Schaly's Greatness

by Bill Robinson

On a spring but wintry day in the late 1950s, snow swirled about the diamond at the old Marietta College baseball field located in a corner of Municipal Stadium, since renamed Don Drumm Stadium.

Surprisingly, the Pioneers were playing a game. MC won. A no-hitter was pitched. The catcher? Don Schaly kept his pitcher on target and pumped up with a booming voice much like his legendary coach, Don Drumm.

Memorable victories came early for this skinny, crew-cut kid from Ellwood City, Pa., but just a few years later there would be countless more after he became Pioneer commander-in-chief. Schaly became one of the winningest coaches in all collegiate sports. But to dismiss him with that label is to dismiss the Queen Elizabeth II as a big boat.

Schaly?s greatness went beyond all those victories, championships, and personal honors. In addition to the purpose of fielding the best team possible, a goal was to improve each player as a person and to produce citizens who would be a credit to society. There are more than 600 of these former players ? many who went on to be All-Americans and others who never played above junior varsity ? that are mourning the death of Schaly, who died on Wednesday in Venice, Fla., at the age of 67.

A former Pioneer player, whose name I can't recall, told me what I heard many, many times over the years: ?He taught me a lot - how to be a champion. He prepared me not only to be a baseball player but after baseball, too. And when you put on the pinstripes, I was with one of the best groups I could ever be with, my teammates. We formed a bond for life. There?s not a better fraternity around. It all goes back to Coach Schaly.?

Playing for Schaly was a commitment to hard work, discipline, and sacrifice. Work time was for working. No teams were better prepared.

Players learned early that devotion to the job was demanded. Lack of excellence could be excused but lack of trying for excellence never.

Getting the best out of a player was a Schaly trademark. He made them believe in themselves and made them believe they can succeed even when they lacked the physical or mental abilities to do so.

One of Schaly?s favorite words was class. Oh how he loved it. He always spoke of class. His players performed with class, if they played, and it upset him no end when the opposition did otherwise.

Schaly could be tough. The earth could tremble on occasion. He was mentally tough but he was a sentimentalist, too. One of his prime attributes was that he was a caring individual beneath that sometimes hard outer core. He really sincerely cared about his players when they were there and after they were gone.

This man of high character and moral courage touched the lives of many beyond his players and coaches. One of them was mine and it helped me become a better sports writer.

Schaly reminded me early that I shouldn't do anything halfway. I got a call from Schaly one night and he was reporting a doubleheader which was played on the road. Toward the end of the conversation, I said "Just gimme the line scores." "Line scores!" he bellowed. "You're not going to use box scores?" I paused for a moment, realized the box score is Major League-type coverage, so I took the box scores. I didn?t miss using many over the next 40 years or so.

Schaly hated any kind of negative reporting about his team. It fit with my philosophy evolving from a roadmap for sports writers once given to me by a famous scribe.

Rule No. 1: Tie goes to the runner. Favor the positive over the negative.

It was a great and forever treasured journey over the years with the Ol' Man (his self-proclaimed nickname). He was a giant in his profession but more important to me, he was a giant of a friend.

Bill Robinson was sports editor of The Marietta Times for 30 years and retired in the early 1990s. He covered the Pioneers when Coach Schaly was a player and coach, and reported on Marietta's three baseball national championships.