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49er Family is Left Grieving
by Doug Krikorian, Long Beach Press-Telegram
November 18, 2007
The despairing irony once again reinforces my cynical view of the cruel
realities that are forever lurking around the corner for all of us, and
make unwanted visitations with a maddening fickleness and numbing randomness.
It was in early August of the past summer that I went out to Long Beach
State, and sat down with Dan Bailey in his training room office to discuss
his upcoming retirement after 36 years of employment at the school.
He was reflecting on some of the thousands of athletes he tended to across
the seasons and he was relating memorable stories and he was telling of
how he was looking forward to doing nothing more exhausting in the future
years than traveling with his wife Kay and playing golf and doting on
his four grandchildren.
And now a little more than three months later, I'm writing about Dan Bailey
again, but I wish I wasn't.
I wish Dan was out there on the golf course with all the pals he played
with so often over the decades like the former Long Beach State basketball
star Ed Ratleff.
I wish Dan was on a junket somewhere with Kay enjoying the leisurely moments
that he so joyfully anticipated after years of laboring as the head trainer
for the 49er athletic teams as well as overseeing his physical therapy
establishments.
I wish Dan would have been able to attend the 49er basketball game Saturday
against Idaho State at the Walter Pyramid where he would have been greeted
warmly by so many people because he had become such an iconic fixture
of the university since he arrived on the scene in 1971.
I wish Dan was still telling me tales about Ratleff, Joan Lind, Dan Bunz,
Terry Metcalf, Russ Bolinger, Glen Tenove, the Pondexter brothers, Glenn
McDonald, Rick Aberegg, Leonard Gray, Bobby Gross, Lucious Harris and
so many of the athletes he saw perform for the 49ers.
I wish I didn't have to say that this big, friendly, smiling, engaging,
popular bear of a man, at age 60, suffered a fatal heart attack the other
day after developing complications from a bleeding ulcer.
"I'm devastated," said the former Press-Telegram sports editor,
Jim McCormack, who as a young beat reporter covering 49er athletics traveled
with Bailey for more than 10 years and became one of his closest friends.
"When Kay called me Friday morning with the news, I just couldn't
believe it.
"Dan and I had one of those delightful friendships that you have
when you spend so much time together on the road with a person. He was
such a tremendous character, but he also was a tremendous trainer.
"I'm struck now by a picture I can envision in heaven that now has
four guys from Long Beach State in it - Dan, Frank Bowman, Jack Rose and
Randy Sandefur.
"If they were playing golf, Dan's trying to win, Jack's telling everyone
to do his best, Frank's planning the post-match dinner and Randy's laughing
at all of them."
"Few universities are fortunate enough to have had an individual
like Dan Bailey, who had such an impact on so many lives," says Dr.
F. King Alexander, president of Long Beach State. "He helped not
only student-athletes, but also faculty members, administrators and other
students.
"It was very disheartening to me when I heard about it. Dan Bailey
was just a great person."
"Dan was a throwback from another era, but he was tremendous at what
he did," says Vic Cegles, the Long Beach State athletic director.
"He was such a respected person in his profession. He definitely
will be missed by all those who knew him."
Ed Ratleff already had been at Long Beach for a year when Dan Bailey came
to work, and they maintained a friendship that never wavered.
"Played golf with Dan all the time," says Ratleff. "He
was such a great trainer. No one was better than him. And he was such
a neat guy, fun to be around. And he had an impact on so many people."
One of those people he had an impact on was a one-time Academic All American
49er linebacker, Joe Donohue, a Mater Dei High graduate who played at
the school between 1980-83.
"Dan was one of the biggest reasons why I went into my line of work,"
says Donohue, who for the past 12 years has served as a physical therapist
for the Anaheim Ducks and whose Pro Sports Physical Therapy outlets are
located in Newport Beach and Rancho Santa Margarita. "He was like
a mentor to me when I was attending Long Beach State. I often helped him
out in the training room, and later I went to work for him at his Long
Beach practice.
"All the stuff I do now grew out of what I learned from Dan. He helped
develop my style. He's definitely one of the most influential people in
my life."
When Jim McCormack phoned me with the depressing news Friday morning,
I thought back to that hour I spent with Dan Bailey last summer, an hour
that I mostly spent laughing as Bailey recalled humorous episodes from
the past, of which there were many.
"I got to know Dan when he played rugby, and he's always been the
guy I'd go to when I had knee or shoulder or any other physical ailments,"
says Stu Ledsman, co-founder of the Belmont Shore Ruby Club. "Whenever
I got hurt, I'd see Dan, and he'd personally take care of me. Just a terrific
guy."
"I just can't believe it," says Jeff Severson, the old Long
Beach State football star. "Here Dan just retired, and now he's gone.
It's so sad."
It is so sad.
Bailey's passing is reminiscent of that in 1987 of a New York sportswriter
named Dick Young, who toiled for years for the Daily News and with whom
I had struck up a friendship.
Dick had bought a home near Las Vegas, planned to live out his days in
relaxing tranquillity after a celebrated journalistic career.
But a few months after retirement, he, too, died at age 70.
The taxman always waits at the gate to collect his due, and one in this
strange life never knows when that fateful day will come.
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