Long Beach State University Athletics
Bailey Leaves with Memories in Tow
8/18/2007 12:00:00 AM | General
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Bailey Departs, Memories in Tow Dan Bailey leaves Long Beach State with bushels of stories, a wheelbarrow of memories, and this one crucial piece of advice for the next 49ers athletic trainer: "Make sure you run out of tape first. They will always get you more tape." At a place like CSULB, the trainers and the coaches are always running out of something. It’s the epitome of life on a shoestring. And they might not let you replace a shoe. But when Bailey got low on supplies, he’d tell his coaches that maybe the 49ers should go out there in untaped ankles. They always got him the tape. "We had to wash out those plastic drinking cups lots of times," Bailey said. "You’d get 2,000 of them in a box, and the box cost $50. We’d be running around gathering all the cups after practice. Then we’d wash them out and use them and keep using them until they just wore out." They don’t do that at UCLA. At USC they could use crystal if they wanted. And even though Long Beach State doesn’t play football anymore, it does run into UCLA and USC in volleyball and baseball and water polo, and it usually handles itself well. At the nerve center of all these athletic programs — and, for that matter, all teams of any kind — is the trainer. Bailey has been the head trainer for 36 years. That’s a lot of tape. It also is a lot of coaches and players, and 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. That was Bailey. Cool in battle, and dedicated to keeping a lot of muscles — and minds — loose. "I had a magic trick I used to do with toothpicks," he said. "I’d fix one so it would just be dancing around in my hand, all by itself. With our basketball players, I used to pretend to check their energy. I’d grab one of their hands and then I’d see if that toothpick would dance. "Sometimes it wouldn’t and I’d say, ‘Well, you’re not ready to play tonight.’ They’d get upset. Then I’d make it dance, and I’d tell them they had the proper energy. They got into it. They always wanted me to do it." Of course, Bailey goes back to Jerry Tarkanian, when the 49ers were ranked in the top five. But trainers remember people more clearly than victory. "Joe Harrington was great," Bailey said. "A lot of people thought he was super-intense, but he really wasn’t. He’d go in our locker room and chew everybody out for a few minutes, then come out and smile at me and say, ‘Watch this,’ and go back in there and yell some more. "Seth (now at Virginia Tech) was the one who was fiery and driven, and he also was Joe’s X-and-O guy, but he won a lot here and we had a great time." Bailey was there for Long Beach State football, which was allowed to expire after the 1991 season. In 1990 the coach was George Allen, who lost his first five and won his final six. He was given the water-bucket shower after the final victory and then fell ill and passed away. Some felt there was cause-and-effect there. Bailey doesn’t. "George did a great job," Bailey said. "He was a little different, though. One time, he asked me why a certain player had to go to class when he could have been putting that into football. I just laughed and said, ‘Coach, this is a university, you know.’ "In fact it’s a very good university, and I credit Dr. (Bob) Maxson for that. He came over from UNLV and was our president, and he improved every facet of the place. And he was interested in all phases of our athletic program." Trainers also remember the tough ones. "I never was around anybody tougher than Misty May," Bailey said. "One year her posterior cruciate ligament was gone. We’d get her together, and she’d go out and play volleyball like the All-American she was. Some people can do that. They won’t let anything stop them." Retirement comes at 60 for Bailey, who has invested well in real estate. He’ll be on the tee a lot more often, and he plans to travel more. He’ll visit his son Ryan, a longtime Team USA water polo player who is joining Partizan, the leading pro team in Serbia. Now Long Beach just needs to call somebody to fill a 36-year hole of laughs, advice, secrets and tape. |
