Homecoming

It was nothing, really, until you stopped to think about it. Only a white-haired old man in a golf cart, coming on a soft April afternoon to watch a college baseball game. Only a white-haired old man, coming to watch a college baseball game because A) he likes baseball, and B) he was somewhat familiar with the college in question.

Such a small thing. Such a huge, huge thing, perhaps.

Bob Knight coming to an Indiana University baseball game was no big thing, until you remembered that he hadn't stepped foot on campus since he was fired as its head basketball coach 19 years ago. Said he'd never come back, as recently as two years ago. Didn't come back even when one of his successors, Tom Crean, repeatedly reached out to him. Didn't come back even when his former players begged him to, and when his greatest team, the 1976 undefeated national champions, was honored at a game one night.

They'd have brought down the house, if Knight had walked out there with his team that night. The ovation would have lifted the roof off Assembly Hall. But, no.

He would be, as he has always been, consistently bullheaded. There has always been an element of Greek tragedy to his saga, an element of sadness that he could never stop being Bob Knight even when it was to his benefit. From his first days to now, he's been his own worst enemy, and the architect of his own troubles.

So, yes, he would cling to grudges as if they were family heirlooms. Long after everyone who had been involved in his dismissal from IU was either dead or long gone -- a dismissal, true to form, that he brought on himself -- he refused to make peace. The war was long over, but he remained that lone Japanese soldier hiding in a cave for decades, refusing to surrender.

And then came this soft April afternoon, and here he was. And maybe that was just Bob Knight coming to watch a little baseball, and maybe it was something more.

Much has been written and said these past few months about Knight's deteriorating health, in particular an advancing erosion in his mental faculties. At his public appearances, he sometimes repeats stories several times, and forgets he's introduced people minutes after doing so. It's apparently a jarring thing to witness, particularly for those who remember what a brilliant man he's always been.

And so maybe this baseball game was something more than a baseball game. Maybe it was the opening of a door. Maybe it was the beginning of reaching out to the place with which he will always be synonymous, before it's too late.

Mortality tends to focus human beings on what's important, after all. And to clearly delineate what is not.

Perhaps that's what's going on here. One can only hope.