The four stages go like this: Middle age, old age, “Hey, you look good,” and legend.
When Mike Gillespie took off the uniform, he was 78. The breakthroughs and the heartbreaks were sprawled behind him, on roadsides.
It took Gillespie eight years to get USC back to the College World Series, a place they once visited annually. It took three more years to win it.
Then he took the UC Irvine job for three years that became 11. He got to another CWS. He lost two ninth-inning Super Regional finals. Gillespie got a three-year contract extension at age 74. That is the very definition of legendary.
Gillespie retired after the 2018 season, but only to tend to wife Barbara, who was fading into Alzheimer’s.
Then he was visited by 2020’s peculiar style of cruelty. He developed a lung problem that became pneumonia, and then he had a small stroke. On Wednesday, he died at 80.
Like Bear Bryant, whose retirement and funeral were nearly coincidental, Gillespie had left too much of his life on that final locker room hook.
He was “Skip,” to one and all. He was game to coach a high school JV team if needed, “because there’s still a way to bunt.”
“That first year, they didn’t hire him until October,” said Daniel Bibona, who pitched and coached for Gillespie at UCI. “Near the end of the month, he would say, ‘Don’t forget the costumes for Halloween.’ Then he wrote it on the practice plan.
“We looked at each other, and, sure enough, we came to practice dressed up like that. He would always keep us loose.”
Bibona gave up five runs at Kansas State one day and got nobody out. His next batter homered at New Mexico State.
Gillespie sat him down. “You don’t just all of a sudden suck,” Gillespie said. “These two outings are just a fluke.”
Bibona became the two-time Big West Pitcher of the Year.
Gabe Alvarez came to USC to the tune of trumpets, the best freshman in college baseball. Then the Trojans had a bad game, and Gillespie erupted like a eucalyptus fire.
“He was on me and on me,” Alvarez said, laughing. “Finally he yelled, ‘Alvarez, you’re the worst best freshman in college baseball!’”
Gillespie and Arizona’s Jerry Kindall are the only men to win national championships at their alma mater as coach and player. Gillespie coached at College of the Canyons before USC athletic director Mike McGee called. He never knew why, except that McGee had hired Larry Smith and George Raveling for the big-time sports and maybe wanted a real Trojan.
Gillespie dealt with scholarship limits, private school tuition complications and tough rivals all around. He admittedly didn’t know pitching. “If we gave up a hit on a high pitch, he’d yell, ‘Throw it lower!’’’ Bibona said.
But he turned the Trojans into fundamentalists who mastered situations, not just a sluggers’ parade.
In 2006, real Trojan AD Mike Garrett fired Gillespie, through a proxy.
Jason Gill is the current USC coach, the fourth since Gillespie was fired.
“We were always so prepared,” said Alvarez, now a USC assistant. “We worked on this one play for three years and never used it. It was a first-and-third pickoff. We finally used it against Long Beach State in the Fresno regional in ‘95. It helped us win.”
But nothing compared to Morgan’s Run.
In 1998, the Trojans led Arizona State 11-8 in the seventh inning of the CWS final. They had bases loaded with two out and Wes Rachels at bat. Rachels had five RBIs to that point. But this was the Gorilla Ball era, and Gillespie knew 11 runs weren’t enough.
He signaled that Morgan Ensberg should steal home. Twice Ensberg faked it. On the next pitch, third-base coach Andy Nieto said, “This is not a test.” Ensberg laughed. He was safe, Rachels singled home two runs, and USC won 21-14.
“When he came to recruit me, I was struck by how passionate he was about his players,” Alvarez said. “None of us were happy about how it ended at SC. We were thrilled to see him go out the way he did at Irvine.”
This spring and summer, Nieto (now coaching Damien High) and Bibona and the others checked on Gillespie, brought him food, dwelled on his hopeful days.
“But some reason he never could get over the hump,” Nieto said.
Coaches can be unforgettable, either way. Bibona created a walking monument just in case. He named his son Cole Skip Bibona.
“You did?” Gillespie asked at the time. “Is it really on the birth certificate?”
Bibona assured him it was.
Becoming a legend in someone else’s time: That’s the fifth stage.
