Dan Bailey Passes Away at 60 Years Old
Long-Time Trainer Passes Away After Retiring from 36-Year Career
November 16, 2007
ON HIS RETIREMENT
August Feature in the Orange County Register
August Feature in the Press-Telegram
ON HIS PASSING
Bailey Touched a Lot of 49ers
49er Family Grieving Over Loss of Bailey LONG BEACH-- Long-time Athletics Trainer Dan Bailey, just three months after a 36-year career at Long Beach State, passed away early this morning at a Los Alamitos hospital following complications from knee surgery. He died of a heart attack on Friday morning at 2:30 a.m. He was 60 years old.
He is survived by wife Kay, his son Ryan, a professional water polo player in Europe, Joe, a former shot putter at UCLA and daughter Dana Vander Ploeg, who resides in Victorville. There will be a memorial service for Bailey on Tuesday at 11 a.m. at the Walter Pyramid. Funeral services are pending. In lieu of flowers at the memorial service, the family requests donations be made to fund a scholarship in Bailey's name at Long Beach State. Please call (562) 985-5402 for more information.
Bailey spent 36 years as a 49er trainer beginning in August of 1971 serving as an assistant trainer under Tom Oxley. He was hired in physical education to work as an athletic trainer half time and in the Student Health Center as a physical therapist, half time. Three years later, in 1974, he became the head trainer. He went on to work with countless teams and countless athletes before retiring in August, 2007. In the Orange County Register in August, he relayed a ritual he had with former Men's Basketball Coach Seth Greenberg.
In 1993 Bailey found himself next to Seth Greenberg on a bench at Allen Field House, watching the 49ers blow out top-ranked Kansas.
The two had a ritual. Greenberg would say, "What do you think, Bales?" and Bailey would reply, "Tell you later."
With 1:53 left, Long Beach led, 60-39.
"What do you think, Bales?" Greenberg asked.
"They can't score 22 points in a minute and a half," Bailey replied. "Can they?"
They couldn't, and the 49ers won, 64-49.
In addition to working with the 49er athletic teams, he was extensively involved with several Olympic teams. In the late 1970's he started working with the USA women's sculling team. Joan Linde (Van Blom) was one of his athletes. In 1982 he began working and traveling with USA water polo. During the 1984 Olympics he was in charge of athletic training for the sailing venue in Long Beach, he worked for the U.S. women's sculling team at Lake Casitas, and the USA men's water polo team at Pepperdine. He continued to work off and on with USA water polo until 1990 when he became the head athletic trainer for USA men's water polo, working in that capacity through the 1996, 2000 and 2004 Olympic Games and the 2006 World Championships.
"Ol' Doc Bailey probably won a lot of athletic championships for Long Beach State over the years by being able to keep kids healthy," said former school president Dr. Robert Maxson in the Press-Telegram in August. "He is a tremendous trainer who knows all the remedies. But if you were an athlete, and wanted to be pampered, you better go to someone else. Dan is a no-nonsense guy. He'll go down as one of the stalwarts of Long Beach State history, no doubt about it."
"Dan is one of a kind, both as an athletic trainer in which he has no peer and as a person with a unique sense of humor," said former Press-Telegram sports editor Jim McCormack, a longtime friend who spent a lot of time with Bailey on the road during the 1970s when McCormack was the 49er beat reporter for the newspaper.
An innovater among athletic trainers, he was the first to use heel and lace pads, an item every training room uses to prevent blisters when taping. He was also the first person to sell pre-lubed heel lace pads. He was instrumental in developing a summer education program with various Japanese colleges and universities, whereby Japanese students were brought to the Long_Beach State campus to study athletic training. He is the past president of Long Beach Sports Medicine and Physical Therapy, Inc. and over the years he has developed various athletic training and software products.
But a testament to a man's legacy, especially a trainer's, is what is athletes say about him, All-American Tyler Hildebrand was one of them, when the Press-Telegram did a story on Hildebrand in April, 2006.
"He knows more about knees than anyone I've dealt with. I've had three orthopedic surgeons and they had no idea. It was something they read in books back at medical school," said Hildebrand. "But Dan taught me how to rehab better than ever. He makes you do the kind of things you don't think you're capable of doing. He's not like the typical physical therapists that just read and learn their stuff from books. Dan has been there, done that because he's seen a million athletes go through here. He knows what your limits are and he pushes you to get to them."
Bailey earned his undergraduate degree in physical education at the University of Utah, where he played football and wrestled. In 1971 he received a graduate degree in physical therapy at USC.
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