For These Coaches, Going Extra innings Is a Way of Life : At USD, John Cunningham Earned Stadium Namesake With 25-Year Contribution

As usual, John Cunningham had been working while a lot of other people were taking some time off.

Those closest to him, his wife Nancy and 13-year-old son Geoffry, were spending a week at the family’s time-share condo down by the beach. Those next closest to him, the players on his University of San Diego baseball team, were enjoying a vacation from school, courtesy of spring break.

Cunningham isn’t much into breaks. Unless they’re the kind that you make with hard work.

At one time or another during the past 25 years, Cunningham has been a college athletic director, an official scorer for a major league baseball team, an assistant college basketball coach, a teacher, a gardener, a college counselor and a bus driver.

And he has done all that while also serving as USD’s baseball coach. In 25 years, he has built and groomed a baseball field and has built a solid baseball program with good players to send onto it. He has taken USD to Division I and compiled a better-than-.500 record despite having the use of only two full-ride scholarships (and 10 tuition-only scholarships), compared with other Division I schools that have as many as 13 full scholarships to hand out.

He has done so much for the school that, in January, the university honored him with an elegant dinner party, invited 350 of his closest friends and then announced that it was renaming the baseball field John Cunningham Stadium.

“That proves that the people here think a lot of him,” said Patrick Cahill, USD athletic director. “Because it’s an unwritten law here that nobody can have anything named after them unless they die--or they donate a great deal of money.”

Cunningham, on the other hand, has donated a great deal of time. And that’s something nobody can put a price on.

His spring break started with a three-day recruiting trip to Las Vegas. He arrived back in San Diego Thursday night for one night’s sleep at his home in Escondido. The next morning, he returned to the airport for a 9 a.m. flight to Fort Worth and another recruiting trip.

When he got off the plane in San Diego Thursday, he was talking with a couple of USD law students he had met on the plane. He had promised them a ride home.

Just then, somebody called his name. It was a reporter.

“You’re so hard to get hold of,” he was told. “I was wondering if you’d have some time to talk a little USD baseball.”

John Cunningham didn’t sigh, scream or run. Instead, he flashed a grin and said he had a few minutes. Cunningham will talk USD baseball with anybody, anytime.

“You know, one of the things I regret the most is that we don’t get enough (media) coverage at USD,” Cunningham said. “But I guess that’s the way we like it. We can do our own thing, and nobody really bothers us.

“That’s what I like about my job. It’s my baseball program, and nobody is ever trying to tell me how to run it or tell me that they know more about my job than I do. I don’t know if a lot of coaches can say that. But I can.”

The conversation would last more than a few minutes. Most conversations with Cunningham do.

“He’s had an awful lot of long, long postgame talks,” Cahill said. “Sometimes he gets going on something, and there’s no stopping him. He cares about people, and he wants them to know how he feels. It’s a great trait to have. So many people just won’t express their feelings. He will.”

The law students would have to wait.

When Phil Woolpert, the former University of San Francisco basketball coaching great, died last May, he took a little bit of John Cunningham with him.

Of all the people he has met in his life, Cunningham said, Woolpert had the most influence on him. The two first met as player and coach in 1955, just a few months after Woolpert’s USF team, led by Bill Russell and K.C. Jones, won the first of two consecutive NCAA championships.

Cunningham never really knew his father. His parents had split when he was very young, and he grew up with three of his brothers in an orphanage in downtown San Diego. It was tough on him, he says, but he did the best he could with what was dealt him.

He eventually went to St. Augustine High School, where he discovered he was pretty good at basketball. By his senior season, in fact, he was leading the county in scoring.

He wrote a letter to USF, and Woolpert gave him a scholarship.

“That guy was as honest as the day is long,” Cunningham said. “He was so unique for his time. He never used anybody to do anything for him. He helped people get the best out of themselves, and he helped me get the best out of myself.”

Cunningham played for Woolpert for four years, and after his senior season, the team was invited to participate in a good-will tour of the Far East. One day in the Philippines, USF’s group was attending an outdoor party on a patio when it started to rain.

Everybody rushed inside, but Woolpert slipped on the marble floor and broke his back. He wound up in a cast from his neck to his toes. He took a year off from USF, then decided to leave altogether.

He tried the business world but wasn’t successful, and a year later he wanted to get back into coaching. USF didn’t want him anymore, so Woolpert migrated south and returned to coaching at USD.

“If it wasn’t for him, I’d have stayed in San Francisco,” Cunningham said. “But he invited me down to work with him after I finished graduate school. I couldn’t pass up the chance.”

Cunningham was a basketball assistant and also helped out with Mike Morrow’s baseball team. Morrow stepped aside in 1964, and Cunningham took over as only the second baseball coach the school has had.

In 1969, Woolpert decided to step down as basketball coach and athletic director. Cunningham was AD for one week before he convinced Woolpert to come back and remain in that capacity.

“That’s the thing about John,” said Thomas Burke, USD’s vice president in charge of student affairs and the man who organized Cunningham’s 25th anniversary celebration. “He’ll always do whatever it takes to help out.”

Phil Woolpert isn’t the only sports figure who has had an impact on Cunningham’s life.

“All you have to do is mention Elgin Baylor to him,” said Jim Brovelli, the former USD basketball coach who is now at USF. “And then run for your life.”

Of course, that’s not true. Cunningham is much too gentle for that. But he does remember.

Cunningham joined USF before the 1955-56 season and, as it was for freshmen in those days, he couldn’t play on the varsity. But he could practice against them. At 6-feet 5-inches, Cunningham played center in practice. The varsity center--Bill Russell.

“Phil used to say, ‘Hey, John, just keep him off the boards,’ ” Cunningham said. “And he said it like it shouldn’t have been that difficult. Heck, I came to USF as the county’s best scorer out of high school, and I was happy to get a shot off against him.”

Russell led USF to the championship that year, and two years later, the Dons were strong again. They were ranked No. 1, in fact, when they met Seattle University in San Francisco’s Cow Palace with a trip to the Final Four on the line.

Cunningham was Woolpert’s first forward off the bench, and he was needed late in the second half when Seattle’s Baylor twisted and turned and fouled out USF’s starter, All-American Mike Farmer.

The game was tied with nine seconds left when Seattle inbounded the ball to Baylor, who was guarded by Cunningham.

“We all thought he was going to drive to the basket and score or get fouled,” Cunningham said. “We knew we couldn’t stop him. But he didn’t drive. He just stood there at the top of the key, and I waited for him to drive. Then, with two seconds left, he dribbled a couple of times, took a step or two back and let it fly.”

Seattle won.

“We always remind him of that play,” said Ed Slevin, a teammate. “But, you know what? He had great position. There really wasn’t anything anybody could have done.”

“John is really the kind of person who represents what USD is all about,” Burke says. “His kids behave, go to class and represent our school with dignity. Those are the things that are most important to John, and those are things that have always been most important to him.”

But, as with any coach, winning is also important. That’s why Cunningham is disappointed with his team’s 17-18 record this season.

What’s toughest is that USD was 31-23 last year and returned most of its top players. A big year seemed to be in store. But injuries and some poor pitching have contributed to the sub-.500 record. Before spring break, USD lost four consecutive games to Pepperdine, three by blowing leads in the last two innings.

“It’s hard sometimes when the team is going badly, but there are other things,” Cunningham said. “I learned that a long time ago.”

And that’s why he keeps busy. When he’s not grooming the baseball field (“Don’t ever go jogging on his field,” Brovelli warns) or coaching or recruiting, he’s driving the bus for the basketball team.

Just last summer, he gave up his job as the official scorer at Padre games. He’s still on call, though, for emergencies.

“Last summer was the first time I was off, with no real job, in 25 years,” Cunningham said. “And I found out that it was pretty nice. I love my job, and I love working, but taking some time off isn’t such a bad thing, either.”

It just usually doesn’t happen that way.

CUNNINGHAM AT USD

YEAR W L T PCT. 1964 12 19 0 .387 1965 17 21 0 .447 1966 20 26 0 .435 1967 14 26 0 .350 1968 13 24 0 .351 1969 22 17 0 .564 1970 21 16 0 .568 1971 34 12 0 .739 1972 20 19 1 .513 1973 19 22 0 .463 1974 23 15 0 .605 1975 19 20 1 .487 1976 26 16 0 .619 1977 24 19 0 .558 1978 33 22 0 .600 1979 32 19 1 .615 1980 30 25 1 .545 1981 30 25 1 .545 1982 29 24 1 .547 1983 17 27 1 .386 1984 20 36 2 .362 1985 17 39 1 .310 1986 26 25 2 .509 1987 31 23 1 .574 1988 17 18 0 .486 Totals 566 555 12 .505