Dave's world comes to life

Sporting News, The, May 5, 1997 by Dave Kindred

This one's for fun.

I called my college baseball coach.

"Coach, this is Dave Kindred," I say.

Jack Horenberger, 83 years young, says, "David Kindred. Long ball-hitting second baseman from Atlanta, Ill. You still keep your glove by your typewriter?"

"You bet."

"Attaboy," he says.

I called him because Illinois Wesleyan University last month won the NCAA's Division Ill basketball championship.

Illinois Wesleyan, my alma mater, is the fount of civilized thought. Every young man on campus carries a Bunsen burner and every young woman reads Plato in the Greek. It's what Harvard would be if Harvard had a cornfield on the edge of town.

I can tell you what Horenberger said the first week of my college life. "Take off the Atlanta letter jacket," he said. No more high school hero. I can tell you our double-steal sign; Horenberger shouted, "Hey, Lou." I can tell you what he said in a Mississippi locker room when he heard his second baseman leave a toilet stall. "Kindred, flush it. You're in the big leagues now."

Some other day we can talk about the Tiger-Fuzzy tempest in a teapot. On another day we'll discuss the Bulls, the best team in any sport ever. Today we celebrate the Titans of Illinois Wesleyan.

As a freshman, I played alongside a senior shortstop named Dennie Bridges. Also a football and basketball star, Bridges now is Illinois Wesleyan's basketball coach, first hired as Jack Horenberger's assistant and promoted in 1965.

"I knew Dennie would succeed me one night when we were six down," Horenberger's says. "I called a timeout but before I could say a word, Dennie said, `Here's what we're going to do.' This, this, this and that And he went out and made sure everybody did it. He dribbled behind his back, got a layup and the sucker free throws. And he did it three times. We were up by two."

Dennie Bridges is now Division III's winningest active coach with a 587-290 record in 32 seasons. Now, how Bridges could have coached 32 years when we turned a double play only last week, I have no idea. But there you go.

Thirty-two years. Long enough to have coached Jack Sikma, who had an extraordinary 14-year NBA career and now has been retired six years. Long enough that his successor as Horenberger's star shortstop, Doug Rader, played a decade in the big leagues before becoming a manager/coach who straightened out Mark McGwire and now whispers in Albert Belle's ear.

"It's where I fit," Dennie Bridges says.

He could have chased a Division I job. But he grew up on central Illinois' farmland and felt at home with Horenberger at Illinois Wesleyan. No need to leave when you love where you are.

"Anyway, when I started at Wesleyan making $6,000, Division I coaches made $20,000," Bridges says. Then with a laugh: "Now they're making $800,000. Maybe now I'd think differently."

Eleven times in 14 years in Division III, Bridges has taken Illinois Wesleyan to the NCAAs. Eight times his teams have made it to the Sweet 16. A year ago Illinois Wesleyan lost in the championship game.

"It's amazing," Bridges says, "what a good coach you can be when you get off the bus with the best players."

But how does he get those players at a private university costing $22,000 a year when he has no athletic scholarships?

"We have a beautiful new arena we sell out (2,680 seats) and where we've won 46 of 47 games," Bridges says. "Wesleyan is a great academic institution. And we play winning, exciting basketball."

As for the money, there are academic scholarships and need-based help. And Bridges can schmooze. Horenberger says, "One parent asked Dennie why his boy should pay to go to Wesleyan when he could get a free ride at a bigger school. Dennie took a piece of paper and said, `Sir, write down what your boy's happiness is worth to you.' The boy came to Wesleyan."

After last season's defeat in the national championship game, Illinois Wesleyan graduated six of its to seven players.

"We had a bunch of young players coming back," Bridges says, "and we had no idea what kind of chemistry we'd have."

But Bryan Crabtree, the team's best player, had an idea. He said, "The last 50 years, Wesleyan has been known as a winning team. We knew we'd be good because we're expected to be good." By season's end, Crabtree, a 6-7 senior forward, had become Division III's Player of the Year. He averaged 22.6 points and 6.5 rebounds.

Even now, a month later, talking about the championship leaves Bridges giddy. "You can't understand the difference between winning a national championship and finishing second until you've done it. It's unbelievable. You're the national champion forever."

On the night Illinois Wesleyan won it, Jack Horenberger accompanied his wife and 18 friends to a sports bar in Sarasota, Fla. There they could watch a satellite telecast of the game.

"I watched the first half," Horenberger says. "Then I had to leave. Couldn't watch it at all."

Horenberger came to Illinois Wesleyan in 1932, an ambitious baseball player from Grayslake, Ill. Forty-nine years later, he retired after giving his professional fife to his school: as baseball coach, basketball coach and athletic director.