I normally don't get upset about deaths, but I am very, very upset about this one. Though I somehow never met the man himself, there's a lot of ties that bind.
Obviously he's from my hometown, but more than that, he has ties to my old neighborhood, which to me, is the ultimate tie that binds, since like him, I moved away from Milwaukee, but never let Milwaukee move away from me.
His first coaching job was at humble St. Sebastian School, up on the hill at 55th and Washington Boulevard, which is where I went to school and its a place that I still have an extremely deep affinity for. He coached 8th grade basketball at Sebs in his formative days before he got to Marquette.
He coached there long before I was a student, but I played 8th grade basketball at Sebs myself. When I found out that Majerus' first job was as coach was in the gym I played in, I thought that was so forking cool.
Majerus' time as head coach at Marquette was not a happy one. The program stayed independent too long and got lost in a changing college basketball wilderness in the 80s. It's forgotten now, but while Majerus' personality was well-liked at Marquette and in Milwaukee, he was under a lot of pressure there, and there were many Warriors fans (and they will always be the "Warriors" to me) who were glad to see his back. (Only to regret it later as Marquette flopped around aimlessly until the mid-1990s)
Despite that pressure, you'd still see him around. My dad would tell me stories of seeing him in various west-side Milwaukee joints from time-to-time. I'll never forget my dad bringing home carry-out from the old Melrose Inn on Vliet Street and that Majerus was there waiting for the same thing.
My family later relocated to Indiana ... but so did Majerus. He took the job at Ball State. And later, I would go there as a student. He took Ball State's program to undreamt of heights and became a very popular figure around Indiana at the time.
I'll never forget seeing him at a sectional game at Hinkle Fieldhouse when I was in high school. He wore a white Ball State sweater with horizontal red stripes and he took up at least two seats in the old bench seating they had at Hinkle. You couldn't miss him, and I have a sneaking suspicion, he didn't mind that one bit. I was too young to ever be a part of it, but his summits with media and others at Iaria's in Indianapolis are the stuff of legend.
So was the team he built at Ball State. In his last year there -- 1989 -- Ball State advanced to the second round of the tournament. I arrived at Ball State the following year, and sadly, Majerus had decamped to Utah. But the players he left behind went on to make it to the Sweet 16 in 1990 and push eventual national champ UNLV to the brink in the NCAA Tournament.
It's hard to overstate how legendary that team is at Ball State. And its equally hard to overstate the memories that team created for people like me, who were at Ball State at the time. It was two weeks of bliss, raucous celebration, public displays of joy/drunkenness/rioting (yes ... rioting, the good kind) and just good, damn fun. Without Majerus, those memories never happen.
I always seemed to be one step behind Majerus and that became true in my current job too. The school I cover played Saint Louis in the postseason a few years back. I was excited because I just wanted a couple of minutes to bend Majerus' ear and talk about our mutual backgrounds and his team at Ball State.
Unfortunately, it never happened. Efforts to get Majerus before the game on my part weren't successful, and with a tight deadline after the game, I never got that chance to talk. It's one of the great regrets I have on my job ... one that was driven home big-time when I saw Porter Moser's Tweet earlier tonight.
Majerus was a man who seemed so full of life he didn't know how to save it when his time came.
Gary Parrish linked his last press conference on his Twitter feed, and in it, Majerus is Majerus, but he also talks about being tired. How he needed a day off. How he didn't want to go to Iowa to recruit because he wanted a break. But then admitting he'd probably go to Iowa anyway ... the unspoken admission being that he didn't know how or when to stop.
Taken in hindsight, the footage is absolutely haunting and sad. Watching it had me gutted.
But then I remember that Majerus was about joy, not sadness. Perhaps more so than any other Milwaukeean I can think of, he represented my home city better than any one person ever did and in the kind of light I thought "my people" are like.
The values he represents are the values I represent. The off-color humor he was so famous for is the same off-color humor that was part of my surroundings growing up. We're cut from the same Milwaukee Catholic-raised cloth.
I am so proud he's from my hometown, that he had a tie to my neighborhood, and that he coached at my grade school and at my alma mater.
I wish I had the chance to tell him all of that in person in St. Louis in that March not-so-long ago, but that's life, and this will have to suffice.
I hope the afterlife is as good and rich to Majerus as his real life was. Peace be with a wonderful man. RIP.
