Milwaukee Was Touched by a Warrior

They said their final goodbye to Al McGuire here Monday night, in a stirring Catholic requiem Mass that filled two floors of a huge cathedral and went on in celebration from 7 p.m. to nearly 9. McGuire would have called it a two-hour goose bump.

He was the quirky basketball coach who put a little Jesuit school in downtown Milwaukee on the map with a series of basketball teams that slapped around the big guys in the late 1960s and ‘70s and won the NCAA championship in 1977. In the title game, McGuire’s Marquette Warriors made Dean Smith’s fabled North Carolina four-corners offense look like a fable.

And he was the goofy network announcer who, upon walking away from basketball after that NCAA title, became famous as the sidekick for Dick Enberg and Billy Packer, the one who would say the wildest things and even dance with the winning teams in celebration. His heart was rap, his rhythm Benny Goodman.

America’s television audience, much like Marquette’s basketball fans before them, didn’t know what hit it.

He was proud of his individuality. He said he liked being Al McGuire. He lived the Frank Sinatra song. He did it his way.

He came from the Rockaway Beach part of New York City and told anybody he met, usually in the first five minutes, that he was the way he was, he wasn’t going to change, and if you didn’t like it, you weren’t going to like him. Monday night’s turnout of more than 1,000, on a night of freezing rain and bone-chilling wind in a city that has all too much of that, proved once and for all how many people liked him.

When he died Friday at 72, after a long battle with a blood disorder, his death triggered an unusual public outpouring of sympathy and a national sense of loss. As more and more stories were written and broadcast, those who knew only the basketball and broadcasting parts of McGuire learned that he transcended sports, that his personality went well beyond the bounce of a basketball or the quip at a microphone. McGuire raised people. Also money.

The scene of his funeral, Gesu Church, in the heart of this city’s downtown on its main street, Wisconsin Avenue, was blocks from the start of an annual September five-mile race. It began in 1978, the year after McGuire quit coaching and at a time when he wanted to give something back to the city of Milwaukee, which he said had given him so much. The race is called “Al’s Run,” it annually attracts around 25,000 participants and it has raised millions of dollars for Milwaukee Children’s Hospital.

Monday night, the city that McGuire touched so deeply turned out to touch him back, for one last time.

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Among the pallbearers was a heavy-set, grim-faced man, in his early 50s, hobbled by a bad knee and temporarily crippled by a broken heart. His name is Rick Majerus, and he normally would have been coaching the University of Utah basketball team to yet another run at the NCAA tournament. Majerus is a basketball great in his own right, a master of the nuances and motivational techniques that separate the good coaches from the great ones. In 1998, Majerus took Utah to within five minutes of the NCAA title, losing only when it tired down the stretch and yielded to Kentucky.

Majerus learned the game of basketball from McGuire. Majerus had a father named Raymond Majerus who was once a national force in the AFL-CIO, but Raymond Majerus died young. Majerus’ second father was Al McGuire.

Majerus has been here for the last month or so, on leave from coaching because of his bad knee, and spending time with his mother, who has cancer, and with McGuire, who was dying.

Early this fall, Majerus came to visit McGuire, who was then strong enough to get away for short times from the Franciscan Woods care center where he stayed. McGuire wanted to go to the park. Majerus drove him there. They walked for a couple of hundred yards, then McGuire said he was tired. He sat on a park bench, Majerus went to get the car. When he came back, McGuire was asleep on the bench.

“I tried to gently stir him, but he didn’t wake up,” Majerus said. “He looked so peaceful, so I waited. And I waited. And pretty soon, I figured he had died. So I just sat there with him, the two of us, on a park bench.”

Eventually, McGuire woke up, only to head back to his bed and the eventuality that could not be reversed.

When Majerus came back here for good about a month ago, he had a daily ritual of bringing McGuire a pizza. It was, among other things, symbolic because, for years as McGuire’s assistant, Majerus endured McGuire’s rants and raves about him needing to stop eating pizza and slim down. Now, McGuire would smile, take one pepperoni and munch on it, then leave the rest for the nurses.

Three days before McGuire died, Majerus brought him the greasiest hamburger he could find, with onions and pickles and tomatoes and lettuce and mayo and ketchup and mustard. McGuire ate it all. Then Majerus brought him a hot fudge sundae. McGuire ate it all.

It was the last meal Al McGuire ate.

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The early parts of the service were of the stiff-upper-lip variety.

Organ music filled the church and echoed off its ceilings. McGuire’s son, Robbie, and daughter, Noreen, did readings, and his grandchildren participated.

The printed program opened with a page of remembrance from McGuire’s broadcast partner and friend, Enberg, who appropriately let some of McGuire’s best sayings carry his piece:

“The only time winning is really important is in surgery and war.”

“You’ve got to touch the rank and file. The world is run by C-plus students.”

“The reason you don’t get a thank-you letter after giving a free speech is because the guy who got you for free got the thank-you letters.”

The sermon was given by the president of Marquette, Robert A. Wild, S.J., who theorized that McGuire was already in heaven because, upon his death, he rode his Harley Davidson to the pearly gates and plied St. Peter with a little bit of New York charm and a dash of street smarts.

“St. Peter never had a chance,” Father Wild said.”

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When McGuire died, scores of prominent sports people were quoted as saying pretty much the same thing: He was one of a kind.

And so he was.

In the off-season, McGuire would grow his hair long and ride all over the city on his motorcycle. No ties, no nice threads, only jeans and dirty T-shirts. One night, he decided to motor over to one of his children’s homes to see his grandchildren. He parked the bike, rang the doorbell and waited. The baby-sitter peaked out through the drapes, and, fearing for her life, called the police.

When his son, Allie, became a high school star, McGuire had to make the decision about whether he wanted to recruit him, whether he wanted to subject his son to all the pressures inherent in playing for your father, especially a father like Al McGuire. McGuire thought about it and then called a news conference. He said that, not only would Allie play for him, but that, because he was his son, he would be a starter.

And so he was.

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The real tears came at the end of the Mass.

Allie McGuire stood at the podium. Behind him were more than 40 former players and coaches from McGuire’s era.

Allie thanked the people at Franciscan Woods for allowing his father “his dignity” in the last days of his life. He thanked the people who had braved the weather to attend. And then he did what all in attendance had wanted: He told more Al stories.

He said his father had almost died about two weeks ago, and his survival at that time was near miraculous. “I went to see him the next day and he was sitting up in bed, eating a hot dog.”

Allie said, the next day, his father lapsed in and out of consciousness, and he said that, as horrible as that was, he still somehow managed to remain Al.

“I was sitting face-to-face with him, two feet away,” Allie said, “and he suddenly started talking about the University of Wisconsin basketball situation [where the team is being run by an interim coach]. He looked at me and said, ‘I want you to call the athletic director of the University of Wisconsin, and I want you to tell him to take my name off the short list.’ ”

Allie McGuire said that his father’s ritual, in the last three or four months, has been to receive guests, all obviously coming to say their goodbyes.

“Each person got 15 minutes,” Allie said. “And it would go like this. The first 10 or 11 minutes would be catching up on the family. Then, in about the 11th minute, he would say, ‘Give me a hug.’ And he would rock himself back and forth on the bed until he could get to his feet for the hug. The person would thank him for how he had touched his life and my father’s eyes would start to glisten. It was always like that, the same ritual, time after time.

“One day, I said to him, ‘You don’t always have to get up.’ And he said, ‘Son, I have to get up. They have to remember me as strong.’ ”

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Before the formal service, Gesu Church was open for viewing of McGuire’s body, in an open casket. Next to the casket was a floral arrangement with a basketball in the pot. And next to that was a 3-by-5-foot picture of the legendary coach, his arms extended high and spread wide apart in a signal of joy that, on this occasion, could also be taken as a gesture of departure.

It was McGuire in his prime, full-faced, broad Irish smile, thick hair creeping down over his ears, in yet another moment of triumph in a career that had so many.

He had just beaten Notre Dame, and the look on his face said: “How sweet it is.”

Now he is gone. How sad it is.