The Name Is the Same but Not the Game

The late Fresco Thompson used to like to put the thing in the proper perspective for young athletes torn between a life in baseball or in football. “What do you want,” Fresco would sneer, “a career--or a limp?”

You can imagine the frustration today a young USC Trojan performer named Louis C. Brock would cause the crusty old-time Dodger vice president.

Lou Brock is not just anybody with a two-sport talent. For Lou Brock to turn his back on baseball is like a Barrymore turning his back on the stage or a Rockefeller renouncing banking.

Lou Brock is just not a football name. Fresco would probably disgustedly suggest he change it to “Bubba” or “Spider” so as not to confuse people and dissociate himself further from the grand old game.

You see, Lou Brock is as baseball as peanuts and Crackerjack. It’s a Hall of Fame name in the boys of summer’s game, and what it’s doing in a face mask instead of a batting helmet is something for the second Louis Brock to answer. Fresco would probably ask him where he wants the crutches sent.

Very few people could play baseball the way the original Lou Brock could. He stole more bases than anyone who ever played the game. He’s one of only 14 to get 3,000 hits or more. He hit more than .300 seven times, led the majors in scoring twice and did it all with this little private smile on his face as if he knew a joke nobody else around did.

And even with 938 stolen bases, to say nothing of the 307 times he got caught stealing, that Lou Brock never needed a cane--or a brace.

So, what’s wrong with that for a career? Why wouldn’t a guy opt for that instead of one in which you spend your life back-pedaling or trying to take football passes out of the ears of 6-foot-5 Olympic class sprinters? Why should somebody named Lou Brock be going into Busch Stadium in shoulder pads instead of sliding pads?

Could Lou Brock Jr. have done what Lou Brock Sr. did--have that kind of career in the major leagues?

Probably. He was the best high school batter in the St. Louis metropolitan area in his time with an average in the .470s. He had the arm, speed and power and he could play shortstop or the outfield. He was a switch-hitter and a good enough prospect for the Montreal Expos to draft him.

He also played quarterback on his high school team and was All-City at that sport, where he ran for nine touchdowns in his senior year, passed for four more, kicked extra points, punted and even made 32 tackles on defense.

Still, when he accepted a football scholarship at USC, most people assumed that was because there were more of them than baseball scholarships and that the season would soon find him in an outfield, not a backfield.

The then-coach, John Robinson, didn’t think so. He put in a proviso that Lou Brock Jr. could not play baseball his first season at USC, that he had to concentrate on learning to be a defensive back.

The evidence suggests that if there hadn’t been a Lou Brock before him, this Lou Brock might have wound up in the National League, too.

“Assetwise, I had more tools, I was more suited to baseball,” he admits. “But I became a better football player.”

How much of this was due to a subconscious wish not to have to duplicate his father’s achievements?

“I did want to establish my own identity,” Lou Brock Jr. said. “It is a fact of patrilineal philosophy that every son wants to be better than his sire. As far as who my father was, that was my driving force. But when you are the son of a successful man, it is a given that you are starting at a point higher than he started.

“This meant that, if I played baseball, I needed to get 3,024 hits, or one more than my father; I had to steal 939 bases. My successes would be measured by his. I had to play to higher standards than the other guys.”

Lou Brock Jr. forgot baseball. And vice versa.

Instead, he became one of the best defensive backs in the history of a school that had Dennis Thurman, Dennis Smith, Mike Battle, Danny Reece, Ronnie Lott and Joey Browner, to name a few.

Young Lou had 48 tackles as a junior, 3 interceptions and 4 passes broken up. Last year, he led the team in interceptions with 4, passes broken up with 8, and he recovered one fumble. He ran one interception back for a touchdown (58 yards) against Notre Dame and ran another for 41 yards against Stanford, setting up a touchdown.

He will probably go late in the first round or early in the second round in Tuesday’s NFL draft. Eighteen pro teams have expressed an interest; eight have tested him.

But will he want to go rummaging in the closet for a first baseman’s mitt the first time a pro tackle levels him? Will he come to wishing he only had bases to steal for a living, not footballs?

Lou Brock Jr. grins. “My first day at the corner in USC practice, the offense called the 28-pitch, the old Student Body Right right at me. Here comes this Bruce Matthews, the All-American offensive guard, and he lowers the boom on me. Stars were flying, bells were ringing, I was woozy and the coach looks at me and yells out ‘Welcome to college football, kid!’ ”

Didn’t that make him want to go immediately and find a sport where, if he wanted to catch a ball he wouldn’t have five people trying to tear his arm off first? He grins. “No, I kind of liked it.”

Lou Brock Jr. hopes for a long career where, maybe at the end, they’ll have one Lou Brock in the Hall of Fame at Cooperstown and the other at Canton, where the day can come that he won’t be known as Lou Brock’s son any more but that one will be known as Lou Brock’s father.