Beilen, but his future wife in volleyball All-America Abby Cole.
"Arnold Barnett, an MIT statistician, said the odds of surviving a plane crash with one fatality involved is one in 3.4 million," Hatch told me. "So, I survived two of those, with multiple fatalities in both. So, the odds of surviving those two crashes is one in 11 quadrillion, 560 trillion. That's a 14-digit number."
Hatch did some math in his head and said that number is roughly 120,000 times the world population.
"So," he said, "you get the point."
Hatch scored just one point in his collegiate playing comeback after Beilein gladly honored the scholarship offer he extended the Fort Wayne, Ind., star days before that second plane crash in 2011. But he remained a part of the team as a student assistant/manager, and we often sat together on busses during the march to the 2018 Final Four.
There really was no conceivable way we should be talking, that he should be walking, that he should be graduating, that he should be getting married, that he should still be breathing. He survived two plane crashes that killed everybody else -- five family members.
Hatch, now an inspirational speaker, said: "That didn't happen because it's like: 'Lucky me, I'm still here.' I believe it was divine intervention ... Abby is the reason I'm still here. I really believe that."
Above: Steve's sons, Brad and Derek, wife Mary and granddaughter Scarlett. Below left: Sara Rossi and Brad Kornacki, husband and wife, with their son, Felix Kornacki, at a Michigan baseball win at the University of California in March. Below right: Derek and Steve Kornacki in the Michigan Stadium press box in 2016.
Michigan athletics is truly family, and that also goes for my wife and sons, too. We've shared bowl games, season tickets, great trips and so many memories since I began covering Bo Schembechler's team in 1983.
When I was in Los Angeles for the NCAA baseball Super Regional last year, my youngest son, Brad, flew down from San Francisco to see a game, share some meals, do some swimming and spend time with me.
We took a long walk along the canal in Venice, and Brad paused before a bridge to tell me I was going to be a grandfather again. We hugged and cried, and made our way to the beach, absolutely beaming. Two days later, our Wolverines had upset top-ranked UCLA and were headed to the College World Series and more triumphs with a team that took me in like family, too.
I'll never forget those guys, who also welcomed Brad and his wife, Sara, and son, Felix, to their game in Berkeley against Cal in March. That victory came days before the COVID-19 pandemic closed down sports in the Big Ten and canceled athletic schedules that won't resume until later this month.
Fisher Stadium and Alumni Field were quiet this spring, and those adjoining ballparks have provided too many great moments to recall without turning this column into a book.
But I will recall one that had nothing to do with a game's outcome but was powerful in its simplicity nonetheless.
It was 2 1/2 hours before the first pitch a few years back, and legendary Michigan softball coach Carol Hutchins was enjoying the time with Marley, the golden retriever she adores, before the crowd arrived.
The crew at the concession stand was beginning to set up, and the coach knows them well. She ordered up one hot dog, and the vendor knew how to finish the order, adding, "No bun, right?"
Hutchins smiled and nodded. Marley was so distracted by the prospect of his early dinner that he ignored the request of a bystander asking to pet him.
"Marley," said Hutchins, looking down at her faithful dog, "show some manners."
Marley, I swear, seemed to nod and walked over for a few kind words from the bystander, petting and a couple slaps on the back. Then the lovable pooch smiled.
I wished I had been here in 2005, when Carol and her team won the Women's College World Series, but I did cover the 1989 men's NCAA basketball champions and 1997 football national champions.
Their reunions over the last few years were incredible experiences.
My son, Derek, and I spoke with the guys I covered and he idolized as the football program celebrated the 20th anniversary of that undefeated season. It was a chapter in our book, "Miracle Moments in Michigan Wolverines Football History," and one that Derek wrote.
Everyone was great, but Brian Griese was particularly touching. He told us how special it was for us to be writing this book together, sharing a gift just as he had with his father, Bob, as a quarterback and then as one of the game's top announcers.
Last year, Michigan's only NCAA basketball champions returned to Crisler Center for their 30th anniversary celebration. Getting reacquainted with coach Steve Fisher and his wonderful wife, Angie, was a circle-of-life experience. Posing for a photo with team stars Glen Rice, Sean Higgins and Rob Pelinka (once upon a time my sons' church group leader and now general manager of the Los Angeles Lakers) was special.
At times like that, you get looks in your eyes and hug in a way that only older men who were younger together during great times can share.
From left: Sean Higgins, Kornacki, Glen Rice and Rob Pelinka at the 2019 celebration of the 1989 national champion Wolverines men's basketball team.
You remember watching boys grow into men, and girls becoming women.
When I spoke to emergency room physician Chris Hutchinson in March about dealing with COVID-19 patients nearly every hour of every working day, I recalled the tenacious All-America defensive lineman who was one of the heart-and-soul guys on teams that won five consecutive Big Ten championships.
His life's path -- with son Aidan now following in his footsteps as a feared Wolverine lineman and excellent student -- is really what this whole college experience is supposed to be all about, producing people who impact far more than just scoreboards.
And covering Jon Runyan Sr. and Jr. also was a truly memorable opportunity.
I wonder if someday some of the Michigan football players I became closest to -- Mason Cole, Jabrill Peppers, Chase Winovich, Jake Butt, Ben Bredeson, Jake Rudock, John O'Korn, Jourdan Lewis, Rashan Gary and Jehu Chesson among them -- will return here to watch their sons in "the hole Yost dug, Canham carpeted and Schembechler filled," to quote broadcasting legend Bob Ufer.
Watching Harbaugh hold his toddler, Jack, on his lap as he stared out at Michigan Stadium on the morning he was named head coach, was particularly touching. Jim could see the future but also the past, when he was an All-America quarterback one decade after being the team's ball boy when his father, Jack, was an assistant coach.
History runs so deeply and resonates so loudly here.
I apologize to those whose names I'm not recalling in this column. But know that you, too, will always be special to me.
So, while the big plays in the biggest games are great, these are the things you remember most. You remember the people and the special times.
I have been so fortunate to know them all, to share in their lives.
One more Rose Bowl, which would have been my ninth, would have been nice, but I guess I shouldn't be greedy. It's time to go.
I didn't help the Wolverines win a single game, but I hope you enjoyed my storytelling and thoughts. I hope that what I represented will always make you smile.
Take care.
Note: Stories I wrote on six 2020 Michigan Hall of Honor inductees and College Football Hall of Fame inductee John "Jumbo" Elliott were done this summer, but won't run until later dates.
I'd also like to thank Brad Rudner and Kurt Svoboda, the best supervisors you could work for, and three editors who made my stories look and read better: Jon Ripperger, Chris Clark and Matt Baumer. You guys are all the best!
